Remnants Remaining

Axel's eyes widened at the news he'd just been told.

"I'm sorry about your family, Axel…" It was Minister Harrison, who'd unexpectedly called him into his office two days following the Jenzaya Extinction. Over these two days, the Virtues held up at HQ anticipating the return of their leader and Wardell. But they never came.

Jasper being his family, Axel was worried sick when his brother hadn't returned the night of the day he'd left. Jasper and Wardell had left so early in the morning that no one was told where they'd gone. It wasn't until the news that broke out the next morning that worry had settled in.

{ JENZAYA DISTRICT: COMPLETELY DEMOLISHED BY DESTRUCTIVE EARTHQUAKE }

The district that Axel, Jasper, and Wardell had grown up in, had been completely wiped off the map. But it wasn't the fact that his hometown had gone extinct that burdened Axel. It was knowing that his parents were situated there.

"Knowing your origins, I'd sent out a rescue team to prioritize evacuating your family specifically. This is going to be very hard to hear Axel… But, I regret to inform you that the bodies of both your parents… and Jasper… have been found."

Axel's eyes widened upon hearing this.

"I'm sorry about your family, Axel… And it really disturbs me to know that even Jasper was unfortunately caught up in that too…"

Axel scrunched his eyebrows. He squinted his eyes to prevent any tears from exiting. He fought through the saddening pain that began to choke his neck. "Jasper's dead…?"

Minister Harrison nodded silently.

Axel stood up and turned around. His body stiffened as his back faced Minister Harrison. With nothing left to say or acknowledge, other than the fact that the one he looked up to was now dead, he walked out of the room.

As Axel navigated his way through the hallways and floors back to the hub, the hue to his world was noticeably grayer. The colors he could see were lost in tone, and the sound of everything was rather static.

"Jasper…" Axel subconsciously swayed to the side. He fell towards the wall to his right, planting his face against it. This was to hide his face of sorrow from the rest of the now empty world around him. Salty tears leaked down the wall from beneath his face. Sobs echoed into the wall.

On the other side of this wall, a burly man laid in his half-death bed. Wardell was having his wounds treated in the medical facility.

"If it wasn't for that extra added physical durability he'd gained from those experiments, he'd easily be dead right now," a doctor told Minister Harrison, who was visiting the room. He sighed at the sight; an unusual one. The biggest and strongest man on his team of Virtues laid split open in a hospital bed. Wardell was wrapped with bandages head to toe, and casted for his broken bones. His skin was scathed and shredded and blistered from all the damage it'd sustained.

"He should be fine about a week from now. I'm sure he'll be glad to be awake again then."

"No," Minister Harrison sighed. "I think he'd rather stay this way than wake back up again."

The doctor was confused. "Why is that?"

Minister Harrison closed his eyes. "Remember you were a plausible candidate to go and treat his sister, Lesley August?"

The doctor nodded. "Yeah… But the other group made the cut, right?"

"Right. They were able to revive her from her locked-in syndrome."

"That's great!" The doctor exclaimed. "Good on them for that."

Minister Harrison now struck the doctor with a serious glance. "Did I never tell you she was situated in Jenzaya Hospital?"

The doctor was hit with realization. "Oh…" He looked down at Wardell, and his eyes fell with pity.

"Wardell was found under debris alongside the corpses of Jasper and his parents, as well as another unidentifiable figure."

"Unidentifiable?"

Minister Harrison's stomach churned at the memory of the photos he'd been shown. "The corpse was completely mangled. Upon running a DNA test using its little blood that remained, results came to show it was Lesley August."

"Oh no…" The doctor covered his mouth.

"Off of the bodies present, I can assume that Jasper had taken Wardell to Jenzaya Hospital to visit his sister who was finally awake. And I guess Jasper's parents were invited too."

"So it was like one big reunion…"

"Yes. But one that ended with tragedy…"

The two stood in silence as they looked at the unconscious Wardell with pity.

"So, what do you guys plan on doing concerning the extinction of Jenzaya District?" The doctor asked him.

"We haven't come up with anything solid just yet. The destruction of the district as a whole has totaled to nearly a billion dollars in repairs. With the drop in economy in the past year, the Cardinal Nexus' funds aren't looking all too good in approaching the reconstruction of Jenzaya District."

"You mean you guys are considering just leaving it be?"

Minister Harrison turned towards him. "We're calling it 'extinct' for a reason. Every single hometown civilian of Jenzaya District has died, so there's no people left to compensate for. We might just leave it as ruins, and cut off its boundaries from the rest of the country."

"What will the people think of that?"

"People have already looked down on us. It's been days since the incident and our media director has chosen to hold off on making a statement for now."

"But why?"

"Because anything we tell the public now will destroy our reputation."

The doctor gritted his teeth. "But the people want to hear reassurance, don't they? They must feel horrible knowing something like that had happened but the government hasn't established any safety measures concerning it yet."

Minister Harrison threw him a glance. "You're a doctor here at the Cardinal Nexus. You have absolutely no say in what we choose to do. Stay silent."

The doctor frowned. "Sorry…"

"Listen, I understand where you're coming from. But you need to consider this: we'd just provided the entire population a reason to feel safe with the Seven Virtues. If we come back and apologize for failing to keep the thousands safe in Jenzaya's destruction, then our society would lose all trust in the Cardinal Nexus. We wouldn't be able to reassure them anymore."

"How do you know it isn't already like that? I can guess that by refraining from speaking out to the public about the recent issue, you guys have already given yourselves an even worse reputation."

"Tsk!" Minister Harrison stormed out of the room.

The doctor sighed. "What will become of this society?"