Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 217: Quarantine

“We’re going to be exploring this city for decades. Can you imagine what secrets it holds? We …”

Isaac tuned out the scientists’ excited chatter coming from the deck of the carrier and focussed on the people in the meeting room.

It had taken them all of ten minutes to agree on the fact that whatever ended up being done with the city, it would have to be a joint decision.

Trying to monopolize the city wouldn’t be really possible due to the multi-nationality of the group that had fought and bled to take it. If the US tried to claim it, there would be a million people who’d rightfully challenge it, and the same went for anyone else trying to take charge.

Making “no one touches the city until we figure this out” the first joint decision had taken only a few seconds after that.

Everything else … they hadn’t been able to agree on a single point in twelve bloody hours.

“Look, I’ve said this before, I’ll say it again, and I’ll keep saying it until you start listening to me: drop a nuke on the place and be done with it! Colonel Fairfield, just do it!”

“I’m not authorized to make decisions about the deployment of the US’ nuclear arsenal.” Fairfield sighed, repeating himself for the millionth time.

“Nuke it?” Dr. Han asked “Do you know what will happen when a rampant nuclear fission reaction occurs within an area of space where the standard laws of physics as we know them may not exist? Are you able to provide a survey on the consequences of vaporized eldritch building material getting into the environment? Can you provide verifiable evidence that there are no materials hidden in the city that will react poorly with an explosion of that magnitude?”

“Shut up about the nukes.” Fenrir rumbled “You’ve had this exact same argument five times and gotten nowhere. Put a pin in it and move on.”

“Yes, let’s.” Isaac sighed. The whole “ignore the nukes” talk had also happened multiple times, but this time, it would hopefully stick as Fenrir was currently standing behind the bomb-happy adventurer and looming over him.

“Ok, what about [Raid Bosses]? We’ve either found the bodies of or captured all the cultists you found during your first exploration, Dr. Thoma, but can you guarantee that means we found all of them?”

Urgh, this again.

“Every piece of information we have available states that no cultists are remaining.” Fairfield pointed out “The tunnels under the city are deep, but they don’t branch out all that much. Anyone still hiding out is located in rooms that aren’t accessible unless certain circumstances are met, and those normally aren’t very big.”

“We’ve probably got all of them, but what if we didn’t? What if another Heart of Madness shows up?”

“Then we deal with it.” Isaac said, “We’ve received reinforcements and we’ve gotten better at working together.”

“Oh, working together, like that one time the incident commander took off on his own to kill a dinosaur?” one of the destroyer captains asked snippily.

“Captian Smith, did you, perchance, get a chance to read up on its capabilities? The Mosasaur Monarch would have been a very dangerous enemy to the fleet, but in my professional opinion, taking it down myself would take the least amount of time and occur the least number of casualties.” Isaac said.

“Where the hell would I read up it?” Smith asked snidely “You fought it a few hours ago and you’ve been in this meeting since then.”

“I dictated a report to a helpful petty officer via the party, it was uploaded to all the relevant places ten hours ago.” Isaac said “And if another [Raid Boss] arrives, I’ll make a judgment call about how to handle it as well.”

“Thank you for your concern, Captain Smith, but considering that the situation was resolved quickly and safely, I believe Dr. Thoma’s course of action was the correct one,” Fairfield added.

“Glad we got that sorted, and now, can we please talk about what you’re going to do with the city if you’re not going to nuke it?”

“Quarantine,” Patrick suggested. He’d been furiously tapping away at his tablet for hours while using a separate Party to communicate with Bailey, Isaac, and Dr. Han while the rest of them worked on ensuring that no one managed to get any stupid suggestions approved.

Sure, in an optimal world, they’d have managed to get everyone to agree on quarantine without having to first work out a solution to every single problem that idea had, but the situation was a bit too tense for that.

“We’ve been over this, the people enforcing the quarantine would go insane and then we’d just end up with a repeat of the current situation.”

“And if the city doesn’t do them in, the people begging to be allowed to explore will.”

“We don’t even know why the city rises and falls, it might even be able to travel.”

And a dozen different arguments were thrown up, but Patrick didn’t respond and waited until the very last of them had been made, then projected his presentation onto the wall screen.

“We’ve thought about all of those. Firstly, a colleague back home was able to tell us how the mechanism that let the city rise works based on pictures, and why it failed.”

The next slide showed a picture from the bodycam that Patrick had been wearing in the city, with a certain piece of runic circuitry circled.

“The mechanism wasn’t a part of the city, it was added after the fact by the squatters, and that component there was manufactured faultily. Apparently, it should have been obvious to anyone with the right amount of training, but no one caught it and when they put it together the first time, it absorbed all environmental mana and ascended the city. When they sank it back down, they broke the mechanism for good.

“The city is staying down there and we can be sure that there are no additional mechanisms as they have to be located near the center of the place they’re intended to raise, an area that’s been explored thoroughly.

“We’re going to be getting around the issue of sanity erosion by regularly swapping out the guard contingent, using [Veteran’s Knowledge] to transfer experience in dealing with the city’s emanations.”

“And what about the explorers? Whoever ends up stuck here will have to prevent the literal thousands of hopefuls from sneaking in. They’re all chomping at the bit to explore the city, and if they’re locked out categorically, some might decide to throw all caution into the wind and ignore all regulations about dealing with the city.”

Isaac rolled his eyes. That would literally have been the next topic talked about.

“Limits on how often one can visit, limits on how long the visits can take, mandatory psychiatric counseling, and so on.” He finally said, “But please, let’s save the comments until Mr. Lerch has finished his proposal.”

The argument went on for another hour but eventually, the proposal was agreed upon, the meeting finally ended, and Isaac headed off to find the psychiatrist with the confidentiality [Skill] that Maier had told him about.

This would either take a huge weight off his shoulders … or it would be a complete disaster.