Chapter 395 What Comes Next?
“And so the Morgans have fallen,” Rina sighed.
“How did you think things would go down?” Aron asked as he walked beside her down the long hallway in one of the Cube’s deepest subbasements.
“I don’t really know. One of the many ways I’d pictured it was in some dramatic shootout between you and them, but... I never once imagined their whole family would go down like fruit being plucked from a tree,” she said.
“Well, the world does have a way of surprising us, I suppose.” Aron grinned at Rina, then they both laughed. “By the way, have you heard anything from your father lately?”
“Yes, actually. He contacted me to tell me to run as fast as possible before the nukes. He said he’d tried his best, but there was already a war and there was nothing he could do,” she answered. She would never hide anything from him, and honestly didn’t believe she would ever even be tempted to.
“Do you think he really tried to stop it?”
Her shoulders slumped a little. “I don’t know,” she sighed. He seems to have changed since I decided to disobey his order to return to America. And when I told him you could deal with things, well... he started getting involved in the family businesses again. Before, after I dealt with my so-called ‘brother’,” she scoffed, “he’d stepped back into more of an observer role. I guess he thought I was going to die and was acting accordingly.
“What are you planning?” she asked and squinted at him. Aron never asked anything without a reason for asking.
“I’ll leave it to you, since the Rothschilds never did anything against me in the first place. So let me know if you need me to do anything to help and I’ll do my best,” Aron said, his voice considerate.
“Thank you.” Rina was grateful that Aron wasn’t planning anything to deal with her family as he had the Morgans. She knew that both families were rotten to the core, after all, and at their heart, the Rothschilds were no different from the Morgans. The only difference was that the Morgans had acted against Aron, while the Rothschilds hadn’t. Thus, they had earned a stay of execution for the moment, though her boyfriend wouldn’t hesitate to pluck them out as he had the Morgans if he felt it necessary.
After all, he was on a timer and up against a rather intimidating deadline.
......
“They really did it,” Herschel Rothschild said, loudly enough that his wife could hear it. He was staring at his phone, which was displaying the notification of an upcoming announcement.
He knew it must be coming from Aron, too, as he had been keeping tabs on the ongoing war. Now, he finally realized that what Rina had told him about Aron having a plan to deal with the nuclear attack wasn’t just hot air; she hadn’t been blinded by love and he really had dealt with things quite neatly. Up until this moment, he had thought the boy was too full of himself to the point of feeling invincible and had overwhelmingly underestimated the forces arrayed against him.
Virginia heaved a sigh of relief. She could finally rest easy now that she knew the danger to her daughter had passed. ‘You’re really going to kill me, child,’ she thought as she dialed Rina’s number. Even though she had heard Herschel say everything was fine, she still wanted to hear her daughter’s voice; no mother would ever stop worrying for their daughters, much less Virginia, who loved hers more than most.
And although she and her husband had connections, nothing at all was being released by Eden, so all anyone had to go on at the moment were the reports that Nova and Panoptes were carefully curating and releasing on the internet. Virginia wasn’t stupid; she knew that most of it was propaganda and she would need to hear it from her daughter for any firsthand account of how things were in Eden.
“What’s that boy going to do next?” Herschel muttered to himself, but loudly enough for his wife to hear again.
“What do you mean by that?”
“After war comes rebuilding. Although the amount of damage might not seem as bad as it could be, considering everything started and ended in half a day, the actual damage is still quite a lot higher than any war ever fought. And I’m not just talking about the missile strikes, which is already unfathomable enough, but also the economy.
“Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, was brought to a halt. Even market trading is still suspended, and every second the market stays suspended causes millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to the economy. And even when trading is resumed, the market is going to face a panic sell as everyone tries to pull their money out at once. If it isn’t handled well, the Great Depression of 1929 will look like a normal dip on a day trader’s tracker.
