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Chronicle Universe - Day 45
Mobile Command Center
Outside Seattle, Washington
Marcus sat in the command vehicle, surrounded by monitors and military personnel, his eyes fixed on the cave entrance displayed on the main screen. He'd spent the last two weeks preparing for this moment—not training his powers, but orchestrating something far more destructive.
The mysterious crystal had to be destroyed.
Ever since his telekinetic abilities had stabilized at ten tons of force, Marcus had felt something disturbing—a connection, like an invisible thread linking him to something vast and incomprehensible. The crystal wasn't just a power source. It was something alive, something watching, something that had marked him.
"Teams are in position, sir," reported Colonel Harrison, one of the officers standing beside him. The man's eyes held an unnatural glaze, pupils slightly dilated—the telltale signs of Marcus's mental influence.
It had taken careful work to establish control. Mind manipulation was the other path telekinesis could take, the one the Chronicle protagonists never explored. While they'd focused on moving objects, Marcus had discovered he could influence thoughts. Not perfectly—he wasn't Professor Xavier—but combined with carefully administered sedatives and suggestion techniques, he could create temporary but absolute loyalty.
The colonel and his fellow officers from Joint Base Lewis-McChord would remember none of this tomorrow. They'd wake with headaches and gaps in their memory, blamed on a training exercise gone wrong.
"Begin deployment," Marcus ordered into his radio.
Through the monitors, he watched as military trucks rolled toward the cave. Each vehicle carried high explosives—enough to level a city block. The soldiers, also under his influence, moved with mechanical precision, unquestioningly following orders that should have raised dozens of red flags.
Two Weeks Earlier
Marcus's preparation had been meticulous. First, he'd needed funds—real funds, not casino winnings. His enhanced brain, still running on newly synthesized NZT, had made him one of the world's most dangerous hackers.
South Korea's banking system had been his first target. Their cybersecurity was advanced but predictable. Marcus had found seventeen different vulnerabilities in their infrastructure, exploiting three simultaneously to mask his true entry point. Within six hours, he'd siphoned fifty million dollars through a maze of shell companies and cryptocurrency exchanges.
Japan had been harder but more rewarding. Their stock market manipulation detection systems were sophisticated, so Marcus had gone subtle—thousands of micro-transactions, each too small to trigger alerts, but collectively moving hundreds of millions through the system. The economic damage would take months to fully calculate.
Both countries were in chaos now, their financial sectors reeling, but Marcus felt no guilt. He needed resources for what came next, and compared to what would eventually threaten Earth—Chitauri invasions, Infinity Stones, Thanos—a little economic disruption was nothing.
With the money, he'd rented a private laboratory and produced a six-month supply of NZT-49. The drug was his edge, the thing that let him outthink problems rather than just overpower them.
But the most important preparation had been preventing the original Chronicle trio from gaining powers.
Day 35 - Intercepting Destiny
Marcus had been watching the cave for weeks, knowing that Andrew Detmer, Matt Garetty, and Steve Montgomery were destined to discover it during a party. He'd seen them approach three nights ago—three teenagers with a camera, drunk on cheap beer and teenage invincibility.
He'd stopped them with surgical precision.
A telekinetic tap to Andrew's carotid artery—not enough to cause damage, just enough to trigger unconsciousness. Matt and Steve had panicked when their friend collapsed, and in their confusion, Marcus had touched their minds too. Not control, just suggestion: This place is dangerous. Don't come back. Your friend needs help.
They'd carried Andrew away, and Marcus had reinforced the suggestion over the following days. Every time any of them thought about the cave, they'd feel inexplicable dread. They'd never return. They'd live normal lives, never knowing what they'd almost become.
It was better this way. Andrew's path led to madness and death. Steve would die trying to help him. Matt would be left traumatized. Marcus had saved them from their destiny, even if they'd never know it.
Present - The Destruction
"Charges are set," a soldier reported through the radio. "Awaiting detonation authorization."
Marcus studied the crystal through the drone feed. It sat there, fifteen feet of blue-green mystery, pulsing with that subtle light that seemed to come from within. Through his telekinetic sense, he could feel it—not just as an object, but as a presence. It was aware of him, had been since that first night.
And that connection, that invisible thread between them, was growing stronger.
"All personnel clear the blast radius," Marcus ordered. "Minimum safe distance, five hundred meters."
The soldiers evacuated with trained efficiency. Within minutes, the area was clear except for the drones providing surveillance.
"Detonate," Marcus said quietly.
The explosion was magnificent and terrible.
Seven tons of military-grade explosives detonated simultaneously, turning night into day. The ground jumped beneath the command vehicle. On the monitors, Marcus watched the earth itself seem to convulse, then collapse inward as the cave system was obliterated.
When the smoke cleared, there was a crater fifty feet wide and twenty feet deep. The mysterious crystal was gone—shattered into thousands of fragments scattered throughout the devastation.
But Marcus could still feel it.
The connection hadn't broken. If anything, it felt... distributed. Instead of one strong thread, there were now countless gossamer strands, each fragment maintaining its own faint link to his consciousness.
"Damn it," Marcus muttered, his enhanced brain already calculating the implications. The crystal wasn't just destroyed—it was spread. Each piece potentially capable of creating new telekinetics, each one still somehow connected to whatever intelligence had created it.
Colonel Harrison stood at attention, awaiting orders. "Sir? The mission appears successful."
"It's not over," Marcus said, pulling out a secure satellite phone. He'd hoped it wouldn't come to this, but he'd prepared for it. "Colonel, return to base and prepare an AGM-86 ALCM for immediate launch."
The Air-Launched Cruise Missile was overkill, but Marcus wasn't taking chances. Whatever the crystal was, wherever it came from, he needed to ensure nothing remained.
"Target coordinates," Marcus continued, reading off the GPS position of the crater. "Non-nuclear warhead, maximum yield. Authorization code: Whiskey-Seven-Seven-Alpha."
The Colonel relayed the orders without question, his mind unable to resist Marcus's implanted commands. Within minutes, confirmation came back—a B-52 was already airborne from McChord, the missile armed and ready.
Marcus stepped out of the command vehicle, using his telekinesis to rise into the air. He needed altitude to properly observe what came next. At five thousand feet, he hovered, watching the crater far below.
The cruise missile appeared as a streak of light against the night sky, moving at subsonic speed but still devastatingly fast. It struck dead center, and the second explosion made the first look like a firecracker.
The fireball rose a thousand feet. The shockwave flattened trees for a mile in every direction. The crater became a glowing bowl of molten earth and vaporized rock.
And finally—finally—the connection broke.
Whatever intelligence had been behind the crystal, whatever alien or interdimensional entity had been reaching through it, was now cut off. The fragments were truly destroyed, reduced to component atoms and scattered to the winds.
Marcus descended slowly, landing near the command vehicle where the officers stood in stunned silence. With a gentle touch of his mind, he began erasing their memories of him, implanting false recollections of a classified weapons test, a gas leak that caused hallucinations, anything but the truth.
By morning, they'd remember nothing useful. The official records would show a training accident, some old ordnance that detonated unexpectedly. The crater would be explained as abandoned mining operations. The conspiracy theorists would have a field day, but no one would ever know what really happened.
"That thing hasn't been destroyed yet?"
Marcus pulled out the radio and gave his final order.
"Launch the missile. Target coordinates: 47.*** degrees north latitude, 122.*** degrees west longitude."
On the other end of the radio, back at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, a mind-controlled officer immediately responded.
"Order received, sir!"
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