Chương 146: 145: Control II

The news coverage was relentless. Screens flickered across every channel, broadcasting footage of the chaos unfolding throughout Indonesia. Reporters spoke in rapid Indonesian, their voices trembling as they struggled to describe what they were witnessing.

"Kami sedang menyaksikan pertempuran yang belum pernah terjadi sebelumnya," one reporter said, her voice barely above a whisper. We are witnessing a battle unlike anything we have ever seen. The footage showed nightmares pouring through the streets of Jakarta, their elongated bodies tearing through buildings, their jaws devouring anything caught in their path. The screen shifted. Armoured nightmares appeared. They were different from the others.

Their bodies were covered in thick plates, their limbs wrapped in twisting vines, their eyes glowing with an eerie iridescent light. They moved with purpose, attacking the fresh nightmares and driving them away from civilians.

"Beberapa makhluk ini berbeda," the reporter continued. Some of these creatures are different. They are protecting us. They are fighting the other monsters. A fragile sense of hope entered her voice. The footage cut to a scientist. His face was pale, his eyes wide with disbelief.

"Kami tidak tahu apa yang menyebabkan ini," he said, his voice trembling. We don't know what's causing this. Some of the creatures have been… altered. He swallowed hard.

"They have plants growing out of them. They are being controlled." The reporter leaned forward.

"Dikendalikan oleh siapa?" she asked. Controlled by whom? The scientist shook his head.

"Kami tidak tahu." We don't know.... The footage shifted again. A nightmare slammed one massive hand into the ground, destroying an entire city block with a single blow. Buildings collapsed in clouds of dust and debris as cars were thrown through the air. An armoured nightmare charged through the destruction and intercepted it. The two creatures collided. Claws tore into flesh. Vines wrapped around limbs. The battle raged amid the ruins. The reporter's composure finally broke.

"Tuhan, tolong kami." God, help us. The screen abruptly cut to another camera feed. A scream erupted from the studio.

"Sebentar… apa itu?" Wait… what is that? The camera had caught something moving between the buildings. The nightmare launched itself from a street in Jakarta and crossed the gap between two skyscrapers in a single bound. CRASH! It smashed through the upper floors of one building, disappearing into concrete and glass before bursting through the opposite side several floors lower. The reporter stared at the footage in horror.

"Tidak…" No… The broadcast switched again. This time, the camera showed Bandung. The streets around the city centre were filled with fleeing civilians and abandoned vehicles. Armoured nightmares fought among the buildings, their vines wrapping around the bodies of the invading creatures as they tried to keep them away from the crowds. A teal-and-yellow nightmare appeared on the roof of a shopping centre. Its body coiled. Electricity crawled across its spotted flesh. A soldier below raised his weapon.

The creature vanished from the roof. A flash of blue-white light tore across the screen. WHUMM! The shockwave ripped through the street below, overturning vehicles and throwing civilians into storefronts. Several armoured nightmares were caught in the blast and collapsed amid the wreckage. The camera shook violently. The broadcast switched again. Surabaya. A reporter stood behind a concrete barrier, her hair whipping in the wind as distant explosions shook the city.

Behind her, nightmares moved between the buildings.

"They have reached Surabaya," she said, struggling to keep her voice steady. The military is attempting to establish a defensive perimeter near the eastern districts, but the creatures are moving too quickly. A roar echoed behind her. The reporter turned. Her expression changed instantly. A nightmare came racing down the street. It moved like a gigantic eel, its elongated body twisting between abandoned vehicles as its jaws opened and closed in rapid, piranha-like snaps. Click-click-click-click!

The reporter stumbled backward.

"LARI!" She dropped the microphone and ran. The camera followed the creature as it surged through the street, its jaws snapping down on a fleeing soldier and dragging him beneath its body. Another nightmare crashed through a building beside it, sending chunks of concrete raining onto the road. The broadcast cut away. Semarang appeared on the screen. The city was almost impossible to recognise beneath the smoke. A bridge had collapsed across one of the main roads, trapping hundreds of vehicles behind the wreckage.

Civilians abandoned their cars and ran between the traffic. An armoured nightmare stood in the middle of the road. It was surrounded by a dozen of the original creatures. Its vines tightened around its arms. The nightmare charged. It tore through the first creature and slammed another into the pavement. A third lunged from behind, its teeth snapping inches from the armoured creature's neck. The puppet twisted aside and drove its claws through the nightmare's skull.

