Chapter 112 - The Unknown Variable (1)

EARLIER IN THE ALPHA BASE...

"What. The. Hell. Is. Happening. Here!" One of the men inside the interrogation room exclaimed as the priestess' corpse slowly recovered from its wounds and got back up to her feet.

"I don't know... It's the first time I've seen something like this..." Amanda mumbled.

Even the Brigadier General, who was continuously throwing accusations left and right was stunned into silence. No one said a word until Alice fully recovered, and stared hard at Arnold.

'Please don't give me much trouble...' Arnold thought.

He needed Alice to remain calm once she was resurrected. He was worried because most of the resurrected beings threw a tantrum once they were fully resurrected and Arnold had to use the authority of his domain to force them into submission, but he didn't want to do anything like that now for the time being.

Since by asking Talos to resurrect Alice in front of everyone, he already had revealed one of his biggest trump cards, he knew it would cause him some issues but he didn't want them to know more about his abilities and hence didn't want to reveal the existence and the potential of his domain in front of them as well. Right now he could only hope, that due to the betrayal from her 'partner', she'd be willing to rat him out.

"So you even got his ability huh?" Alice asked in a sad and defeated voice once she was resurrected, "Jake had a similar ability himself..."

Arnold was genuinely surprised by the reversal in Alice's behaviour. He thought she'd explode and maybe do something to harm him. Not only she wasn't throwing a tantrum and causing trouble for him, she was behaving like a gentle soul.

But Arnold didn't let his guard down. for all he cared she could've been faking it all so that he would let his guard down and then do something to hurt him or the others. He then suddenly remembered about Natasha, as she also pulled regular stunts like the one she did Arnold went inside to resurrect Dread. No matter how hard he imagined about Natasha and Alice together, not a single positive outcome came to his mind...

'What crap have I gotten myself into... Eh, I'll cross that bridge when I get to it, right now I need to focus on the task at hand.' he thought.

"So you knew about Jake's ability to resurrect the dead? I thought he was keeping it a secret from everyone..." Arnold asked Alice, just to make sure her mind was in the right place.

"I don't think you resurrected me to talk about that, did you? You want to know who I was working with, don't you, fine I'll tell you because as much as I hate to admit it, I was given a chance to take me revenge on him by being resurrected by you." Alice kept speaking in a usually warm tone, I'm not going to waste your time... It's him."

Arnold expected her to point her fingers at the Brigadier General, but instead, she pointed at the private, who darted out of the room the moment, Alice pointed at him. Talos was quick to respond and even before the private could even reach the handle of the door, he got shot in his legs by Talos' gun.

"Argh!" He tried to crawl out of the room but Arnold grabbed his injured leg and dragged him back to the centre of the room and froze his hands and legs on a chair. Everyone else was stunned, even the Brigadier General.

"Start talking," Arnold ordered.

"What... do you want... me to talk about... huh? You and that son of a bitch Nathan?" The private cursed both of them loudly, "You f*ckers took everything from me! Everything!"

"Do I even know you- wait I thought I've seen your face before... don't tell me... it's you!" Arnold finally remembered who the private actually was...

"Yes, it is, Allen. Nathaniel's biological son." Alice answered in Arnold's place, "He had been working with us for a long time..."

"Why the hell would you do something like this!? It doesn't make any sense! Why would you betray your own family!" Arnold was not expecting something like this to happen. He had forgotten about Allen as he never saw him since they went to clear a dungeon together and Arnold soloed it, defeating the Bone Berserker by himself and Allen had tried to gaslight him into giving up on the loot that Arnold earned. (For more info reread the chapter named: Celebration.)

"Because of people like you... my father took away everything that was supposed to be mine! My father treated his own son like a piece of thrash while all of you played a happy family... all because of that stupid, useless, Black Family. When the dungeon outbreak happened, instead of keeping me safe my fcking father threatened to disown me and forced me to enlist in the army saying I had to prove my worth, while nearly everyone in the so-called family got a free pass to live in West America! It's all because of people like Nathan and you, that my father never acknowledged my existence." Allen blurted out with nothing but rage with himself, "But then I found someone who acknowledged me... someone who understood how I felt after my father alienated me... he gave me the power to control people.... to make them obey my commands. He gave me the technology to gain power! But he had a condition... just one."

"What condition?" Amanda asked.

"Use it all to destroy the Black Family... and I happily agreed! After all, that's was the only thing I had been planning on doing for a long long time." Allen smiled like a maniac, "But I knew I couldn't have done it all by myself, but the guy had already figured it all out and helped me meet up with the 'priestess' who had the same goal as I did, and so our plan to take down the family began.

"My job was pretty easy. All I had to do was to mislead a group of army troops to where the priestess had already set up an ambush and let them get captured. You won't know how easy it was to fool these 'superiors'. All I needed to do was to hack into the servers and change the location as to where the troops were headed and wait for the priestess to successfully capture them, guess my brain still counts for something right? We then planned on keep increasing our manpower while reducing the manpower of the army at the same time and once it was done, all we had to do was to attack and take over the base then allow the monsters to invade the safe haven of the people!"

Allen's vision was clouded by his hatred for the Family, and that's why he couldn't see something that Arnold could. Allen was just a pawn for the one who had planned it all out... he was nothing but a resource that the unknown person was using up to get rid of the Black Family and it was this person who Arnold had to take care of because if he didn't then something similar would again and again, with replaceable pawns. For the sake of family, Arnold had to know who the identity of the person.

"Who was it, Allen? Who was the one who had been helping you?" Arnold calmly asked him.

"It was the same person who attacked your sister!" Allen happily exclaimed, "You've messed up too many plans of him, he'll get you soon enough!"