Chapter 221: Effective Immediately, Earth's Security Will Be Temporarily Handled By The Astartes
On the street, a cold, murderous intent radiated outward from the Grey Knight.
They simply stood there, watching the strike team that had come for Matthew, without moving an inch, and that alone was more than enough to make their intentions clear.
In the distance, Matthew hovered in the empty air, his gaze drifting down toward the strike team sent to bring him in.
Feeling that gaze land on them, the strike team's bodies instinctively took a step back.
But before they could manage anything more, an invisible gravity field descended over them without warning.
The crushing pressure fell across their shoulders like two entire mountains, driving every member of the strike team down onto their knees in an instant...
Bang!
The squad hit the ground, knees first!
The impact was hard enough to punch a shallow crater straight into the asphalt.
Caught beneath the gravity field, the squad leader braced both hands against the ground, sweat dripping steadily off his skin.
His jaw clenched, veins standing out across his temples.
The gravity field pressed down on him like an invisible mountain.
Under that crushing weight, every bone in his body let out a groaning creak, as if it might shatter completely in the next instant.
Even so, he forced himself to keep bracing against the ground, lifting his head, inch by agonizing inch...
The man tilted his face up toward the figure hovering above, hands clasped behind its back, his lips moving twice before he finally managed to force out any sound at all.
"Matthew Lawrence!"
"...You... what you're doing right now is open defiance of federal law!"
"I'm acting under direct orders from my superiors to place you under lawful arrest!"
"If you still consider yourself a law-abiding citizen, cooperate with us—"
He didn't get to finish.
Matthew lowered his eyes, his gaze settling on the man who was still trying to speak.
There was no anger in his eyes, no killing intent, only a kind of detached, top-down scrutiny, the way a person might look down at an ant.
"You're holding your head up a little too high."
The instant the words left his mouth, an even more crushing gravity field slammed down from above!
In a single instant... the head that had been straining to stay lifted a moment ago was driven violently back down into the pavement by an overwhelming force!
If his body hadn't already undergone genetic enhancement, that single blow alone would have burst his skull open like a watermelon under a hammer.
Sweeping his gaze over the man now pinned face-first to the ground, Matthew turned his attention to the rest of the strike team.
"Those politicians know full well that a unit like yours could never actually take me in, and yet they still insisted on sending you here to die anyway... do you think that kind of contempt for human life is acceptable?"
"Or, put another way... are you actually all right with that?" Matthew descended from midair and walked up to the man, now fully prostrate on the ground.
With a light flick of his foot, he flipped the man over like a pancake, leaving him lying face-up.
"Are you really content being disposable pawns, sent here to complete a mission that was never possible to complete in the first place?"
The man listened to what Matthew was saying, his bloodshot eyes turned up toward him. "A soldier's highest duty is to obey orders."
"But life is priceless, isn't it?"
With that, Matthew looked down at the man at his feet.
The next instant, a surge of psychic energy poured into the man's mind, laying his entire life out in an instant.
"Andrew, your third child was just born not long ago, and your wife is such a devoted woman. And you came running out here to die for a politician's single order."
"And beyond that—"
"Doesn't it strike you as at all strange that superheroes, people who once protected this entire world, would suddenly, out of nowhere, find themselves hunted by every one of you?"
With that, Matthew let his gaze sweep across every soldier kneeling on the ground.
The next instant, he released the gravity field entirely, restoring full movement to the men who'd been pinned in place a moment before.
"Don't worry. I'm not going to kill any of you."
"Blood and fire might be the most effective way to teach those politicians a lesson, but none of you deserve to be the ones who pay for it."
He looked at Andrew, now climbing back to his feet.
"You're right about one thing."
"A soldier's highest duty is to obey orders. But the most basic responsibility that comes with simply being human is learning to think for yourself about what's actually right."
"And if the order you were given was wrong to begin with, I'd say you're entitled to choose not to follow it." Matthew's voice stayed calm, unhurried.
It wasn't loud, but it still carried clearly to the crowd of civilians that had gathered around them.
Just as Andrew hesitated, uncertain...
Somewhere in the crowd, someone shouted, "Well said!"
In an instant, the emotions of the onlookers ignited.
"Mr. Lawrence is right! People are supposed to learn to tell right from wrong!"
"Those politicians spend all day starting wars for their own selfish reasons, and now they're setting their sights on superheroes. It's like they've never once thought about how ordinary people feel about any of this!"
