Chapter 227: Holy Terra
[Defendant, Thaddeus Ross, former Secretary of State of the United States of America.
I now speak on behalf of the International Military Tribunal to read out the final verdict against you—]
[Charge One: Abuse of authority. Illegally drafting and forcibly advancing the so-called "SHIELD" Accords, systematically stripping superpowered individuals of their basic human rights and subjecting them to persecution.]
[Charge Two: Without proper authorization from Congress or the UN Security Council, unilaterally deploying armed forces. Launching a military operation against Umbrella Corporation and numerous former Avengers and X-Men members, in open violation of international peace and order.]
[Charge Three: Ordering a nuclear strike while fully aware that civilians remained in New York City. Using domestic territory and innocent citizens as bargaining chips in a war, constituting crimes against humanity, war crimes, and attempted genocide.]
[Charge Four...]
Inside the International Military Tribunal.
Charge after charge against Thaddeus Ross was read out, one after another.
Under the spotlight at the center of the courtroom.
A man, wrapped from head to toe in white restraint bindings, looking for all the world like a cocoon, sat bound to a wooden chair.
The bindings ran from his ankles all the way up to his shoulders. His arms were pinned behind his back, every joint locked down individually, even his fingers wrapped tight and immobile.
His head was held fixed in place by a specially made metal brace, and his mouth was sealed shut behind a custom metal muzzle.
That last piece was there specifically to stop him from biting through his own tongue and taking his own life.
Thaddeus Ross sat slumped under the spotlight like a stray dog with nowhere left to go.
Gray-streaked hair hung in disarray across his forehead. The body that had stood ramrod straight not long ago now hung utterly drained, as if every last ounce of strength had been sucked out of him.
The once-confident Secretary of State, a man who used to command instant compliance across the entire U.S. government with a single word, couldn't even manage to move now.
His power, his rank, his reputation, all of it had been stripped away completely under the sheer weight of Umbrella's strength, leaving nothing behind but an aging body strapped down under a spotlight, its very survival no longer his own to decide.
No one could say how much time passed.
The reading of the charges finally came to an end.
Through the entire process, Ross had sat like a wooden puppet, eyes lowered, motionless.
By this point, he didn't even care how the verdict came out.
He knew perfectly well that, with a list of charges this severe, there was no chance of walking out alive. At this point, being allowed to keep his body intact would already count as an act of mercy from Umbrella.
His numb gaze swept across everyone present.
Because this whole affair had come so close to sparking a full-scale world war, the leaders of every nation had come in person to witness this verdict.
Which meant he recognized more than a few familiar faces.
Among them was President Ellis, the man Ross himself had once placed under house arrest, and Matthew Lawrence, the man he hated more than anyone alive, now seated calmly on a raised, tiered dais, utterly at ease.
Just as he'd expected.
The verdict held no surprises.
Death.
The execution itself, though, wouldn't be carried out by any nation. That authority had been handed over directly to Umbrella Corporation.
Or, more precisely, to Matthew Lawrence himself.
The moment the trial formally concluded, a crisp set of footsteps grew closer, one step at a time.
Ross, his eyes lowered, slowly raised them at the sound, turning his gaze toward its source.
As his eyes settled on the figure approaching, the one person he least wanted to see came slowly into view.
Matthew approached at an unhurried pace, expression calm, a faint smile at the corner of his mouth.
Tap, tap.
Matthew came to a stop in front of Ross.
Their eyes met.
Whatever numbness had been in Ross's eyes a moment ago gave way instantly to boundless, seething fury.
If a look alone could kill, Matthew would have died a thousand times over by now.
"Thaddeus Ross."
"I believe this is actually the first time we've truly met in person." Matthew spoke, unhurried.
Ross, still bound to the chair, could only manage muffled, wordless noise, his mouth sealed shut.
Seeing that, Matthew raised one hand and tapped a point in the empty air.
A ripple of magic surged out.
The next instant, the metal muzzle over Ross's mouth vanished without a trace.
The moment it was gone, Ross roared straight at Matthew. "Matthew Lawrence!"
"You manipulative devil! Everyone's been fooled by you! You're the real warmonger here!"
"All that scheming, all that charity work, currying favor with the poor and the sick, wasn't it all leading up to exactly this moment?!"
"'The world,' 'peace,' 'the people'! All of it, every last word, was just an excuse!"
