Chapter 1462: Who Is More Miserable?
While the team stayed on the down-low, the situation in New York was extremely chaotic.
The most obvious thing was that law and order had deteriorated significantly again, and NYPD suffered another major blow.
A new wave of police officers resigned, and it was even worse than last time.
Luke didn’t really care.
There would always be people who would sign up to be police officers in order to make a living.
Besides, New York was the financial center of America. Law and order here actually had nothing to do with NYPD, but with how the financial bigshots wanted it to play out.
The good news was that none of Luke’s colleagues in the police department had been injured.
After the attack by the test subjects, Luke had specifically talked to them about how to respond in a similar situation.
This was very important.
Dustin, Elsa, and Elizabeth worked at HQ, and didn’t need to be in the field.
After receiving Luke’s alert about the danger, they had gotten busy in the office building, and hadn’t been stupid enough to run outside to die.
This time, n.o.body criticized NYPD.
The test subjects could be considered empty-handed monsters, but the Chitauri was an organized army invasion.
Getting NYPD to attack the alien army while maintaining law and order was too demanding. Tens of thousands of dollars in annual pay couldn’t buy lives.
Also, because Luke and the others were too efficient, the National Guard only arrived in Manhattan after the s.p.a.ce portal was closed.
The four big military arms were even more tragic.
The higher-ups first had to decide whether to make a move or not, before they wrangled and made calls to issue the order. Some of the troops got ready and were prepared to set off at any moment.
But before most of the soldiers even got on the vehicles, the battle in New York was over.
The United States spent so much money every year to raise an army that was known as the world’s number one army. In the end, when Earth encountered the first alien invasion, the army didn’t even show its face before it was robbed of its job by a bunch of superheroes.
It was embarra.s.sing.
Anyone who wasn’t blind could see that the main force in the Battle of New York was Batman’s team.
These were “vigilantes” who had never taken a single dime from the American government. Previously, these vigilantes had been falsely slandered in the news.
Now, they were the ones who had saved New York, and not the army who consumed billions of dollars a year.
Worst of all, a tech whiz online compared and logically a.n.a.lyzed a lot of photos, and finally a.s.serted that it was a nuclear missile that Batman had taken into the portal.
On American soil, the only person who would dare launch a nuke was the person in the White House.
If there was an “accomplice” involved, the Department of Defense and the Air Force were prime suspects, and they couldn’t run from this responsibility.
This issue became the real “nuke” which blew up in the news and among the spectators.
The scale, scope, and consequences of launching this missile were far more serious than an alien invasion.
Actually, it might not be a bad thing for many people at the top if the nuke had really exploded.
As long as it could really take care of the s.p.a.ce portal in the sky above Manhattan, this decision could be said to be the right one.
Someone with enough status could then take the fall, and this matter would be settled.
Compared with taking care of the alien invasion in one go and killing those superheroes who shouldn’t exist in pa.s.sing, it was nothing for civilians to die with them.
The civilians making a fuss wasn’t a big deal. It couldn’t last forever.
But now… the nuke hadn’t exploded.
This was both a good thing and a bad thing.
Fortunately, at the very least, it hadn’t caused any casualties, and could only be considered a “failed attempt.”
Unfortunately, this further proved the authorities’ incompetence.
They had even used a nuclear missile, but hadn’t been able to help.
Not only were the authorities now labeled incompetent, they couldn’t cover up the fact that they had launched a nuke without anything to show for it.
It was one thing for the authorities to be incompetent, but for them to be incompetent and ruthless was something that most people couldn’t accept.
This was true for both the financial elites and criminals in New York.
Both of them were the trash of society, but when they really were treated like trash by the authorities, who had been about to dump a nuke on their heads, they couldn’t take it!
In front of the White House, a large number of victims and their families from New York, as well as from human rights a.s.sociations, raised signboards in protest.
The president, Mich.e.l.le Geber, had to give a speech on TV to the nation that afternoon. She made it clear that it had just been a conventional missile and not a nuclear weapon. Also, she had nothing to do with the missile launch; it had been a private military operation.
She also said that the pilot involved was now in custody and that the relevant personnel who allowed the launch to commence were being investigated.
These words created an uproar.
Countless media outlets and the ma.s.ses roasted her for lying through her teeth.
There was a lot of evidence to suggest that just this one American fighter plane had flown to New York from the south, and it had turned around and left after firing just one missile.
If this wasn’t a nuclear weapon, then what was the point of this American operation? Were they relying on this one fighter plane and an ordinary missile to change the situation in New York at the time?
Even if the pilot’s actions were justified, shouldn’t he have fired all the missiles on the plane and not just one at the very least?
More people began to question Mich.e.l.le Geber: You’re the one who holds the launch b.u.t.ton for the nuclear weapon. Now, you’re saying that a nuclear missile was launched on American soil, targeting Manhattan, the number one financial center in the world, and you don’t know who fired it. Is this a dereliction of duty? No, it’s pure incompetence.
This would also mean that the president had completely lost the authority to control the nuclear weapon and didn’t have the capability to sit in that position.
Unbeknownst to the public, Mich.e.l.le Geber, the first female president of the United States, was also feeling despair.
She truly had nothing to do with the person behind this.
Without a clear understanding of the situation, she wasn’t stupid enough to drop a nuclear weapon on Manhattan.
But no matter what she said now, it couldn’t dispel the public’s rising suspicion.
This seed of mistrust had been planted in the hearts of many people a few months ago when it was confirmed that the authorities had tried to frame Batman.
More than 20,000 people had died in the Battle of New York, and 30,000 were missing.
As expected, most of the missing people would be added to the list of the dead.
There were at least 50,000 dead, and hundreds of thousands of casualties. The consequences couldn’t be compared with the thousand or so that had died in the attack by the test subjects.
Back then, the government had seized the opportunity to s.h.i.+ft the blame for the attack on Batman.
For some people, their objective had just been to deal with Batman. Although this failed in the end, it had successfully drawn most people’s attention.
Batman couldn’t take the blame for this alien attack.
First of all, the people had already been fooled once. This time, no matter how stupid a person was, they wouldn’t think that Batman, who at most beat up hooligans every day, could be blamed for an alien invasion.
Worst of all, Batman was missing..