“And after the market suffers a panic crash, a run on the banks will follow. Everyone will need money to spend, but with banks losing everything in the market crash, their ready cash reserves won’t be enough for people to withdraw and they won’t have enough liquid capital to cover the rest. After that, well... after that comes nothing but chaos.”
“Why do I feel there’s a ‘but’ coming?” Virginia asked.n(/o).V)-e-)L./B--1/.n
“Because there is one. Despite the negative trend, a few people will come out the winners in the economic battlefield. Those will be the real winners of the war and will have their pick of trophies to pluck from the losers.”
“Oh my god,” Virginia exclaimed. She understood what her husband meant. Usually, the winners of a war would choose to take “war reparations” from the losing side, but they can only take a certain amount. Otherwise, the losing country or force might just choose to fight to the last man instead and the winner would only rule over scorched earth and ashes. But in this case, Aron was the sole winner, and he had been up against the entire world! So essentially, the whole world was a shopping mall and he was about to go on a buying spree.
The thought of all of that falling into a greedy and insatiable man would cause panic in anyone. She desperately hoped Aron wouldn’t be greedy or insatiable.
“And our family is one of the potential war reparations, and a tempting one at that. Thus, my initial question: what’s that boy going to do next?” Herschel didn’t quite have the same level of faith in Rina’s decision as his wife did, hence his worry.
......
“How far do you think we can bend the branch before it snaps?” Aron wondered.
[The information Panoptes and I have been releasing outside has the entire world in a panic, thus most of our demands should be met. But if we pass a certain point, we’ll push everyone into a ‘last stand’ mentality. So during your announcement, I’ll be actively monitoring the situation and will update your prepared remarks based on people’s reactions to what you’re saying. If it starts going too far, I’ll pull you back, don’t worry.]
“Okay. List the things I can immediately take, and the things we’ll be taking over time as people become used to the new power structure,” Aron said.
Nova waved her hand and a screen appeared with two bulleted lists. The others in the room began reading and their eyes grew wider and wider the more they read. Aron would be taking quite a lot from everyone in the name of ‘reparations’.
[Looks like I’ll be busy for quite some time,] Athena said. The reaper teams, especially, would be busy for the oncoming days, months, or even years. Among the demands were things that would generate insurgencies all over the world, which would target ARES’ greatest weakness: manpower.
Three million soldiers sounded like a lot, but when compared to the entire world, it really wasn’t.
“Now on to another topic. Our casualties.” Aron nodded to Athena, who popped another holographic screen next to the one that displayed Nova’s lists. “We suffered 8,492 casualties overall in the assault, including the dead and wounded. Our two largest losses were in Faisalabad and Bhepal, where ISIS was caught smuggling stolen nuclear weapons and decided to detonate them there instead of carrying out their initial plans. Those two detonations accounted for almost a full quarter of the total losses in the assault.
“The wounded will be healed and returned to full strength over the next two weeks. We’ll document the process and use it as propaganda and proof for an upcoming product release.” Medical pods were on Aron’s list for potential upcoming Asclepius Biotech products. They had been before, but the time wasn’t ripe. Now that the unification had begun, though, he would revisit the issue; thus, having documentation of the pods and proof of results would be important for that.
“After they’re healed, they’ll be given two weeks of paid leave before returning to continue their service.
“As for the deceased, their families will receive three times the standard death compensation and lifetime access to services offered through the Coeus Foundation for three generations regardless of need. We are also focusing on collecting their corpses, or at least those we can, anyway, and returning them for honorable burial on Martyr’s Island.” Aron gestured and a map of Eden showed up with a pin pointing to the newly constructed graveyard, which would be the permanent resting place for the nearly 7000 dead, including 2000 empty coffins.
“Their dignity will forever be protected. They are honored martyrs and are to be treated as such,” he continued, his gaze growing sharp.
Despite the system’s best efforts to the contrary, the deaths still weighed heavily on his conscience. Now it was up to him to ensure they hadn’t died in vain.
