E.N.D. (Celestia Chronicles 10/ M.A.G.E. Arc Book 3)

Chapter 1: The Begining of the End Times

A man walked through the halls of the military base until he reached one room in particular. He pulled a thumb drive out of his pocket and plugged it into the computer terminal. An Alarm began to blare as the guy dropped dead.

***

As Halatia stood on a rocky outcropping she could hear the alarms blaring in the distance- this was it. After two whole years of setting everything up- making sure her work was undetected as she made sure all the right pieces were in place: The E.N.D. Computer Virus was finally uploaded.

****

The Next Morning Harvey and Jeffrey looked over the scene carefully.

"We have a computer virus" Zefor said. "A really nasty one" He added.

"Luckily this base was isolated and off the grid so any computer virus here is self contained" Harvey noted.

"About that" Zefor said with a deep sigh. "We've been compromised in a very unique way- almost all of the world governments have. These outposts- that were supposed to be offline for a very specific reason are now linked together. They are all part of a network exclusive to them and tampering with that network will give us very little time to work with before this Virus activates."

"You're beating around the bush for a very specific reason" Jeffrey noted. "What do these outposts do?"

"All these outposts that are now linked- they are every single nuclear launch site on this planet."

Jeffrey and Harvey stared in disbelief.

"Furthermore- according to logs in our sister branches who are also investigating this matter all of these sites have had their warheads swapped out at sometime in the past two years with ones utilizing Enriched Uranium."

'WHAT?!"

Harvey seemd furious. "I thought Enriched Uranium was banned and against the M.A.G.E. charter!"

"Let me guess every single nuclear powered country went along with it regardless" Jeffrey said.

"Muttually assured destruction in a nutshell" Zefor said with shrug. "You can thank Lucifer for that one. He loved whispering in the ears of world leaders to make them do stuff like this."

"Enriched Uranium launched from every single facility- this could wipe out the entire planet" Harvey explained in a frenzy. "And the Half-life is infinite! There's a reason it was banned!"

"So we disarm the nukes" Jeffrey said.

"You'll need every nation on the planet to agree to it at once" Zefor explained. "Once we disarm one the rest will fire in less than four hours. They will all need to be disarmed simultaneously. The code has also embedded itself in our computers- if it detects future launch sites being built it seems like it will find a way there."

"You're acting like this code can think for itself" Jeffrey noted.

"Because it can" Zefor countered. "And I don't know why but it doesn't even feel artificial..." He rubbed his arm. "This feeling is very familiar to me specifically...."

"You think.. He... might be involved" Jeffrey asked nervously.

"I don't know- but we do know for a fact who is" Zefor said handing a file over.

Jeffrey looked at the file and noticed a picture of Halatia.

"So She's finally shown herself" Jeffrey said.

"And Hallia still hasn't returned" Harvey worried.

"She will" Jeffrey explained. "Me and Zefor got a message about two weeks ago that she should be finishing her training sometime last week."

"Speaking of" Zefor rubbed the back of his head nervously. "Did you put together that ritual I asked for?"

Jeffrey pulled out an old rolled up piece of parchment. "This is a modified version of the spell the reapers were working on to save you. You already know the cost to make it work- hence why we never used it."

Zefor looked it over and then hugged Jeffrey tightly. "I am so grateful for everything you've done for me. Look after them for me."

"Will do" Jeffrey said as he started to walk out the room.

"Wait" Harvey protested, "Where are you going, Jeffrey. We need all hands on deck for this!"

Jeffrey looked back with a smile. "Exactly- all hands! And there's a friend I've been missing terribly these past two years... time to catch up with the Adventures of the Masked Pixie!"