Apocalypse Days: I Rule with Foresight and a Powerful Son
Chapter 201

Chapter 201: 201

The war room of Adrian’s camp was dimly lit but thrumming with quiet power. Large screens flickered along the walls, displaying moving heat maps, camera feeds, energy levels — the very pulse of his operation.

He could see the main base in front, the emergency lock down alarm had stopped, no doubt the civilians had been allowed to leave their rooms again. Most of the members of operations there didn’t know about his little set up here.

Adrian stood in the center, arms behind his back, posture straight, gaze fixed on the tactical layout projected in midair before him. He was a man in control, and he liked it that way.

"North quadrant stabilized. Patrols rotating every twelve hours, per your command," one of his aides murmured, holding a data slate tightly as if it were a shield.

"Good," Adrian said, without looking at him. "What of the test subjects?"

"Containment remains stable. Zara is isolated in Sector D. Subject Winter, Sector F. And the child... Sector G, monitored with psychic dampeners. No anomalies reported."

Adrian allowed himself a slow, tight smile.

"Excellent. Finally, after months of watching the world devour itself in chaos, we hold the key to its salvation."

The aide hesitated.

"Sir?"

Adrian turned. "The child. You understand, don’t you? He’s the beginning. The first true bridge between power and purity. We harness that... and humanity wins. This? This is the start of a new age."

The aide nodded stiffly, clearly unsure how to respond.

Adrian turned back to the screens, voice softer. "We’ve lost too much. Now we take back control."

He didn’t notice the tremble in the ground beneath the camp — not yet.

*****

Leo didn’t like the white room.

It was too bright. Too cold. It smelled funny. The floor was hard and made his toes cold. Not like home. No carpet. No blankie. No Mama.

He sat in the corner, squished up tight, hugging his lion. It was squishy and smelled like Mama. Kinda. The fur was messy now. Kinda sticky now. But he still hugged it lots. Mama gave it to him on his birthday. She said, "You’re my little lion." He was three. He was three.

He missed her.

"Mama?" he whispered.

Nobody answered.

He sniffled. Loud. The snot made bubbly noises in his nose. His nose was all drippy. He rubbed it on his sleeve. The lights buzzed like bees. His ears didn’t like it.

He looked up at the corners of the room, where a red blinky thing was. Sometimes it made a little click sound. Sometimes it stared at him. At least, that’s what it felt like.

He rubbed his hand over the lion’s head. "You don’t like it too, huh?" he whispered. "Don be scared, I’m a hero. I’m a good boy, mama will come for us."

Everything felt too big and too loud and too not-nice.

He didn’t know where mama was. Or Daddy. Or the nice boy who helped with the car. The blanket was gone. The nice one with stars.

Sometimes big people walked by. Sometimes they looked at him. They had scary faces. Mean-eyes. They didn’t smile. They didn’t say hi.

He didn’t want them.

Not the scary room. Not the hard bed. Not the red blinky light in the corner.

"I wanna go home," he said, squishing Lion tighter. His lip shook. His tummy felt weird.

"I wanna go hooooome," he cried louder this time.

Something inside his chest went big. Big and hot. It tickled and it hurt. His hands felt floaty.

"Mamaaaaaa—"

And then—

Pop.

The light blinked.

The air wiggled.

The little lion dropped onto the floor with a soft plop.

The room was empty.

*****

The flicker was so subtle, the overhead lights barely reacted. A low hum vibrated under the war room’s floor — not loud, not even steady, like a heartbeat skipping in the walls.

Adrian’s brow twitched. He paused for a fraction of a second before brushing it off.

Probably the generators.

But a few corridors down, the tremble didn’t go unnoticed.

In Sector G, a junior technician lifted his head, frowning as the fluorescent lighting above him dimmed, then surged too bright for a blink. His fingers paused over his keyboard.

"Hey," he called to no one in particular. "Did anyone just feel—?"

The screen in front of him shimmered.

One of the feeds — the one from the child’s room — glitched for half a second. Not enough to raise alarms. Just a line of static, a flicker of pinkish light in the bottom corner. Like heat refraction in the air, if it had a taste.