"Hey! You American soldiers! Don't you get it?! Mr. Lawrence just doesn't want to see you end up as collateral damage between the two of them! If he actually wanted to take you all out, he could've just raised a hand and you'd have ended up in pieces on the ground, same as those three helicarriers..."
"So why haven't you left?!"
"Get out of here!"
"Go! Unless you want to bleed for those politicians?!"
The voices kept coming, but every single one of them boiled down to the same message: don't get mixed up in this mess, save your own life first.
Listening to the voices around him, Andrew stood in silence for a long moment, finally let out a quiet sigh, and turned wordlessly toward the vehicles.
Seeing that, the rest of the strike team didn't argue either, turning and climbing into their vehicles as well.
By the time the taillights of the last armored vehicle disappeared down the street, the crowd gathered around Umbrella's building finally let out the cheer they'd been holding back...
But before that cheer could build into anything louder, a clear, steady voice suddenly cut through the noise, broadcast from the speaker array mounted atop Umbrella's building, overpowering every bit of chatter on the street below.
"Attention, all Umbrella Corporation personnel, citizens of New York, and citizens of every nation."
"This is Eleanor Ross, Chief Executive Officer of Umbrella Corporation."
Eleanor's voice, carried through the speakers, brought the noise on the street to an abrupt halt, every head turning up toward the skyscraper gleaming coldly in the sunlight.
"Today, the United Nations and the United States federal government issued formal wanted notices against Matthew Lawrence, owner of this company, along with a number of superheroes who have repeatedly taken part in defending this planet."
"The stated grounds were refusal to comply with federal security registration requirements, along with a number of additional charges."
She paused briefly, then continued. "Umbrella Corporation would like to formally raise the following points of concern to every citizen of New York, and to everyone around the world following this situation—"
"SHIELD was recently confirmed to be a government agency deeply infiltrated by the terrorist organization HYDRA."
"Alexander Pierce, a former senior SHIELD official, has been officially confirmed as a senior member of HYDRA's leadership."
"The program he oversaw, Project Insight, was, at its core, a mass elimination operation targeting tens of millions of innocent civilians."
"And just a short time after we successfully dismantled that very plan..."
"A sweeping manhunt, targeting every single person who took part in stopping it, every hero who has ever saved this world and fought against genuine evil, descended without a shred of warning..." At this point, Eleanor's voice sharpened noticeably.
"We now have every reason to suspect—"
"That remnants of HYDRA remain embedded, to this day, within the highest levels of the U.S. government and the United Nations."
"They are using the power at their disposal to carry out an organized, premeditated act of political retaliation against these heroes."
"This is not a manhunt."
"This is a private act of retribution, dressed up in the language of the law."
"This is a purge aimed at justice itself."
At this, a low murmur of unrest broke out through the crowd.
"That said, I ask every citizen not to panic."
"Umbrella Corporation hereby makes the following solemn promise, to every citizen of New York, and to every ordinary person around the world who still carries goodwill in their heart—"
"Umbrella will always be the people's umbrella."
"No matter where the storm comes from, this umbrella belongs to the people. Always."
"It was true in the past. It's true right now. And it will remain true in the future."
Click—
The broadcast cut off abruptly.
The last faint trace of static from the speakers dissolved into the air.
The street fell into a brief, quiet stillness.
The next instant, Matthew raised his right hand, fingers spread wide, and swept it sharply through the empty air in front of him.
Following the motion of his hand, a sharp, resonant hum rang out across the street.
Golden sparks burst outward from empty space, tiny points of light spinning rapidly through the air... spreading wider.
The sparks spun faster and faster, until they connected into a single golden ring.
Roughly a second later, an enormous portal, far larger than any before it, opened in the sky above.
Golden sparks continued spitting out along the portal's rim, flickering in and out against the empty air.
Through the portal, the crowd could clearly make out what lay on the other side.
A grey building, its location unknown, stood there.
It rose at least a hundred meters tall.
The entire structure had no windows at all, appearing to be built entirely from metal and concrete.
As the portal opened, the building's outer walls began to tremble.
Then, as if the whole surface were a single unified piece, the wall rapidly reshaped itself, revealing, one after another, square tunnels roughly four meters by four meters across.
Just as the crowd started to wonder what exactly this was for—
The next instant!
A torrent of iron-grey figures burst out from deep within the tunnels!
It looked exactly like giant worker bees pouring out of a hive.
Which, honestly, wasn't far from the truth.
After all, this particular kind of building, purpose-built for deploying troops, had been named, by Matthew himself, "the Hive."
