August 3, 2028
08:12:35 - 4 hours before N. Shroud’s invasion
New York City, United States
In a rush hour during the morning, with a scenery of huge crowds and heavy traffic, this was quite common in the United States, the world’s biggest country. This financial metropolis, like the other big cities in other countries, had suffered from the pandemic which had been eradicated five years ago. Both the government and citizens were working hard to restore their economy.
Nonetheless, despite the busy scenery, some areas were fairly relaxing. In a residential area of Manhattan, a man named Mason with a suitcase walked towards the taxi parking area. Just right on time, a taxi shows up.
“Taxi!” He shouted, raising his hand, the taxi slowed down and stopped right in front of him.
“Morning, mister. Where would you like to go?” The taxi driver politely greeted the man.
“Please take me to John F. Kennedy International Airport.”
“Understood. By the way, would you like to watch the news or listen to some music?”
“Frankly speaking, I missed the morning news due to a busy packaging. So could you turn on the news channel?”
The driver nodded, turned on the touchscreen, and selected CNN News. The screen showed the opening scene with its theme music. Next, a female anchor appeared and made an introduction.
“Good day, dear audiences. I’m Angela. Around 7 P.M. last evening in San Fransico, residents witnessed various unknown spots in the sky. According to their words, they scattered and wandered around with red and green sparkle. Afterward, they finally disappeared 20 minutes later one by one. There are some similar cases outside of the US including the UK, France, Germany, Russia, Japan, Brazil, etc. Moreover, in the four-month time frame, the global cumulative cases are 273. The Pentagon and NATO have stayed cautious about these continuous unusual events while they stated that there were no military drills. Where did those sparks come from? Are those just some ordinary independent events? Or they are the omen of a new challenge that humanity will encounter?”
“The omen of new challenge encountering? What nonsense. All they want is to repeat the contents to get audiences’ attention,” the driver ranted, he had already been used to this repeating news and became numb with it.
“Ye…yeah…” Mason replied, leaning back in the backseat, and quietly listening to the driver complaining. At that moment, the man’s expression became tense and serious, thinking that these recent repeating news were not simple as people agreed. Usually, this kind of news would stop broadcasting after a week or two. Yet, this news had been broadcast for several months. Was humanity going to face the unknown challenge as the anchor said? Mason shook his head to stop behaving overreacted and looked outside from a window until arriving at the destination.
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08:41:29
John F. Kennedy International Airport Terminal 7
After a few minutes of the ride, the taxi parks in front of the airport entrance. Since it is the world’s busiest airport, a swarm of crowds and travelers from different countries are coming in and out. As the driver parks by the entrance, he faces the man.
“Here we are! That will be 21 dollars, sir.”
“OK,” Mason nods, then pays the driver 25 dollars. “Keep the change. Thanks for the ride.”
“No problem, hope we will meet again!” The driver replied with a smile. As Mason carries his suitcase and gives the driver a wave, the driver waves back and begins to attract the next customer. As Mason enters the terminal, where lots of travelers are lining up for checking, he walks towards the screens to check his flight and its waiting lounge number.
“British Air TF7794…Gate E38…take off at 13:28…,” Mason mumbled. “Still have a fair amount of time.”
After double-checking, Mason heads to the line and waits for his turn. A couple of minutes later, he puts his suitcase on the conveyor belt beside the front desk.
“Good morning, sir. Please present your ticket and passport,” said the staff. Mason followed the staff’s request, then she placed it into a scanner, and then the screen showed Mason’s passport info.
“Brooklyn Mason,” the staff called Mason while she was looking at the screen. “This is your only luggage, correct?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Mason replied.
“Does it have any combustible or flammable items?”
“No,” Mason replied to the staff honestly. The staff then returned Mason his passport and ticket after she finished asking.
“OK. Your boarding gateway is E38, and your seat is at C53 in economy class. Have a nice trip.”
The staff then put a tag on Mason’s suitcase and send it to the conveyor belt. As Mason saw his suitcase was safely delivered, he headed to the security checkpoint to do the security check. After passing the check, he looked at his phone and checked the time that showed 9:03 A.M.
“Still have plenty of time, maybe I can have some meal and look some ware in store,” Mason immediately headed to the nearby store. Three hours later, an announcement chimed in.
“Passengers booked on British Air, Flight TF7794 for London, please proceed to gate E38. Please have your boarding pass and passport ready. Thank you.”
“It’s time?” Said Mason, then he rushed to the boarding gate.
In the line, passengers were holding their boarding pass for scanning. When Mason was quietly waiting for his turn, he heard someone cry out, which sounded like a boy.
“What’s that?!” The boy pointed to a glass window. Mason, people in the line, even others on the pathway stopped and looked outside, there were some UFO looked flying objects hovering outside of the window that looked extremely similar to the minions from a cartoon movie.
“What are those things? Are there any events around here?”
The crowds whispered to each other with their phones snapping the unusual scene. Just then, the mysterious flying objects revealed their weapons and attacked the airplane nearby. A shockwave from the explosion blast the glass window and blew the crowds down, then several laser beams bombarded the airport. The crowds scattered in fear, trying to find somewhere to hide, some of them were unfortunately hit during the escape. As Mason got up, he immediately ran through the panicky crowds to find the exit.
“What’s going on?” Mason said. He couldn’t believe what he just witnessed.
