[center][h3]Welcome To The Jungle - Chapter 3: Refusal[/h3][/center]

[b]Earth-F67X: New New York City, Brooklyn-Queens Expressway[/b]

Much like Genesis’ gut-wrenching emotions, the storm did not subsist. Squinting, her’ eyes barely made out the road. It was hard to see the winding snake path yet she maintained to break into the BQE safely. On this tiresome commute back, a good night’s rest was craved. However, there was no telling how much her mind would race the second her body hit the bed. Genesis’ hastening thoughts penciled what Amina’s life could become were Jag to find out. The horrific reality of her daughter being groomed to become some corrupt engineer, scientist or political pawn for Jag’s tribe tugged viciously at her sanity. The joy of her world was in Amina. For her to go down a path like her father… Stressed, she no longer could stomach the thought. To drown out those worries, Genesis turned up the radio.

[color=fff79a][i]“Breaking News: This is a localized alert via CitizeNN. There are dangerous disruptions in your immediate vicinity along the BQE. Depart immediately.”[/i][/color]

With no option to turn around, Genesis rerouted to the next exit hoping the commotion was at least a few miles ahead. Mistaking the grumbling road for potholes, the pavement below this quindecuple-stacked expressway deteriorated in real time, waving like lifted bedsheets. Genesis acrylics dug deep into her palms, clenching the wheel hysterically the instant she felt weightless. Her navy sedan floated trunk side up, propelled meters forward to the point where she barely made out some makeshift mech rampaging through the highway. With legs like an emu, it leaped, crashing through the lower levels, hurling cars like hot wheels. 

Its Octavian bundaloo extensions drilled through any mass of infrastructure with the audacity to be in its path. This carnage Genesis found herself in the middle of, despite seeming senseless, had some means of madness. At the helm of the mech was a man named Vernon Hayes, a member of a cult led by an environmentalist influencer gone rogue. The group, Neo Environmentalist Working, Destroying, Earth’s Ailing Liabilities (N.E.W. D.E.A.L.) took up the task of limiting carbon emissions by stringing a long series of terrorist attacks on transportation infrastructure contributing to climate change.

What was unclear to the public was how said group obtained the consistent flow of funds and tech to commit such atrocities on society regularly. There were plenty of wealthy groups and politicians secretly lobbying on their behalf. The corruption was that clear but somehow unproven. In a corporatocracy, they were a feared collective among CEOs and executives. With devoted members ready to sacrifice themselves on the regular for a cause, it was often too late when discovering who a member was.

Vernon Hayes, a statistics secretary of the Metro Transit Authority, after copious amounts of research, hand-picked the demolition of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway as a means to put a clot in the flow of traffic into Queens from Brooklyn. This easily inconvenienced millions, giving Vernon an orgasmic shot of dopamine which was particularly heinous when factoring in the complete disregard for innocent lives now in harm’s way. It was rush hour. He couldn’t have picked a worse time for such pandemonium and Genesis, like hundreds of other drivers found themselves descending to their imminent demise.

Nose diving at a corkscrewing angle, all she saw was the rubble-filled junkyard that Brooklyn Bridge Park became below. Hipster joggers and bicyclists fleed frantically, piercing the air with ear-splitting screams. Knowing this was the end, Genesis shut her eyes. The cries for help, the destruction around her, fizzled out, muffled by perhaps the acceptance of death. Consoling memories of Amina, her mother, graduating from NYU with Natasha; she experienced it all simultaneously, finding solace after many years of duress.

It was finally over…

[color=fff79a][i]“One’s death ushers the birth of another.”[/i][/color]

Right before impact, the gaze of a gorgon penetrated her psyche. A voice, which sounded much like her own, more powerful and with conviction spoke to her soul. The will to see Amina. The will to survive overcame her. Genesis had no time to make sense of the jolt of heroin in her veins but before she could act it was already over.