And he had several hundred more of these Hives scattered around the world.
As for when exactly he'd built them all?
Well. Considering Apocalypse could singlehandedly dismantle an entire city to construct a pyramid, Matthew throwing together a few Hive facilities meant to house troops, in a matter of days, honestly felt about as reasonable as it got...
Dense clusters of figures poured out of the Hive and immediately dove into the distant portal.
Thousands of Astartes, riding modified Green Goblin gliders roughly two meters across, streamed out of the portal hanging in the sky, one after another.
Their massive forms blotted out the sunlight.
Nearly a thousand Astartes came to a hovering stop in the sky above Umbrella's building, riding their gliders.
Their formation was staggered, uneven, and yet the effect was overwhelmingly imposing.
They wore iron-grey powered armor, chainsword-blades hanging at their waists, thin trails of blue light streaming out behind their gliders.
From a distance, citizens who'd lived through the Chitauri invasion might have mistaken them, for one confused moment, for those alien reptiles pouring back out of a portal all over again.
But the instant they actually focused on the sight above them, it became clear immediately that these were nothing like the Chitauri.
These were unmistakably "angels," here specifically to guard humanity.
They simply hung there in the sky, perfectly still, not moving an inch.
From ground level, looking up, the scene looked almost exactly like an illustration out of some old Eastern fantasy epic, warrior-sages standing serene atop soaring blades...
Except here, the flying swords had been swapped for Green Goblin gliders, and the fantasy novel's warrior-sages had been swapped for genetically enhanced soldiers standing two and a half meters tall, encased head to toe in heavy powered armor.
A thick, oppressive sense of menace radiated off the assembled Astartes, and yet not a single civilian below made any move to flee.
After all, the reputation of both the Astartes and Umbrella Corporation was common knowledge by now, and with everything that had just happened to Umbrella's own chairman, of course something on this scale was coming.
With that thought settling in, the crowd tilted their heads back, studying the figures filling the sky above them.
Just as the city's residents were taking it all in, Matthew spoke.
His voice wasn't loud, and yet it seemed to land gently, directly at the ear of every single person listening.
This was the work of magic.
"Please, everyone, there's no need to worry."
"The only reason the Astartes have been deployed is to protect the safety of the public."
"After all, none of us can say for certain what the evil forces hiding in the shadows might attempt, now that they've realized we won't simply bow down and comply."
"So, to guarantee the safety of the world and of every one of you, the Astartes will be temporarily taking over the city's security operations."
"And of course—"
"It isn't just this city."
As if to confirm exactly what he'd said.
At the same moment, guided by Matthew, portals opened simultaneously in cities all around the world.
In total, one hundred thousand Astartes, along with Progenitor Two (Alex Mercer), the Ultimate Tyrant, Leon, Hunk, and others, spread out across the globe, taking over local security operations in every location.
This represented essentially everything Matthew had.
To demonstrate the full extent of Umbrella's reserves to the world, this particular deployment even included Tyrant-type Astartes units that hadn't yet been converted to the Blacklight Prototype standard.
He wanted the world to understand something.
Even setting himself entirely aside, Umbrella Corporation, as it stood right now, was an entity that could rival any nation on Earth.
Elsewhere.
The "Wanted Captain," still busy packing his bags in preparation for a lifetime on the run as a fugitive, was getting ready to hit the road alongside his fellow wanted captain.
But just as the two of them finished packing and were about to follow their pre-planned escape route, Steve noticed something was off.
Whoosh-whoosh-whoosh—
Between the tall buildings, several towering figures stood hovering in midair, riding strange-looking flying craft.
Their eyes swept constantly over the streets below.
And that wasn't all.
As they flew, a broadcast played continuously from the flying craft beneath their feet.
"Attention, citizens. We are the Astartes Legion."
"Please, do not be alarmed."
"To guarantee world peace and prevent social order from being infiltrated by darkness, the Astartes will be temporarily taking over city security operations."
"Beyond that, everything will continue exactly as normal."
"Once we have located and eliminated the HYDRA operatives responsible for triggering this wanted-notice incident, we will withdraw once again."
The looping message echoed across the streets and through the sky above.
Inside the apartment, Steve pulled back the curtain and looked up at the figures in the sky.
Listening to the broadcast drifting down from the flying craft, he exchanged a brief glance with Carter.
"..."
"This Mr. Lawrence really doesn't seem like the type to live out the rest of his life as a wanted fugitive."