Chapter Ten

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Nathan sat between the two soldiers in the Rover. They neither spoke to him nor each other. They simply called out codes to a hand-held device Nathan guessed was some form of communicator. Occasionally, someone spoke back but it was the same series of codes that had no meaning to anyone else.

The Rover had no window to the outside world. Its interior was almost completely white, if not for the few black screens that lined the dashboard. There were a couple of indicators on the dashboard as well but Nathan wondered what they were for. It was a driverless Rover, controlled completely by artificial intelligence. Nathan made a mental note to ask Borgina for the location of the control center. If he ever needed an unauthorized ride, hacking into their control system would come in handy.

He wished the ship that brought him from Earth had no windows too. It would have saved him and the other passengers from the horrific images of the enormous carnage. Remembering the view still made him shudder until this day. Everyone in his ship had tears in their eyes as they looked back at the remains of what was once their home planet. He shook his head to dismiss the image. Nothing could be done to change things now. He had to move on.

After twenty five boring minutes, the Rover came to a complete stop. The doors opened and Nathan stepped outside. It took only a few minutes for him to notice the lack of sufficient oxygen in the air outside. He instinctively tried to get back into the Rover but was stopped by one of the soldiers.

"You have to go into that building." The soldier said, pointing to a prism-shaped structure not too far away.

Nathan didn't bother to argue. The soldier was programmed with those instructions and would never go against them. It was one of the reasons he loved Borgina. She was so close to being human that sometimes he forgot she wasn't. He often wished she had a body and wasn't just plain software. That would make her an incredible companion, especially at a time like this.

As Nathan walked towards the building, a few of the codes communicated by the soldiers in the Rover came back to him. They sounded a lot like coordinates he had heard several times before. 38 Durban 8719 North, 77 Durban 0563 West.

"Can I be mistaken?"

He wanted to believe he was wrong but he couldn't ignore the thought. If he was indeed right and those soldiers were referring to coordinates like he suspected, why in the world would they be referring to the coordinates of the Pentagon? Afterall, the Earth was completely destroyed.

"Was the destruction of the Earth planned?"

Nathan didn't know what to think anymore. That last thought sounded like the rambling of a crazy mind. Why would anyone want to destroy the Earth? Is it even possible for a single person or group to destroy an entire planet? What kind of weapon could they have used to achieve that?

The questions kept spinning around in his head. He concluded he was going to look into them. Something was definitely amiss and he was going to find out.

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