File 7.2 - Shattered Home

Back in a light uniform, though he was technically off duty now, military regulations didn’t permit him out of uniform while in the main facilities. Only in the barracks, or apartments in this case, and non-restricted parts of the base was that lifted. They were pretty strict about very specific things.

“Damn, can’t believe it,” a soldier in the lounge complained.

Edgar hung his fedora loosely around his fingers until his hair finished drying. However, he set it down on the counter when he went for a bottle of water. He didn’t do enough he felt to take one of the supplement drinks.

As he sipped on the cold water, feeling it chill his insides after the hot shower, he turned around and leaned against the counter. The lounge was filled surprisingly tightly packed with soldiers and a few civilian contractors. “Eh?” He grabbed the sleeve of a passing soldier looking for a drink. “Whas goin’ on?”

“You haven’t heard, kid?”

“What?”

“Those damn terrorists attacked again. This time it was some civilian freight ship.”

“Tha hell? Again!” Ed moved forward to the monitor running the news broadcast. He was finally starting to hear it over all of the chatter. ‘Can’t tell Su…’

At the bottom of the screen the headline read “Ragnarok Strikes Casslin” taking Ed only a moment to place the city in the world. ‘Getting’ bold…’

The female anchor began to recount the news explaining the situation. “At 12:42 local time, the anti-terraforming terrorist organization known as Ragnarok destroyed a civilian freighter over the skies of Casslin. The method of the attack is still under investigation by the local security force as well as H.O.P.E. specialists. Eye witness reports claim to have seen another ship nearby the freighter when it was destroyed. The unknown ship is suspected to belong to the terrorists, but its origin is unknown.”

“Damn…them again,” cursed Ed as he remembered the attack on Welest. An unknown craft definitely had the makings of being the same group.

“The civilian freighter Niphliheim was arriving in port still hauling cargo destined for the major trade hub. The wreckage of the ship scattered over a kilometer of the city endangering citizens on the ground. Search and recovery crews are working to map out the destruction, but it is unlikely there were any survivors.”

Edgar staggered back, unable to say a word. He bumped into one of the soldiers that complained, but he didn’t know what they said. He couldn’t hear them. All he could hear was the woman’s voice repeating over and over again in his skull “…unlikely there were any survivors…”

He fell through the crowd and stumbled to the floor finding that his legs weren’t functioning properly for him. His mind was still frozen, not even processing it. He couldn’t believe it. It repeated like a broken tape in his head trying to make him understand. But he refused. Even though he knew.

The reaction he had once his body finally caught up to everything was to run out of the lounge. There was nowhere that he had in mind. His legs just took him away from it all. He knocked over several people in the hallway and crashed against the well-polished floor more than once. Even pain wasn’t something that he seemed to notice.

Edgar didn’t know where he was going or even where he ended up when he finally stopped. He was sweating and panting completely out of breath despite it not being even that exhausting of a run. It was his body, it reacted to his mind and emotions. That was all it could do since he mentally wasn’t doing anything still.

But he started to run again. One building melded into another building. He was lost, but it didn’t matter. Escape seemed to be the thing that his body understood. Though escape was a pointless attempt. He had nowhere to go. He couldn’t leave the base.

Eventually, Edgar stopped again. There was no more that he could do to run. His body refused to keep going further. He had reached the fatigue and exhaustion point now. Not that he fully seemed to comprehend such things. The paralysis latched around his brain like a snake coiling tighter and tighter. All he did was drop down to the cold floor.

It felt like he was completely out in the middle of nowhere. He only barely seemed to be processing where he was and it didn’t look familiar. That was the limit of his capacity. He leaned back against whatever it was behind him.