The Earth After Rebirth

Chapter 333: The News Interview

The building was more lively, even from outside. The kids seemed to be melting much like the snow outside, they had the first great sleep ever since they could remember.

Also the meal was nutritious, something that was a foreign concept even before they were kidnapped. They were seated in their sleeping bags, talking, albeit still a lot reserved.

They had been served breakfast, the adults were the only ones who weren't eating. There wasn't much to eat yet, but they weren't hungry anyway.

Kiro's phone rang, and it was President Scott.

"I think you'd like what's on the news channel right now, well like is a wrong word, it'd interest you."

Kiro bolted to another room, the others saw his sense of urgency, so they followed suit. There were no televisions around, so he used his phone.

A holographic screen appeared in the air, along with the news report the president was talking about.

[BREAKING: Blakeson Tech has been attacked by a terrorist group of masked men, luckily, nobody hot hurt. Everyone had gone home but Gilbert Blakeson and his son Isaac. We have a reporter at the scene right now with the CEO of Blakeson Tech, over to you Matt.]

"Thank you Jill, I'm here with Mr. Blakeson who agreed to answer a few questions. What do you think prompted this Sir?"

"As a big company, you get threats every day. Of course we've never imagined that this time they'd actually do something about it, it wasn't expected at all.

"We've received such threats before but they never went anywhere. I hope law enforcement are able to chase them down and bring them to justice, it's a pity we couldn't see their faces, they all had masks on, all six of them."

The reporter had a bit of a confused look because it seemed to him that Gilbert wasn't going to answer the question, but he quickly recovered.

"Did they give off anything?"

"As a matter of fact they did, they called themselves insurgency, what that means is anybody's guess, I'm just glad my son is okay."

Gilbert pulled Isaac close and gave him a side hug, his expression seemingly grateful. Isaac understood, and gave the camera an innocent smile.

"Do you think they'll keep doing this?"

"I think they will, I doubt they'll stop until they've ravaged our society. Their goal is a very bleak one, maybe they're just some lower district scum who are unhappy and lazy to make it out on their own with hard work."

He knew bringing up the lower district will gain him favour in the eyes of the public. Nobody liked the lower district, they had a stigma about them, that they were poor people by choice and that they didn't want to work as hard as everyone else.

But of course that couldn't be far further from the truth. They were some of the most hardworking people in their society, they were taken advantage of however so they could never really climb the ladder out of there.

"What an asshole." Ishaan found himself saying.

Hiro was heavily invested in this now, he didn't want to think about his grief, he figured the only way to get over it is by working so much that he didn't have time to think about it.

"We should edit and upload the videos in retaliation, the people must know." He suggested through gritted teeth.

"But why did they choose your company of all others?" The reporter asked.

"I'm one of the most influential people in our country, destroying those at the top is a very easy way to cause chaos and unrest in any society. That's my guess." He finished he's very rehearsed story.

Him and Trent spent the entire night preparing for damage control. He had answers to almost any question they assumed the reporters would want to know.

"That makes so much sense, thank you for your time Mr. Blakeson. Jill over to you, you've heard the man, we should expect more of these in the future."

The room was silent for a while, now was their chance to get the citizens on their side. If they couldn't make them sceptical of the rich, then they would've failed. As much as they could clean the world on their own, they still needed the populous for support.

"Hiro is right, we should work on the video. It's unfortunate that the storage for these recorders were full before we could capture that guy's face.

"But we have to do with what we have, most of all we shouldn't just upload these online as there are ways to impede people from seeing it. We should hack the national system." Kiro was hopeful that they could do it.

"That's impossible." James rained on his parade. "The system was made to be invulnerable, so it is. The best we could do is hack the news and people's devices, making the video play on their devices." He advised something achievable and simpler.

Kiro nodded and recognised that he was being too ambitious. He was glad there were people around him that could keep him grounded to make better decisions that wouldn't raise any alarms.

"Okay that's a fair assessment, can you do it? I'll help." He asked his best friend.

"Of course!"

"Don't toss me aside, I know a thing or two." Felix said.

So the three of them moved to another building, the one that would be for technology. There were a very few computers in there, they sat at one and started editing.

"We should blur out the fighters." Kiro suggested, not wanting Hiro's father's face to be out there, they weren't sure yet if this would work. He didn't want to risk it.

Hiro didn't want to say anything about this, so he was immensely grateful when he wasn't the one who suggested it. The only faces they would blur were those of prisoners and the kids they encountered in that hatch.

Everyone else who was watching the match and cheering was fair game.

It took them a few hours to edit the video down to just 15 minutes. It started at the entrance of the tunnels, right until they had to fight at the corridor.

Now came the hard part, hacking people's devices to play the video and make it so it couldn't be interrupted until the 15 minutes were up.