Suddenly, the screens started behaving distorted and tuned into black, then they back to normal later, but what they showed was neither boarding schedule nor news, they showed a cloaked mysterious person with a crimson background instead. He spoke to the panicking crowds with an evil grin.
“People of Earth. Your day of judgment has come. It’s time to make you pay for the humiliation and oppression you had caused me several centuries ago. Once my vengeance is done, I will plunge your world into darkness, and you all will bow to my fear and despair!! HAHAHAHA!!!” The screens turned normal afterward.
“Who was that person? What was he talking about?” Mason tried to figure out what was happening. “Is this a challenge that we are gonna face?”
Mason remembered what the news said on a taxi, he couldn’t believe that it was happening right in front of his sight. Yet, he had no time to think as he noticed lots of flying saucers flew into the building and assaulted the crowds. One of them was aiming at him. Mason immediately lifted a suitcase and threw it at the flying saucer that was about to fire. The luggage hit it so hard that caused it was disoriented and hit the ground. One down, but Mason didn’t let his guard down, he picked up a pistol from a downed security guard.
“I must get the hell out of here!” Mason said.
Ran through the crowds, Mason found the nearest emergency exit that was intact. He hustled the door, saw the aprons and runways were on fire, damaged passenger planes and vehicles, even the buildings nearby were in a bad shape. What’s worse, there was another swarm of flying saucers flying toward the city, seemed they were intended to make the whole New York City burn.
As Mason was struggling for what should he do, several SWAT vehicles came to the apron, then the arm forces got off and started suppressing the aggression. the flying saucer, however, kept swarming toward the SWAT forces even they had downed some of them. Luckily, the helicopters arrived in time to support the forces. With the defense covered both ground and air, the attack paused as the flying saucers scattered around. The team lowered their guard, but little did they know, a severely damaged flying saucer was aiming at one of the SWAT members to commence a sneak attack.
“Look out!!” Mason raised his pistol and shot at the flying saucer, but the bullets could hardly cause one single scratch, like hitting a rock with eggs. Then, it changed target to Mason, but before it fired, Mason made a dash, snatched an assault rifle from one of the SWAT members, and then made a slide to dodge the laser beams. He smashed its glass shield with a rifle stock and then fired several times to make it destroyed.
“Phew…” Mason huffed as he stopped firing. A SWAT walked to him.
“Thanks for saving us, but this area has been set a red alert, please leave it……”
“Aim at flying saucer’s glass shield, that’s their weakness!! And I need your weapons, I have some combat experience!” Mason interrupted loudly. By hearing his firm tone, the SWAT member hesitated.
Suddenly, several portals appeared and an army of robots in various sizes and colors entered the battlefield.
“You gotta be fucking kidding me. Are we facing the terrorists that resemble the minions from ‘Despicable Me’?” Another member ranted while he was aiming at the robots with his assault rifle.
In a split second, a volley of energy weapons came, pinning Mason and SWAT teams down behind the cover. One of the vehicles was hit by a laser cannon and exploded.
“Hold your ground!!!” The captain shouted, then he turned to Mason. “Okay fine, if you are experienced in combat as you said, you’re granted to fight with us until the reinforcement arrives.”
“Solid copy.” Mason nodded.
“Good. The weapons are in that vehicle, feel free to take one.”
“Thank you!”
“Good luck!” Captain patted Mason’s shoulder, saluted at him, and Mason saluted back. Next, he crowed behind the cover and got in one of the vehicles. Mason searched around, he took an M82 Barrett sniper rifle and some 50 cal. magazines.
“Jackpot! A weapon I’m good at.” Mason walked out and said. “Cover me, I’m heading to the second floor of the terminal building.”
Mason sprinted into the terminal building. As he reached the second floor, he noticed that there had been hundreds of robots, maybe thousands. Yet, he knew that there was no time to waste on the battlefield despite the breathtaking view. Mason regained his focus and set the sniper rifle, aiming at the robot army. He took a deep breath and made a shot. The bullet penetrated two robots, Mason kept firing at others.
Making lots of kills on the robot army, but they still had the advantage on numbers, and they were about to overrun the frontline of the SWAT team.
“They are too many, we need to retreat or we will be overrun!” A member said. Mason wanted to argue, but by seeing this situation, he had no choice.
“Very well, we are…”
The conversation was cut off when Mason noticed that the robots stopped firing. He and the SWAT team were confused, thinking that they stopped attacking. But then, some huge tank-like heavy robots came out from the portals. Their gun barrels were aiming at the terminal building, and some energy spheres appeared and they were charging.
“Take cover!!!” Mason yelled immediately. At this time, the heavy robots’ laser cannons finished charging and fired. Several large laser beams penetrated through the terminal building causing it to lose support and begin to collapse.
“Brace yourself!!!” Mason covered himself. The terminal building collapsed into a pile of rubble. The robots moved toward the city. Mason looked at the marching robots and damaged skyscrapers when he still had consciousness.
“Curse…those…robots…” He thought, looking at the sky, where some F-35 fighters were flying toward the city. A moment later, Mason blacked out.
Meanwhile, at the peak of the damaged One World Trade Center, a mysterious man in a black cloak overlooked the devastated New York City and the fighters in the sky, he made a mockingly evil grin.
“Let’s see how you can deal with my robot armies of darkness.” He then turned into a black mist and disappeared into the air.