"From the very beginning, all you ever wanted was to become the master of this entire world!" Ross's chest heaved violently, his eyes locked on Matthew with vicious hatred.
"And the rest of you! You bunch of fools!"
He snapped his head around, his gaze sweeping across the world leaders seated in the gallery.
In his fury, the restraints around his neck creaked audibly against the strain.
"The one strapped down here today is me. Tomorrow, it could just as easily be any of you!"
"By the time his power grows strong enough to swallow every nation whole, you won't even get the chance to regret it!"
"A pack of tame livestock, and here you all are, still clapping and cheering for him!"
"Fools! Fools! All of you, nothing but fools!!"
Ross screamed himself hoarse, but not a single person answered him. It was as if none of them had heard him at all.
Seeing that, Ross turned his head back around, his bloodshot eyes locking onto Matthew.
"Matthew Lawrence... as long as you're still alive, this world will never know real peace!"
"You are the single greatest source of instability in it!"
"Only your death would give this world its best possible ending!" Ross glared at Matthew, teeth grinding.
On the other side, Matthew, having just weathered a full torrent of abuse, still hadn't said a single word.
He simply stood there watching Ross, half out of his mind with rage, a faint mockery playing at the corner of his mouth.
Only once Ross had finally run out of things to say, gasping for breath, did Matthew finally speak.
"Finished?" he said, his voice carrying easily.
"You made quite the passionate speech just now, like you were trying to say everything you'd ever want to say for the rest of your life all at once. But as it happens, not one word of it actually made it past this barrier between the two of us." Matthew glanced toward the nearby wall, a transparent barrier faintly distorted by a gravity field.
"And there's one more thing."
"Ross, I don't agree with most of what you just said. But there's one part you actually got right."
"I really was waiting for a war."
"A war big enough to shake the whole world."
"Only a war on that scale could give Umbrella a legitimate reason to become fully independent of every nation on Earth."
"So... I suppose I owe you a thank-you."
"If you hadn't come along, I might've had to wait a while longer for the right opportunity." As he said it, the corner of Matthew's mouth curved slowly upward.
"Unfortunately, only the victor gets to write the ending."
"And you, as the loser..."
"No one's going to listen to you."
The words settled, and a faint glimmer crossed Matthew's eyes.
He lifted a hand, curling a finger slightly, and the vanished metal muzzle reappeared out of thin air, snapping perfectly back into place over Ross's mouth.
Hearing what Matthew had said, Ross's face twisted.
He started thrashing against the restraints again.
The bindings dug deeper grooves into his skin, and a garbled, animal-like roar tore out of his throat, but no one could make out a single word of it anymore.
Or rather, no one particularly wanted to hear anything a condemned man had to say.
Listening to the chair creaking behind him, Matthew didn't spare Ross another glance, simply turning and walking out of the courtroom on his own.
As he walked, he called out an instruction to the Astartes keeping order by the door. "Since he's already been handed over to Umbrella for judgment, then—"
"Take him away."
A few days later.
Everything unfolded exactly as Matthew had predicted.
Not long before, that battle, one that could only be described as a complete generational leap over modern warfare, had freed Umbrella Corporation entirely from the constraints of any nation, elevating it into an independent power the world could no longer afford to ignore.
Umbrella now stood fully independent of every nation on Earth, and had claimed a true "territory" all its own.
Japan, Poland, and the rest of the smaller nations that had struck first were now completely occupied by Umbrella and folded entirely under its administration.
France, which had surrendered promptly enough, along with a handful of other nations that had seen which way the wind was blowing and surrendered outright, only had the small portions of territory already captured at the time carved away.
Among the major powers, only America, thanks to Ross's stubborn last stand, had ended up completely absorbed into Umbrella Corporation.
On the surface, America still looked exactly as it always had. But everyone understood perfectly well by now that the nation already had a new master.
Not that it made any real difference to them.
Setting aside Matthew Lawrence's own unfathomable personal power, the technology and military strength in Umbrella's hands alone already stood leagues above every nation on Earth.
The Grey Knight legion within the Astartes forces even possessed instantaneous spatial jumps, a battlefield capability modern warfare had essentially no answer for.
Faced with a technological gap this overwhelming, every nation had the good sense to recognize the writing on the wall, and no one dared step forward to object.
After all, nobody wanted to experience being steamrolled by that kind of combat system a second time.
