Chapter 146 - 145 - Time Trouble(Part 4)

"...stop that," Came an annoyed groan, as I continued poking Kiran, on the verge of panicking. 

"Oh, sorry...thought you were dead," I replied sheepishly, letting out an internal sigh of relief. 

"Very funny," He responded dryly, before going back to sleep. 

Little does he know that I wasn't joking around....alright, from the looks of it, no one from my class died, and with the exception of two or three people, I was relieved. Well, I guess I should go find Director Silva and tell her about the power outage. 

Probably shouldn't message her, it'd be too difficult to explain over text without typing up a few paragraphs worth of information, anyway. Right, let's go... 

"Hey, where are you going, dude? You just got here," Remarked Mitchell, as I turned around and headed for the door. 

"Well, I was just thinking...the first session is boring, so I'm gonna skip it. See you guys in two hours," I replied, walking out before anyone could say anything else.

There's still about four hours before the power outage is supposed to happen, but for all I know, the trigger for it might have been set off well before then, so the sooner I address it, the better. 

Hm, what's going on? Oh, looks like the ambulance I called is here...and it wasn't just the guards that were being taken away. Some of the students were also in vegetative states...looks like less than ten of them. 

Well, it's not like the entire Academy building had collapsed during the Crocsnek attack or anything, so most of those that got caught up in the damage must have been injured without being killed...so long as they didn't die, they'd still be alive when I go back in time. 

And that's why I want to avoid going back to Save Point 01 if at all possible, because if I fail to prevent the Crocsnek from attacking again and am forced to go back to this morning again, there's gonna be a whole lot more veggies piled up. 

This might sound kinda heartless, but I was relieved to see that I didn't recognize any of those that were now in vegetative states, which means that no one I know died. 

I took advantage of the commotion to sneak out of the Academy without being noticed...yeah, I could freeze time, but I need to recover as much of my XFE as possible. I've got about three quarters left to recover, which would take about two and a half hours. 

Without freezing time and teleporting, it'd take about thirty to forty minutes to walk to her office, and that's my only option since there's about fifty minutes before the next bus is scheduled to come by the bus stop that's opposite to the Academy.

Well, that's fine, I suppose. I could use some time to think on the way there. Specifically, how do I convince Director Silva to take me seriously? Is that possible without revealing that I can travel back, and now travel forth as well, in time? 

Ideally, I hope so. But that might be wishful thinking...after all, I had no idea about the central generator before this, nor about the the captured Mutants in the underground facility. 

Not to mention the fact that I know about an upcoming Ace Mutant attack in the Sanctuary, something that has never happened before. Yeah, there's pretty much no way to explain what I know without giving away the fact that I have knowledge of the future. 

Hm, wait a sec...maybe that's not a problem. After all, knowing what's going to happen in the future isn't proof of direct time travel. It could also be explained by clairvoyance or something like that. 

I mean, yeah, anyone's first guess would probably be time travel, but the probability of them then guessing the specifics of how my Tier One powers work is slim to none. 

And I'm not obligated to give away those specifics...I'm fairly certain that if I make it clear to Director Silva that a lot of people are likely to die if what I know comes to pass, she'll take it seriously. After all, I think it's fair to say that I've proven myself to be quite reliable in the past, so I might as well make full use of that. 

As I continued heading to the building while deep in thought, I arrived before I even realized it, taking about thirty-five minutes to get there. Oh, right, I should probably message her to let her know that I'm here...yeah, guess I ought to have done that right when I left. 

I always hate it when people give me last minute notice before showing up, specifically my sister, and here I am, doing the same thing. Hypocritical? Yeah, probably. But totally justified, considering what's on the horizon. 

Oh, Director Silva just replied to my message...good, she's free right now. Alright, now comes the hard part. I then headed inside the building, making my way up to the director's office and knocking on the door. 

"Come in!" 

I walked in and shut the door behind me as I entered the room, before going forward and sitting on the chair at the front of her desk, a slight look of surprise on her face as she saw the serious expression I had. 

"This might not make a lot of sense, but something bad is about to happen. The Sanctuary is about to undergo a blackout in a few hours, and a few minutes after that, an Ace Mutant is going to break into the X-Warrior Zone," I remarked, getting straight to the point. 

"Huh? Wait, what?" She responded in bemusement. 

"I don't want to reveal the full extent of my Anomaly powers, so I won't get into exactly how I know, but I can assure you that this is definitely going to happen unless we take preventive measures," I informed her bluntly. 

"Woah, woah, slow down a second, Kilzachs! Give me a process to second all that...I mean, give me a second to process-...you know what I meant!" She exclaimed in bewilderment, before taking a deep breath, closing her eyes to think over the info I'd just dumped on her, and then adding after a few seconds of silence, "Okay, I don't fully get it, but if nothing else, I can see that this situation is urgent...continue."

"Right...all we need to do is prevent the blackout and it should all work out. The blackout causes the warding radiation to cease, which is what results in the Ace Mutant busting in through the ground, in the X-Warrior Zone. So we prevent the blackout, we prevent the Mutant's attack," I explained objectively. 

