Chapter 283 - Nick, Chris, Jenny and Zeel

Zeel stirred awake underground with a huge rock pinning his body in place.

Closing his eyes, Zeel's nanites scanned the environment and soon a 3-Dimensional image of the entire complex was projected into his mind.

Everything down to the smallest grain of sand was now within Zeel's mind. Yet, not everything was visible to his hyperactive senses, as if he was in a location similar to Himiko's Tomb.

"I hate feeling fucking suppressed!" Zeel complained irritatedly.

∞∞∞

After the explosion, Nick and Chris were speechless. Nick even handed his rifle over to Chris as if he wasn't the one that accidentally made the shot.

It wasn't long until Nick and Chris found themselves standing below a helicopter that was poised to land.

"What are you going to tell the Colonel?" Chris asked, trying to take his mind away from the superhuman feats he had witnessed earlier.

"I am going to admit my wrongs, and then ask for forgiveness," Nick replied a bit scared about what he had just witnessed.

Truth be told, he was still having a hard time believing that anything he had just seen was actually real. How could someone catch a missile?

It was just not within his realm of understanding.

The helicopter landed, and out came an angry Colonel Greenway, Nick and Chris' senior officer in the United States Army.

"I am told you boys should be a hundred clicks from here!" Greenway shouted, his voice even louder than the raging winds brought by the landing helicopter.

"Sir, I admit to all my wrongs," Nick shouted black as he saluted "But I don't think you understand the gravity of what's happening here,"

"Severity?" Greenway asked, his voice raging even more "Severity my ass. All I see are two assholes from long-range reconnaissance, running around Northern Iraq stealing any treasure that isn't nailed down.

And these insurgent fuck-ups, clean up your messes every time before the army can investigate and disbar your asses!"

"Sir, I would normally deny it but…" Chris did not get to speak further as Nick interrupted.

"Sir, has the government lost some sort of unique weaponry? Maybe an android or a drone?" Nick asked, but only received a skeptical look from Greenway.

At this time, Nick was grasping at straws, anything that could make rational sense of what his eyes had witnessed Zeel doing.

Not in the mood for Nick's usual bullshit, Greenway walked through the ruined stone city not minding Nick's at all.

"Sir, please?" Nick and Chris said in unison as they followed closely behind Greenway.

Greenway paused and looked at Nick and Chris. Seeing the seriousness edged onto both their faces, Greenway pulled out a communicator from his vest.

"Someone send a medic to look at sergeant Nick and Chris. They suffered head damages from the earlier missile strike," Greenway reported.

Nick was about to explain the situation clearly, but a sudden fist impacted the side of his face.

Nick stumbled back, and Jenny, who had thrown the fist, grabbed her hand in pain and shook it furiously.

Nick's head spun for a couple of seconds before it stabilized.

Raising his head and seeing it was Jenny, Nick rubbed his cheek and felt like he had seen an oasis in the desert.

"Jenny! We have to get out of here, this place is crazy. There are supermen running around, and missiles don't explode when they should," Nick stated with utmost seriousness as if expecting Jenny to believe him regardless of the absurdity of what he was saying.

"And there is also lightning, I saw some lightning," Chris added from the side.

"Yes! Yes! There was lightning as well!" Nick added, but each sentence that left his mouth just made him look even more deranged.

However, while Greenway had a difficult time determining whether or not he should knock Nick out, Jenny's face changed at the mention of lightning and Superman.

'Doesn't that sound like the asset Henry assigned?' She thought tiredly.

Grabbing Nick's face and staring into his eyes, Jenny said "Nick focus! What happened to the asset?"

"Asset?" Nick replied confused.

"The lightning man?" Jenny said, wondering why she ever slept with Nick in the first place.

"He died over there because of Chris' accident," Nick stated without any indication he was lying.

Chris fell to the ground in surprise as Nick had just put the blame entirely on his shoulders. Jenny only had one thought in her head at the moment.

'Fuck! I am going to get fired for losing the asset,'

Pulling Nick, Chris, and Greenway to the crater in the ground caused by the missile, Jenny peered over the edge and was startled by what she found.

