Falling Apart & Coming Together

At some point, probably just a month after the superheroes vanished, Destroyer began eliminating world leaders. News reports were almost daily. I remember the first headline clearly, “German Chancellor Murdered by Destroyer”.
 
I was scheduled to fly to Germany for an industrial space flight roundtable. It was rumored the the Chancellor would make a private appearance among the leadership group after the day’s sessions ended...but that trip was cancelled — and so was the Chancellor.
 
Then the next headline was more emphatic — almost impressed, “Destroyer Crushes Japanese Prime Minister“
 
Then the next, “Russian President Beamed into Oblivion. Citizens Celebrate.”
 
And more followed, “Chinese National Assembly Vaporized in Elegant Display”
 
“British Prime Minister Admits to Treason — Executed Mercifully by Destroyer.”
 
“US President Convicted of High Crimes — Executed by Gigaton. Justice Served.”
 
And the names kept coming. Over time, the tone of the headlines and the “spin” of the media softened toward Destroyer, portraying him as a liberator. Headlines shifted from “murderous” to “merciful” and “just” within a month and, out of fear, most people accepted it and moved on. They didn’t have a choice.
 
After nearly a month of daily news reports on governmental leaders admitting to treason and being “mercifully” executed by Destroyer and his cronies, the world seemed to be falling apart. Nearly all world leaders had been eliminated and replaced with those who were loyal to Destroyer. Some leaders capitulated and joined his ranks, but the headlines were mainly painted with dead “traitors”.
 
Though it wasn’t as widely reported, my remaining sources in the Department of Defense informed me of what happened next:
 
In the second month after the “Vanishing”, the top leadership of all worldwide defense agencies were eliminated — the Department of Defense, the European Defense Agency, the People’s Liberation Army — all the agencies remained intact, but with top leadership “convicted” of high crimes and publicly executed. Some were tortured and jailed indefinitely, but only until they could be scoured for information.
 
The media reported what happened next, but credited it to security concerns and in response to growing threats of insurrection. “In a move of swift leadership and decisiveness, Destroyer installs a new North American Police Force.”
 
But according to my contacts, VIPER had been established as the “North American Police Force”. They quickly consolidated their International Nests into North America, quelling what might have been a second American Revolution. With supers in their villainous leadership ranks, the state police force obliterated the rebellions and adopted the threatening moniker “SNAKE” — referring to themselves as the “Super-North-American-Kill-Enforcers”
 
They literally enforced “peace” by killing.
 
Remembering back — when the US government passed "gun registration" legislation in the year prior to the Vanishing, we all celebrated it as a step toward public safety. But when SNAKE (VIPER) took over as kill-enforcers, they used the gun registry to begin a thorough confiscation of all firearms in North America. Within six months of the SNAKE, it became illegal to possess firearms.
 
There are still periodic reports of weapon-cache discoveries, followed by public executions. I’ve been told that some retired officers have hidden their unregistered weapons very carefully...but these never seem to remain hidden. And retired officers are often eliminated.
 
Similarly, my contacts know of munitions stores maintained on the underground, but anyone caught with ammunition is killed on sight by SNAKE.
 
After the early rebellions were squashed, protests seemed to erupt across the world about the need for “Metahuman Registries”. Though staged and funded for the most part, the protests eventually struck a chord among a worried world population. Metahuman Registration Acts were passed quickly around the world and metas are now required to be processed and documented — or face elimination.
 
One of my old running buddies at the Department of Defense — Senior Specialist Milton Broaudus — moved into a department that had been repurposed for identifying and monitoring unregistered metahumans. After a few months, Milton was sent to a "re-education" camp for passing over a report of a low powered, pre-teen meta. The tribunal that sent him away almost chose execution, but one of the panel members had graduated with Milton at ‘Point and let him off “easy”. When he came back, Milton wasn’t the same person. His eyes were tired and his skin was worn. He lost a decade in the year he was away being “re-educated”.
 
Only once before he was sent away, Milton mentioned to me something very sinister — and this has never been reported in the news. He told me about the existence of "experimentation" installations. I never got to ask him more about this.
 
No less than sixty days after the Vanishing, Gigaton was appointed over the US Department of Defense. Though he seemed in-over-his-head at first, Gigaton surrounded himself with loyalists and created a command structure to occupy the vacuum created by the previous leadership eliminations. He is rumored to have created watch-lists for ex-military officials and retired operatives. These individuals periodically turn up missing, if they aren’t successfully recruited or tortured for information.
 
Milton was sent away for “re-education” almost three months after the Vanishing. There are still other sympathizers within the DoD who remain opposed to Gigaton and Destroyer, but they quickly learned to keep quiet. The brave and outspoken ones were all killed. The quiet ones learned to lead double lives. They perform their day-jobs at the DoD, often through gritted teeth...but they meet covertly in the “underground” and organize with retired officers who are willing to risk their lives for a cause that is just barely coming together.
 
After Milton came back from “re-education camp”, I knew there must be something more I could do. I had already begun working on the DarkR web prototypes, but DarkR was still a distant reality years in the making. So I did what the rich do best — I began hosting galas.
 
At the galas, nearly one every month it seemed, I would make sure only one of my closest DoD friends were invited each time. While the gala would go on into the night, I would sneak back into the Sharpe Mansion Vault with my closest DoD contact — Beth Schroeder — along with Jamie, my personal assistant, and put my money where my social-media-mouth could never be. This could never be mentioned publicly.
 
Starting in the second year after the Vanishing, I began funding Beth Schroeder with monthly “hush funds.” $100K in cash was given to her from the vault — once every month — lined in jackets and overcoats designed to exactly match the coats she wore to the gala. Though I’d give her the money, she would put it wherever it needed to go...to protect and hide new metahumans.
 
The deal was simple - if the money I was providing was ever discovered, it would be called a bribe for contract approvals on my company’s space flight program development. Beth would actually have to “use” some of the money for herself, to keep up the ruse. But the real work was aimed at identifying supers who weren’t loyal to Destroyer, preventing their execution, and bringing them to the “Meta Underground Railroad”.
 
Admittedly, I’ve not been connected to it in any way...other than through the money. Periodically Beth will mention to me about new “shipments” arriving in far-off places and I’ll know she is referring to new metas for whom she’s been able to bribe and buy a way into a new life in an unheard-of location.
 
And now, almost three years after the Vanishing, metas are still identified, monitored, and killed — everyday. But with the DarkR web intact, Socrates firmly in place, and the New Champions Protocol underway, I’m truly hopeful we can start to come together like never before.