Black smoke poured from the wound as the creature collapsed. More nightmares emerged from the smoke. The armoured defender roared and charged. The broadcast switched again. Yogyakarta. The camera showed civilians pouring out of a university campus while soldiers attempted to hold a defensive line across the main road. A nightmare dropped from a rooftop. It landed among the soldiers. CRACK! The pavement shattered beneath it.

Its mouth opened, revealing row upon row of needle-like teeth that snapped together with frantic speed. Click-click-click-click! The soldiers opened fire. Bullets bounced off its flesh. It barely reacted. The creature surged forward, electricity racing across its body. A blue-white flash engulfed the screen. When the light faded, the defensive line was gone. The broadcast changed again. Medan. Nightmares were moving through the streets near the harbour, their bodies weaving between warehouses and cargo containers.

Armoured puppets fought them among the shipping yards while terrified civilians fled toward evacuation boats. The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. One of the teal-and-yellow creatures climbed onto the roof of a warehouse. Its claws dug into the metal. Electricity crackled across its spine. A puppet charged from below. The creature leapt. It struck the armoured nightmare in midair and drove it through the roof.

The two creatures disappeared inside the warehouse. A violent struggle erupted beneath the metal. The roof buckled. The creature emerged seconds later, dragging the puppet's torn body behind it. Its jaws snapped repeatedly as it turned toward the fleeing civilians. The camera cut away. Makassar appeared next. Smoke covered the waterfront, and fires burned along the docks. Military vehicles were attempting to evacuate civilians when several nightmares emerged from the water.

Their elongated bodies rose from the harbour like enormous eels. One creature launched itself onto the dock. Another followed. A third struck a military vehicle and sent it rolling across the pavement. A soldier fired wildly. Click-click-click-click! It seized him. The camera turned away as screams filled the broadcast. The feed returned to Jakarta. A creature crouched in the middle of an intersection, its elongated body coiled like a spring. A flash of blue-white electricity erupted from its flesh. WHUMM!

An expanding shockwave ripped across the surrounding streets. Windows shattered simultaneously. Vehicles flipped over. People were thrown from their feet. Hundreds of civilians collapsed almost at once. The reporter's voice rose into a panicked scream.

"Matikan kamera! Matikan kamera!" Turn off the camera! Turn off the camera! The feed continued. Another nightmare launched itself upward. It struck the side of a skyscraper and bounded from one floor to another, moving so quickly that the camera struggled to follow it. It smashed through apartment walls, sending furniture, glass and bodies flying as it tore through the building like living artillery. A second creature followed. It disappeared into one building and emerged through another.

The camera shook violently. People were running in every direction below, screaming as the creatures ricocheted through the city.

"Evakuasi! Evakuasi sekarang!" a reporter shouted from another broadcast. Evacuate! Evacuate now! A studio anchor struggled to maintain composure.

"Authorities are telling everyone to remain indoors, but…" The sentence was cut short by a distant explosion. The broadcast switched to a street camera. A teal-and-yellow nightmare landed in the middle of a crowd. Click-click-click-click! Electricity erupted from its body. A violent shockwave tore through the street. The crowd disappeared beneath a wall of blue-white light. When the electricity faded, hundreds lay motionless across the pavement. The camera remained fixed on the devastation.

No one in the studio spoke. A reporter finally whispered, "Mereka membunuh ratusan orang dalam satu serangan…" They killed hundreds of people in a single attack… The footage changed again. Another nightmare had entered a residential building. It tore through the first floor, leapt through the second and blasted through the third without slowing.

Its body twisted through the structure with impossible speed, smashing through walls and apartments as though the entire building were nothing more than a maze built for it to hunt through. A family ran down a hallway. The creature burst through the wall behind them. The screen went black. The broadcast returned moments later. The reporter was crying.

"We need help," she whispered.

"Someone has to stop them." Across Indonesia, Rhizome's puppets were being slaughtered. In Jakarta, armoured nightmares fought through burning streets. In Bandung, they defended evacuation routes beneath collapsing skyscrapers. In Surabaya, they battled through intersections filled with wrecked vehicles. In Semarang, they held defensive lines around trapped civilians. In Yogyakarta, they fought beside terrified soldiers. In Medan, they guarded the harbour. In Makassar, they battled among the burning docks.

