Chapter 72: Pat's Resolve
[So the husband and wife are alive. That's good. I take it you're calling about the helicopter. Surprisingly, the driver is still alive. I'm sending you his coordinates on the island. Try to get there quickly.
He sent me a message saying there are still some Anima roaming the island and he can't land for longer than ten seconds or he is going to get swarmed.]
"Don't worry about that, just send the coordinates. I'll take care of any stragglers that try to attack us."
Mark's voice was confident, and Pat was a little surprised that Mark was that confident after the fight that he just went through. Pat had a recording of Mark's fight playing on a large screen in front of him.
He was able to tap into the NASA satellite and get a recording of the island in real-time, and he analyzed all of the injuries that Mark received and how much treatment Mark would need to get back on his feet. Anybody that received that much injury would be dead or dying by now, so Pat was shocked that Mark still had the energy needed to take care of stragglers.
[Are you sure about that? I've seen your previous fights and I don't think you should be entering into another fight after something like that. You're injured, aren't you?]
Pat's voice was as haughty as ever, and it almost sounded like he was reprimanding Mark for even suggesting that he would take care of more monsters after the fight he just had. But Mark just waved Pat's concerns away.
"Yeah, I've got some scratches here and there, but I'm fine overall. It's nothing life-threatening. Just send in the coordinates."
Pat shrugged as he heard this. If Mark thinks that he is strong enough to handle even more Anima, then Pat is not going to try and stop him. Pat typed in the coordinates to the helicopter, and he was sending them over to Mark's phone when something on the large screen caught his eye. There was an interface transmitting a message over a secret network embedded in the NSA module on the NASA satellite.
Pat narrowed his eyes as he turned to look at it closely, and he noticed that it was a media signal. It seems that the NSA was transmitting some video over the network.
"I've sent the coordinates to you. Get out of there and come home."
Pat didn't even wait for Mark to respond before he closed the communication and threw his airpod to the side. He immediately began to type on his holographic keyboard as he became laser-focused on what the NSA was transmitting over the satellite.
The media message was not even encrypted, and it was so easy for Pat to piggyback on the signal and enter the system through a backdoor that he was disappointed. Pat frowned for a moment before he shook his head and maneuvered his way toward the disk where the video message was being stored. Pat hummed when he noticed that the NSA was viewing the video in real time.
However due to the number of videos being transmitted at the same time as well as the limitation of the NSA equipment, there was a lag in the system, and they were only getting the video five minutes after its broadcast.
Pat was immediately curious about what sort of video they were so interested in watching. Are they transmitting the video from the island through some sort of camera that the NSA superhumans are wearing? That was something Pat didn't know about, and he knew that Mark didn't know it either. The NSA never even mentioned that they would give their superhumans a transmitting device.
Pat was only able to get videos of what happened outside the tunnels through the NASA satellite, so he became curious about what happened inside the tunnel. He managed to copy the video from the system, and he began to filter through the videos to get rid of any part that didn't include Mark's face.
Pat's system was much faster than the NSA system, so he was able to filter through the videos in less than three minutes.
Pat then started to watch all the videos at his usual 2x speed.
"Check for survivors and see if you can get them out of here."
"We aren't alone."
"Show yourself, motherfucker."
"You are no KING."
He ran through more than ten minutes of battle and killing before he finally reached the point where Meta was confronting the Anima QUEEN. Pat's eyes widened, and he slowly dropped his drink to the side as he leaned forward to get a better look at the screen! What the hell is this? Was that Arit? She looks like an anima!
Meta's transmission device was a little cracked, but it still provided enough video to show the confrontation between him and the anima QUEEN without interference. Pat just watched silently for some time, and he didn't even blink when he saw the QUEEN stab her claws into Meta's neck and kill him in cold blood. Pat was already used to seeing people die, so there was nothing new here.
After the QUEEN killed Meta, the video went off as Meta fell, but there was still some audio, and Pat immediately slowed the video down, and started to listen to the audio from that point to get a better idea of what was happening.
"Ufufu~! What do we have here? Another Superhuman?"
"Arit… can you hear me?"
Pat could hear both Mark and Arit talking, but Arit sounded very different from how she used to. Pat could only think that something had taken over her body. The audio kept going until the point where Mark managed to bring Arit out of the QUEEN's control, and Pat immediately closed down the video and started to work.
Pat didn't get it.
He didn't understand what really happened in that cave, but from the little that he heard, he knew that there was no way he could allow this to get out to the open. If the authorities ever heard that Arit was an anima, they would attack her in full force and try their hardest to end her life. Pat might not be very close with Arit, but he would protect her just for Mark's sake.
[There is a Seventh Generation firewall protecting this server. Attempting to break through it automatically will take an estimated: 5 minutes]
Seventh-generation firewall? Pat scoffed as he turned off the automatic firewall shredder and cracked his knuckles as he decided to do it manually. It would take too long for the system to break the firewall, and there were only about four minutes before the video got to the NSA servers in City C. Right now, Pat was attempting something that had never been attempted before.
He was going to break into the NASA satellite and destroy the NSA module handling the transmission of the video before it could transmit the remaining videos to the NSA servers. That was the equivalent of physically breaking into the Pentagon and trying to come out of there with your life. That is the only way to ensure the video is really lost.
If Pat only gets rid of the servers, then there is a chance that the module on the satellite will save a version of the video, and the NSA will get the video once they get their servers running again.
He had to break everything.
[Beginning Fake Transmission.]