The team returned to the temporary airstrip at the Red Sea coast, where there was some communications gear that hadn’t been destroyed.

They called the other teams—Iolanthe and Nobody in New York; and Pooh, Stretch, Tracy and Sister Lynda in D.C.—desperate to know how they had fared in their missions.

Pooh Bear answered immediately. ‘We’re at Raven Rock, north of Washington, D.C. and we have full lists of all the members of the royal world who were gathering at the three rendezvous points for the Omega Event.’

‘How are they all reacting to this?’ Jack asked. ‘Not well, I imagine.’

Stretch answered. ‘Oh, no, they’re fine. After they sprang their trap and hacked our plane, we sprang ours, took control of their bronzemen and then rolled a Siren bell into their underground living quarters and put them all to sleep.’

Iolanthe’s voice came over their earpieces next.

‘And Nobody and I have the Blue Bell,’ she said. ‘We’re flying it down from New York City to D.C. right now, ringing it as we go, waking up the population. We’ll be sure to hold off when we get close to you, though, Stretch—wouldn’t want to wake up any of those royals you put to sleep.’

Jack sighed. ‘There’s gonna be a lot of things to clean up after this. Entire populations to wake and a whole world to put right. Our work has just begun.’

A Man Named Jack: Part V The World After Omega

In the months that followed the Omega Event, Jack’s story slowly became known.

On 29 December, the whole world—at least those people who had been awake—had seen the sky fill with dreadful cracks and then seen the colossal quantum pulse of energy shoot up into it.

Television networks, released from Sphinx’s emergency broadcast signal, showed footage of the event, captured on cell phones.

And then, gradually, word seeped out about an event that had occurred in the Sinai Desert in Egypt, and in the Red Sea near it . . .

. . . and suddenly, the news channels were filled with aerial images of the massive megastadium in the Red Sea—filled to the brim with seawater—and the newly risen stadium in the Sinai Desert.

Something historic had happened—something not just on a human scale but on a universal scale—and the world wanted to know all about it.

Heads of state called each other, searching for answers, and soon it became apparent that a small team of soldiers hailing from several minnow nations had been working on this mission for twenty years, a team led by a crack Australian trooper by the name of Jack West Jr.

The first thing to do was wake everyone up.

Under Sky Monster’s command, flanked by escort planes, the Blue Bell was flown over all the cities that had been afflicted by Sphinx’s ringing of the Siren bells.