The armoured nightmares had once stood in their thousands. Now they were falling by the dozens. A teal-and-yellow creature tore through one defender before another could even reach it. A second puppet charged from a side street and was cut apart by a blur of claws and teeth. Another was struck by an electrical shockwave and collapsed instantly. More creatures came. Faster. Faster. Faster. Rhizome's puppets barely had time to react. An armoured nightmare raised its claws. A creature flashed past.

Its head struck the pavement. Another puppet lunged. Three of the new nightmares descended upon it at once, tearing through its armour and dragging it apart. Across another street, five of Rhizome's defenders surrounded a single creature. It vanished. A heartbeat later, all five were dead. Rhizome felt every death. Her breathing caught.

"No…" She reached deeper into the network. More puppets turned toward the new nightmares. More were sent forward. The response was immediate. The new creatures tore through them. One. Five. Twenty. Fifty. Hundreds. The rate of destruction accelerated until Rhizome could barely distinguish one death from another. Her puppets were being cut down faster than she could replace them. Shamira watched the colour drain from Rhizome's face.

"What's happening?" Rhizome didn't answer. Her eyes were fixed on something only she could see.

"They're killing them," she whispered. Another wave of deaths hit her consciousness. Her fingers clenched.

"They're killing them too quickly." The network trembled. Thousands of nightmares moved beneath her control, but every command was met with resistance. Every defensive line she created was torn apart within seconds. Rhizome forced more spores outward. More armoured creatures rose. More vines wrapped around claws. More puppets turned toward the enemy. The response came instantly. The new nightmares leapt through the battlefield. One launched itself through a building. CRASH!

Concrete and glass erupted outward as its elongated body punched through several floors before bursting through the opposite side. Another followed. It tore through the same structure with a deafening roar, sending chunks of masonry raining into the street. A third slammed into the pavement. BOOM! Electricity exploded from its body in a blue-white wave. The shockwave tore across the battlefield, ripping through an entire formation of Rhizome's puppets and hurling armoured nightmares through the air.

Vines snapped, armour shattered, and bodies collapsed into clouds of black smoke. Rhizome gasped. Her body jerked. Shamira caught her before she fell.

"Rhizome!"

"I'm still holding them." Her voice trembled.

"But they're getting through." Another surge of deaths flooded the network. Rhizome's eyes widened.

"They're getting faster." Across Jakarta, Bandung, Surabaya, Semarang, Yogyakarta, Medan and Makassar, the new nightmares continued their rampage. They tore through streets, leapt between buildings and released waves of electricity that killed hundreds at a time. The images continued appearing across the news channels, city after city showing the same horror. Jakarta was burning. Bandung was collapsing. Surabaya was under attack. Semarang was surrounded. Yogyakarta had lost its defensive lines.

Medan's harbour was engulfed in smoke. Makassar's waterfront burned. Indonesia was no longer facing a single invasion. It was being overwhelmed from every direction. And the people watching the news understood something terrifying. The nightmares Rhizome had been controlling were no longer the greatest threat. Something far worse had arrived. — In the apartment, Rhizome's eyes opened. Her expression remained calm, but the exhaustion in her face was unmistakable.

"They are still coming," she said. Her voice was quieter now.

"More and more of them. I cannot keep this up forever." Shamira knelt beside her.

"Then what do we do?" Rhizome turned toward her, her honey-coloured eyes meeting Shamira's.

"We survive," she said.

"We survive, and we hope that someone, somewhere, finds a way to stop this." She closed her eyes once more. Outside, another explosion shook the city. BOOM! Rhizome barely reacted. Her bioluminescent spores continued drifting through the open window, carried into the smoke-filled streets.

"And in the meantime…" Her voice was barely audible.

"We fight." The apartment fell quiet again, broken only by the distant roar of explosions and the constant, rhythmic clicking of nightmare teeth echoing through the ruined streets. Click-click-click-click. Rhizome's eyes remained closed, her face pale with exhaustion as she continued pouring herself into the network. Sweat beaded across her brow, and faint tremors ran through her fingers whenever another surge of deaths passed through her consciousness. Shamira watched helplessly. She wanted to say something.

Anything. Before she could, her phone rang. The sound was jarring against the backdrop of destruction. Shamira flinched and reached into her pocket, fumbling with the device before pulling it free. The screen glowed with a familiar name. Her heart skipped. She answered immediately.

