Reincarnated With The Degenerate System

Chapter 274: For the Sake of the Future 3

The rifles came down.Arthur did not move. The tendons in his neck were rigid against my forearm, and I could feel his pulse hammering through them—fast, furious. A military man’s heartbeat.

He was still scheming despite his situation.

"Good." I kept my voice low, meant only for him. "Now we can talk like adults."

I released him and stepped back. Not far. Just enough to give him the option of turning around.

"Work with us." I suggested.

"Work with you," Arthur repeated.

"That’s what I said."

"You walked into my facility, put four of my best men on the ground, held a gun to my throat—"

"I don’t carry a gun."

"—held lightning to my throat," he corrected, and there was something almost dry in the way he said it, "and now you want cooperation."

"I want more than cooperation." I moved to the table and looked down at the maps spread across it.

Underground networks. Territorial boundaries. Supply lines. The small, suffocating world we’d all been living in since the invasion pushed us beneath the surface.

"I want unification."

Arthur didn’t respond immediately.

"Every faction down here," I continued, "is doing the same thing. Carving out a corner. Protecting their water, their food, their power supply. Fighting each other over scraps while the real problem sits on the surface."

I looked up at him. "You’re a military man. Tell me honestly — does that make any sense to you?"

His jaw moved slightly. "Survival rarely makes sense."

"Survival is a short term goal. I’m talking about something longer."

Arthur crossed his arms. "You’re going to tell me that you plan to take out the aliens?"

"Not tell you. Remind you. We all know it already." I straightened.

"The initial invaders pulled back years ago. What’s left are the remnants that we could take down for good once we destroy their main base of operation."

"That doesn’t make them less dangerous."

"It makes them beatable. The question is whether we beat it in pieces, faction by faction, bleeding out in the dark — or whether we go up together and actually take something back."

"What’s your plan?" he inquired.

The lightning curled around my forearm.

It wasn’t violent this time. No crack, no burst, no scorched air. Just a slow, breathing coil of blue-white current winding from my wrist to my elbow, humming at a frequency they felt in there back teeth more than heard with there ears.

"I’ll teach your Second Phasers to control elements and make them more powerful."

"We build an army. Then we attack with everything we have. No stopping. No half measures, no secured perimeters and waiting to see what happens." I let the lightning fade slowly, like a coal cooling. "We go up and we don’t come back down until we’ve reclaimed the surface."

The silence after it was different from before.

Arthur was the first to speak. "That’s not a plan. That’s suicide. If your army gets wiped out, then it will be over for us dwellers too."

"It is. But are you satisfied living here? Are you satisfied knowing that the next generation will suffer the same fate? I’m giving you a way out."

Arthur didn’t answer immediately.

He turned away from me and walked to the far wall — the one with the old monitors still flickering, water flow data scrolling across dead screens in pale green light.

Finally he opened his mouth, without turning around, "I have a grandson. Seven years old. Born down here." A pause. "He’s never seen the ocean."

"He asks me about it sometimes. I tell him it’s blue. That it goes further than you can see." He stopped. "I’ve been telling him that for three years. At some point it starts to feel like lying."

He turned back around.

"You’re right that I’m not satisfied. Nobody down here is satisfied. Satisfied men don’t fortify water treatment plants and train soldiers they have nowhere to march." He moved back toward the table.

"The question isn’t whether I want the surface back. The question is whether your plan gets us there or just gets us killed faster."

"Both are possible," I responded honestly. "I won’t tell you there’s no risk."

"Then tell me why the risk is worth taking."

I leaned forward, both hands on the table.

"Because the alternative is certain. We stay down here long enough, we don’t die in a battle — we just fade. Resources shrink. Factions fracture. People stop having children because why would you bring someone into this."

"Your grandson is seven now. In ten years he’ll be a young man who has never breathed open air, never seen a horizon, never had a future worth planning for. And the aliens above will still be there. Holding what’s ours by default because we never had the spine to take it back."

The room went very quite.

"At least if we fight.... there’s a version where he sees the ocean."

Arthur looked at me for a long moment.

Then he pulled out the chair at the head of the table and sat down. Not the gesture of a man conceding — the gesture of a man settling in. Getting to work.

"Sit," he said, to me and Harrison both.

We sat.

He leaned forward, elbows on the maps, and for the first time since we’d walked in he looked less like a warlord receiving enemies and more like the general he used to be.

"If we’re going to do it, then we must form a plan. I already mapped the aliens’ main base. We believe that if we take it out, then the aliens will disperse or even die," Arthur pointed out.

"Are you sure about that?" I asked. This information was unknown to me and Harrison.

"Yes. Before things got this bad, I talked to one of the scientists, and they told me that the aliens rely on some kind of mental connection to a core to keep moving. They’re also very afraid of the sun, so they converge in their base during the morning."

"Go on. Tell me more." I smiled and began to listen.