Total pages in book: 44
Estimated words: 40274 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 201(@200wpm)___ 161(@250wpm)___ 134(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 40274 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 201(@200wpm)___ 161(@250wpm)___ 134(@300wpm)
The punishment lasts approximately twenty seconds. Those twenty seconds seem like an eternity before whatever the hell psychic attack fades, leaving people sobbing on the filthy streets. Some of them have soiled themselves, and many are still crying. Young and old, none have been spared. Nobody seems to have been physically harmed, but the effects of the emotional strike are rolling through the world.
“WE CAN BE YOUR SALVATION, YOUR DELIVERANCE, YOUR FUTURE. OR WE CAN CREATE HELL ON YOUR EARTH.”
“These fuckin’ assholes,” a guy next to me curses as he gets up, trying to soothe his bawling child. I share his sentiment. We do not like to feel or witness pain, and what we just saw and felt was the agony of war without the physical wound.
All around me, people are reacting to their short ordeal with horror, anger, and tears. A sense of outrage suffuses the streets. A few blocks away, a fight is breaking out. We can’t hit the aliens, but we can hit each other. For fuck’s sake.
The Cupid have just made a huge mistake in judgement. They thought bringing pain to us would make us submit. They don’t know humans very well at all. They’ve just ignited every rebellious soul into full-on fury. The people who were agitating for resistance now have something solid to hold onto. And the billionaires who attacked them now seem like fucking heroes for leading the fight against our would be alien overlords.
“The fuck,” I curse in turn. My attempt at stopping bad things from happened has failed, and now I have suffered them. I am angry at Cir, and all the Cupid for taking the acts of a few assholes out on everybody. That wasn’t fair. That wasn’t right. There were tens of millions of innocent people of all ages who didn’t know any better and never had any control of the billionaires.
I am angry now. Very angry. Angry enough that I storm my way up to the roof and get back in the shuttle. I didn’t think I’d be flying back to the Halo as quickly as I left, but here we are. I’m trying to save the fucking world, even though I’m still shaking and feeling sick to my stomach from whatever the hell the aliens just did to us all.
“Where’s Cir?”
I don’t know why I bothered asking. I can suddenly feel him. That sense of linkage I had before is getting stronger. I feel like I can sense him in the Halo. Again, nobody stops me. They have no sense of a hostile being in their presence as I storm through the halls, tears streaming down my face. It’s like I’ve been pepper sprayed with feelings.
Following my sense of Cir, I slam into a room full of tall and serious Cupid. I don’t bother to introduce myself. I have not formulated any preamble. I launch straight into a tirade, pointing my finger at each of them, shaking with rage.
“You just did what every evil fucking son of a bitch does. You just made the whole world suffer for the actions of a few. You hurt the good people because of the bad ones. That is, and has always been the tragedy of this planet. That we’re stuck here with each other, suffering because of what our ancestors did, and what more powerful people do. The average person has fuck all control of what happens around them or to them. And you have soldiers ready to invade? You ARE THE BAD GUYS!”
My voice goes screechy and raspy on the last words.
And then there’s silence.
Brows rise. Glances are exchanged. There is a general air of what the fuck is going on here, as if I have interrupted something very serious and somehow made it much less serious.
The room erupts in laughter. All four of the Cupid high command smirk, including Cir, who speaks to me in a way I’m just going to call patronizing.
“We’re not the bad guys, Jessica.”
“Yes. You are. You just made an enemy of every man, woman, and child on the planet. You said you came to help us, but you hurt everybody.”
“Maybe you needed to be hurt.” The tall guy with the green hair and the fancy suit chimes in. We’ve not been introduced before, so I suppose I’m just going to have to introduce myself.
I pick up the nearest solid object, which happens to be a red stapler, and I yeet it at the head of the green Cupid. I don’t know who the fuck he is, but he needs a stapler to the fucking head.
I don’t think they expected that. The green guy dips and dodges just in time to avoid being hit, and the stapler hits the far wall, springing open to unleash its load of virgin staples all over the alien floor.