"Hello? Hello?!"

"Shami." Her boyfriend's voice came through the speaker, calm and steady despite the distant noise surrounding him.

"Are you alright?"

"Am I alright?" Shamira's voice rose as everything she had been holding inside finally began spilling out.

"The city is burning! There are monsters everywhere! Rhizome is… I don't even know what she's doing. She's controlling them, she's fighting them, but there are so many, and they keep coming, and I…" Her breath caught.

"I don't know what to do."

"Shami." His voice cut through her panic.

"It's okay. It's going to be okay."

"How can you say that?"

"Because I'm here." A warm, familiar laugh crackled through the speaker.

"Look outside." Shamira froze. She slowly turned toward the window.... High above the burning city, something moved through the smoke. At first, she thought they were more nightmares. She was wrong. Jets screamed across the sky, their sleek forms cutting through the haze like silver blades. Their engines roared as they banked in perfect formation, sweeping over the burning skyline. Shamira stared upward.

"What…" The jets opened their bays. Figures dropped from the aircraft. One. Two. Five. Dozens. They fell through the smoke, silhouettes disappearing into the clouds before becoming clearer as they descended. Armoured bodies. Weapons. Powered frames. Steppers. Shamira's eyes widened.

"They're here." Her boyfriend's voice came through the phone.

"Told you." Another explosion erupted somewhere below. The falling figures continued their descent. One Stepper dropped directly toward a burning avenue, its armour catching the glow of the fires beneath it. Thrusters ignited along its back. The machine slowed. Then it descended into the heart of Jakarta. BOOM! The impact sent dust and debris racing across the street. The Stepper rose from the crater. Its weapons unfolded. Around it, more Steppers descended through the smoke. The city had gained a new army.

They fell through the air like meteors, their grey-and-crimson armour gleaming in the hellish light of the fires below. They descended in perfect synchronisation, stabilisers correcting their trajectories as they dropped between the burning skyscrapers. Their boots struck the streets with enough force to crater the asphalt. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. Dozens became hundreds as more Steppers descended from the sky, spreading across Jakarta like a tide of steel and fury.

Their armour locked into place as they landed, weapons unfolding from their forearms and shoulders while targeting systems swept across the nightmare-infested streets. The city erupted into chaos. A Stepper landed directly in the middle of a pack of nightmares. His fists were already moving. He drove one punch through the skull of a nightmare, black smoke bursting from the impact as its body collapsed.

He spun beneath another nightmare's snapping jaws and slammed an elbow into its ribs, sending it crashing through a parked vehicle. A second Stepper dropped beside him, an energy whip snapping to life in her hand. She swung. The weapon wrapped around a nightmare's throat and tightened. With a violent pull, she ripped the creature off its feet and slammed it into the pavement before hurling it into the path of an advancing squad.

"Nice one!" The squad opened fire. Bullets tore through the nightmare's body, each round striking with surgical precision. The creature convulsed before dissolving into black smoke. More Steppers advanced behind them. Their sidearms barked in controlled bursts while larger weapons unfolded over their shoulders. One raised a compact rifle that emitted a concentrated beam of Apis energy, punching through two nightmares in a straight line. Another fired a cluster of explosive rounds into a charging pack.

The street erupted. The yellow nightmares moved faster. They tore through the distance in flashes of electricity, their elongated bodies crackling with blue-white energy as they darted between buildings. One launched itself at a Stepper, its jaws snapping repeatedly as rows of needle-like teeth flashed toward his head. The Stepper vanished. A burst of blue mist erupted where he had been standing. He reappeared a dozen metres away, already aiming his weapon. He fired. BOOM.

The nightmare disappeared inside a violent sphere of energy, its body dissolving into black smoke.

"Got one!" Another creature came screaming down from above. A Stepper raised his arm. A deployable shield unfolded from his gauntlet just as the nightmare struck. The impact drove him several metres backward, boots carving trenches through the asphalt. The creature's teeth snapped against the barrier. Click-click-click-click! The Stepper grinned.

"Not bad." He triggered the shield. A pulse of force blasted the nightmare backward. A second Stepper immediately dropped a gravity mine beneath it. The device activated. The nightmare was dragged violently toward the centre of the street as gravity twisted around the device, its body compressing into an invisible sphere of crushing force. The creature thrashed. Its bones cracked. Its body dissolved into smoke. —