"Oh my gosh, it's Egyptian!" Jenny exclaimed.

Below the crater was a tomb that showed a hint of Egyptian statues.

"Is that unusual?" Chris asked, his money-making instincts already kicking into gear.

"We're in the Persian Gulf Chris, Egypt is thousands of miles away," Nick commented, his mind also detecting benefits.

Seeing the look of excitement in the eyes of two treasure-hunters and a single researcher, Greenway didn't wait for them to ask for permission before an order was issued.

"You have exactly an hour before we leave… anything that you gain during that time is yours," Greenway said, knowing that if Chris and Nick didn't get it, then the insurgents would.

The insurgents would use the treasures to purchase more guns, which would just make his life harder so it was best to leave these matters to Chris and Nick.

Twenty minutes later, Nick, Chris, and Jenny were slowly lowered into the Egyptian Tomb below.

It wasn't even a minute after they landed that a voice rang out from a corner of the room.

"Hey, a little help here?" Zeel asked, unable to entirely lift the huge rock that pinned him down.

"What the fuck!" Nick cried startled.

Chris simply merged into the background and tried to be as unnoticeable as possible. Unlike Nick who could somehow miraculously survive death, Chris knew he had no such talent.

Jenny strode forward pulling Nick along, and together, they somehow managed to move the rock away enough for Zeel to hop to his feet.

Jenny was intrigued by the mysterious asset Henry assigned to the case alongside her, while Nick was just confused and questioning everything at the moment.

"That rock was strangely light," Nick stated, shoving Zeel's unnatural resistance to death at the back of his mind.

"The rocks were never meant to be heavy, the carvings on the rocks are what makes them heavy," Zeel commented, dusting off his nanite-clothing.

Jenny was inspecting everything about the tomb, but Zeel's choice of words caught her interest. She was not new to the supernatural, but also not as experienced as some of the higher members of Prodigium.

"What about the carvings?" Jenny asked interestingly.

Zeel stared at Chris hidden behind Nick a bit before he answered.

"The carvings are antiquated Egyptian runes that suppress evil, and I guess I was considered somewhat evil since they temporarily held me in place," Zeel replied dismissively as if being partially evil was no big deal.

Zeel's left hand still couldn't be used, but he was sure that it would only remain that way for a couple more hours at most.

After getting the answer to her question, Jenny walked away to inspect the tomb further with Nick following closely behind.

Zeel blocked Chris's way before he could follow the duo.

"You're should head back up," Zeel stated.

Chris fell to his knees as his face paled and he asked "Head back up to heaven?"

Zeel felt the strange need to chuckle at Chris's pathetic display, because for some reason or another, Chris was terrified of him.

"I meant outside," Zeel snorted and walked away.

Truly, Zeel wouldn't mind if Chris stayed but Zeel had already been struck by Heavenly-Lightning once today, and he didn't want to risk it.

Chris was a normal human, and demonstrating his divinities while near normal-humans was against The Laws Of The Worlds.

Jenny was not a normal human due to her fate ties with Henry and his organization, while Nick… well, Zeel just naturally liked Nick so he didn't mind exposing a few secrets.

After all, it wasn't every day that Zeel could socialize with someone as selfish, and benefit-driven as himself.

Zeel caught up to Nick and Jenny quite easily.

"Where is Chris?" Nick asked suspiciously.

Zeel pointed upwards and Nick nodded in affirmation.

"So what are you?" Nick asked curiously.

Knowing he could not exactly lie, Zeel answered somewhat truthfully "The final stage of Human evolution,"

Nick nodded rapidly as if he finally understood everything "Government experiment huh?"

"Universe/Government, if the terms are interchangeable, then sure," Zeel replied, causing Jenny to chuckle ahead of them.

But truly, Jenny was listening to every word that left Zeel's mouth and committed them to memory. This was another task given by Henry, try to uncover Zeel's origins.

The trio continued walking forward for another minute until they entered another section entirely.

"What the fuck!" Nick and Jenny shouted seeing what was inside the room.

Zeel's reaction was much more condensed as he sensed a wave of death-attuned energy wash over his body for an instant.