The tech clicked twice, checked the system. Nothing flagged.

Still.

He tapped the desk. Something was off.

Down the hall, two security guards walking patrol stopped mid-step.

"You feel that?" one asked.

The other frowned. "Feel what?"

"Like... the air’s heavy. I don’t know. Pressure drop maybe."

They kept moving.

Back in the war room, the surface of the floating map display distorted. A faint halo circled Sector G for the briefest moment before correcting itself.

Adrian noticed this time.

"What the hell..." he muttered. "Why did that flash?"

One of the aides noticed too. "Sector G, sir. Could be a sensor refresh delay. I’ll run diagnostics—"

"Don’t bother," Adrian snapped. "Tell engineering to check the lines. And recalibrate the dampeners. I want all psionic inhibitors at full capacity."

The aide nodded and moved to comply.

A moment later, the lights in the room flickered again. Slightly longer this time.

The hum returned. Just enough for someone perceptive to notice. Or someone attuned to it.

Adrian’s fingers twitched behind his back. That wasn’t the generators.

He looked again at the map.

Sector G had gone dark for a full second now.

His eyes narrowed.

He turned away from the screen.

"Double security on the child. I want full sensory diagnostics and live vitals. Now."

*****

The alert didn’t come immediately.

It started as a blip on one of the control panels — a quick red flash in Sector G’s feed. A camera shorting out. A door glitching for half a second. An unusual energy spike. Nothing major.

Until a guard burst into the control room.

"Sir!"

Adrian turned slowly, irritation flickering in his eyes. "This better be important."

The man was pale, sweat sticking his uniform to his neck. "It’s the child. He’s— He’s gone."

Adrian blinked once. Twice.

Then laughed.

"You mean he escaped?" He cocked his head. "A three-year-old? Past biometric locks and two guards?"

"N-no, sir. He just... disappeared. One moment he was sitting in the corner. Then the feed went fuzzy and—he was gone. Like he vanished. We don’t know how."

Silence.

Then the sharp crack of Adrian’s fist slamming into the wall console beside him. The screen shattered. Sparks danced along the edges.

The men around him flinched, it took something serious to make their commander lose control.

Disbelief was a brief flicker in Adrian’s mind. It passed as quickly as it came, replaced with calculation. Possibility. And then, ice-cold fury.

He stalked toward the control center, the soldier who came with the news scrambling behind him.

"Get me the surveillance feed," Adrian ordered.

"Yes, sir. Already queued."

They reached the control room in seconds. The feed was already up. Several staff hovered at the edges of their stations, none daring to speak.

The footage rolled. Leo curled up on the corner of the room. Crying. Holding some worn toy. The faint shimmer. The blur. Then—static.

Gone.

"Replay it. Slow it down."

They did.

He leaned in.

There it was. The ripple.

The distortion.

Then—absence.

No explosion. No transport flare. No external portal signature. Just a slow burn of nothing.

The child had vanished.

Adrian’s fingers dug into the edge of the console.

Not escaped.

Not taken.

Vanished.

His mind moved a mile a second. Could he have activated his power? An unconscious defense mechanism? A teleportation ability? Where would he reappear?

Fuck.

He whirled on the nearest tech.

"Thermal scans?"

"Running now—sir, there’s no trace. Not even residual heat signatures. It’s like he never existed."

Adrian’s face cracked with fury. He slammed his fist into the console again, a loud metallic clang echoing through the chamber.

"Lock this place down. Full sweep. I want every inch of this facility scanned, dismantled, ripped apart if it needs to be. If he’s hiding, we find him. If someone took him, we hunt them."

Guards scrambled to comply.

"Harlan," Adrian barked.

"Yes, sir!"

"Send men to check all escape tunnels. The generators. The underground storage levels. I want eyes in every shadow."

Harlan nodded and fled.

Adrian turned back to the screen.

The image of the empty corner was frozen on the display.

His hands curled slowly into fists.

This wasn’t how things were supposed to go. He had the pieces. He had control. He had her.

Unless—

Unless she had something to do with this.

Unless she knew.

Adrian’s eyes narrowed.

"Prep the south corridor," he growled. "I’m going to see that fucking bitch."

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