The White House, the Oval Office.
Inside the office, the former President, Ellis, still sat behind the desk that symbolized the highest seat of power in America.
He sat there quietly, his pen moving steadily across the documents in front of him, the soft scratch of it against paper the only sound in the room.
His posture remained perfectly composed, his suit collar buttoned without a wrinkle out of place, as if nothing at all had changed.
Not far from him, Matthew sat on the office sofa.
Legs crossed, he idly flipped through a book he'd pulled off the shelf without much thought, saying nothing at all.
The two of them stayed like that, each leaving the other undisturbed, for who knew how long.
Behind the desk, Ellis's pace working through the documents gradually slowed.
Clearly, he'd finished the stack in front of him.
He closed the final file.
Once that was done, Ellis seemed to finally set down some unspoken weight, leaning back in his chair, his thoughts drifting loose.
This was his own little trick for recovering after intense work: what people commonly called zoning out.
But before Ellis could fully settle into it, Matthew, not far away, suddenly closed the book in his hands, pulling Ellis's drifting thoughts back down to earth.
"..." Ellis looked over at Matthew.
He knew exactly why Matthew had come today.
Just as he'd expected, once he had Ellis's attention, Matthew set the book down and turned his gaze toward him.
"Ellis, I imagine you already know what needs to happen next."
You know what needs to happen next...
Ellis let out a soft laugh, murmuring Matthew's words back to himself in his own head.
Know. Of course he knew.
Thinking it over, Ellis drew a slow breath and said, evenly, "Of course."
"Now that America has changed hands, there's no way I can keep sitting in this seat."
"I've at least got that much self-awareness."
With that, he rose from his chair, walked around the long desk, stepped away from the position that symbolized the highest power in the land, and gestured toward it with an open hand, inviting Matthew forward.
"Mr. Lawrence, care to sit up here for a while?"
He tilted his head, his gaze calm and even. "Come find out for yourself. How comfortable is a seat that's supposed to represent 'the highest power in the world,' really?"
Hearing that, Matthew let out a short laugh.
He didn't say much in response to Ellis's invitation.
He simply rose, unhurried, and walked over to the chair.
Under Ellis's watchful eyes, he settled into it.
"How does it feel?" Ellis asked, smiling.
Hearing the question, Matthew leaned back and spread his hands. "Honestly, not as comfortable as the chair in my own office."
At that, the corner of Ellis's mouth twitched, a hint of helplessness crossing his face.
He studied Matthew sitting in that seat for a long moment, and finally asked, "Mr. Lawrence, now that you're sitting in this chair, have you thought about what comes next?"
"Reform? Or do you plan to keep following the same path as before?"
Ellis pulled up a chair of his own and sat across from Matthew, his tone neither servile nor defiant.
Looking at Ellis across the desk, Matthew didn't answer right away. Instead, he turned the question back on him. "Ellis, I can answer that question for you."
"But before I do, I need you to answer one question of mine first."
Hearing that, a trace of confusion crossed Ellis's face.
Their eyes met, and what Ellis found in Matthew's gaze wasn't the contempt he might have expected for a deposed ruler, but something closer to an odd, genuine admiration.
Carrying that confusion with him, Ellis asked, almost without thinking, "...What question?"
At that, Matthew cleared his throat and looked at him with sudden gravity. "Mr. Ellis, if I were to formally offer you a position as one of the administrators of Holy Terra, would you accept it?"
Ellis fell silent again.
After a long moment, a helpless smile crossed his face. "Mr. Lawrence... as much as I'd like to answer that question, I think you'll need to tell me something first."
"What exactly is this 'Holy Terra' you keep referring to?"
Hearing the question, Matthew suddenly smiled.
"As for Holy Terra..." He gave a light snap of his fingers.
The next instant.
The Stars and Stripes hanging in the office rippled and changed at the sound of that snap.
Under Ellis's watching eyes, a new flag took shape rapidly: Umbrella Corporation's emblem as its field, with a double-headed eagle at its center.
"Holy Terra isn't a nation. It's a unified name for America, and for every territory beyond America that now falls under Umbrella Corporation."
"Of course—"
"The name might still sound unfamiliar to you right now."
"But one day, the name Holy Terra will echo across the entire universe!"
"And wherever Holy Terra's reach extends, that ground will belong to humanity!"
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