"Alright, I think I follow...so, then, what's going to trigger the blackout?" Frowned the director. 

"I'm not a hundred percent sure of exactly what went down, but basically, the captured Mutants held in the underground facility probably escape not long from now somehow, and then damage the central generator," I replied, surmising it as best I could with the limited knowledge I had. 

"How do you-...okay, so what do you want me to do? Tighten security in those areas in the underground facility?" She responded, after mulling it over. 

"No, not quite...tell me, is there a teleportation platform near where the captured Mutants are being held? And what about near where the central generator is?" I asked her. 

"Oh, uh...yes, and...no. But those two areas are pretty close by to each other," She answered in response. 

"Good...what about security cam feeds in those areas?" I inquired. 

"Also, yes." 

"Alright, then here's what we'll do...bring up the live feeds for both those areas, I want to see what actually results in the Mutants breaking out. As soon as that happens, immediately teleport me there, I'll take them all out," I remarked, as she nodded and brought up three cam feeds on her laptop. 

The first one was a feed of the area outside the large cell holding the captured Mutants, where a lone guard was seated on a chair, looking bored. The second feed was of the inside of the cell, where each of the captive Mutants were individually held inside separate cages. 

Hm, wait a sec...

"Hey, all these Mutants are supposed to be Q-Ranked, right?" I frowned, as I stared at the screen. 

"Yeah, that's right. Why?" She inquired in reply. 

"Because I'm pretty sure that's a juvenile K-Rank...specifically, a young Seeyulator," I remarked, pointing at one of the cages. 

A Seeyulator is an alligator-like Mutant that grows upto fifteen meters in size...lizard and reptile type Mutants are pretty common, and most of them are Q-Ranked, so I suppose it's conceivable that this one was mistaken for a Q-Rank, but come on, man, this level of carelessness is infuriating. 

"So it is...I'll see to it that it's transferred to a stronger cage soon. For now, it still looks young enough that this cage should hold it without a problem. It'll definitely be able to break out in a day or two," She remarked, looking displeased by the mistake. 

"Yeah, for a moment I thought it might be the cause of the blackout, but it's definitely not matured enough to break out of this cage...oh, well, nothing for us to do but sit and watch for the next few hours, I guess," I sighed, as I kept a close eye on the live footage. 

The moment something happens, I'll snuff it out immediately, I'll ensure that what I experienced doesn't happen a second time... 

. 

. 

. 

. 

.

Something's wrong...it's been more than three hours so far, and something isn't right here. But what? Am I just getting anxious now that we're within half an hour of the blackout? No, that's not it, there's something else that's off here... 

"You know, maybe we should replace security guards with combat androids...it'd certainly be easy enough, all we'd need to do is tweak the programming a bit. I mean, look, this guy has barely moved at all this whole time, he may as well be asleep," Sighed Director Silva wistfully. 

"The Mutants look pretty unlively too...," I replied, before a thought occurred to me, "Hey, uh...when were these particular Mutants brought in?" 

"About five days ago. We gather them for helping with Academy training, and then get more to replace the ones that are killed. Why?" She inquired curiously. 

And that's when it clicked, as I abruptly sat up with a start, my eyes widening in realization as I watched both feeds. Now I get what was bothering me...it was the repetition!

"That's it! Shit, we wasted so much time...both these feeds are looped footage!" I exclaimed in realization and frustration. 

"Huh? What do you mean?" 

"That Seeyulator should be much bigger than this, you know how quickly Mutants reach maturity, and the reptile types are especially fast growers. The only explanation is that this isn't live footage we're seeing here. Tell me, do these guards have access to the security camera feeds?" I inquired with a frown. 

"Oh...shit. Yeah...yeah, they do. For the sake of convenience and efficiency, everyone in the underground facility has authority to fully access the system, though they don't usually abuse it because I can revoke that authority at the slightest hint of that, and I have done in the past. I can access the security camera settings from here, let's see...yeah, you're right, it's been programmed to play looped footage. Shit, I'll restore the live feeds right away," She replied with a grimace, as she tapped away on her keyboard furiously, before stopping and freezing in horror. 

My eyes widened as I got a look at the screen...the Seeyulator was almost twice as big as it was in the looped footage we'd been watching all this time, it's cage was in the background, the metal bars mangled and twisted, completely destroyed. Meanwhile, in the camera feed of the area outside the holding cell, the security guard was nowhere to be seen. 

And as for the Mutant itself...it was happily chomping down on the security guard ravenously, with the other Mutants clamoring to try and break out of their cages, drooling heavily. There was a whip on the floor, next to the fresh corpse...I think I have an idea of what went down here and how, but that's not important right now.... 

"Holy shit...alright, we can rewind the footage to see what led to this, but for now, I need to get over there, RIGHT NOW!" I urged Director Silva, who nodded in reply, her eyes wide with shock and disbelief. 

Damn it, how careless, I...I messed up...!

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