Page 149 - TruthAboutLyingFinalAmazon15

Nicholas Boothman
instinct for survival. It wasn't logic or diplomacy that
stopped his hand; it was a Level 3 Truth Heave.
The world watched in horrified silence as the leader of
the Iron Union was doubled over by a violent, involuntary
contraction of the diaphragm, his face turning a sickly
purple as he retched into the dead air. This was the same
physical agony Henry had seen in the Quiet Zone, the same
biological executioner that had paralyzed the Martinez
family, now serving as the final, desperate barrier between
humanity and a global holocaust. The truth hadn't set
Volkov free; it had physically broken him before he could
break the world.
The screen went black.
Henry stared at the blank screen. The entire world had
been destroyed, not by a lie, but by the cold, flawless logic of
the Truth. There was no deceit to punish, no malice to blame,
only two parties, legally and morally bound to adhere to
their absolute, self-destructive realities.
He looked up at the ceiling of the ancient archive, hearing
the first, distant, muffled thump of the kinetic launch
platforms initiating their global ascent. The sound was
immediately followed by the rising, apocalyptic wail of
every air-raid siren that still functioned in the city.
He had won the war against illusion, and in doing so, he
had proven that only the illusion could guarantee survival.
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