Gattsu

No God's Sky

The Hall of Records, Cizra Su-lah

A muted light barely illuminated the chamber where Zuril Nu-Báshira stared widely and unblinkingly at the six foot tall monolith that floated across from it. The only semblance of life the golem exhibited was when it spoke a blue line snaked across its surface, and rippled with the intonations and pitches of its metallic queries. The commandant’s credit was on the line, and the cizran took this for what it really was-not an interview like the government said, or debriefing as many military superiors said, but for the interrogation that it really was. An interrogation that would decide the fate of his reputation. All eyes were on him, but if he were cunning, he could deflect to his superior officers.

Zuril clicked his beak as he recalled the information of many years prior. Then answered the slate, “Yes, I remember,” of course he did. His status depended on it. He had performed his due documentation as any good cizran would.

With an avian twitch he continued, “I had engaged protocol Θ tsathoskr. Our sensors confirmed this due to the breakdown in parallax and astroluminary activity.”

“Please, Science Commandant, ‘plain language’ as requested.” The stone responded, the metronome only minorly agitated.

He paused for a moment before craning forward onto an appendage, “The stars were gone.”

The Commandant continued, “There was precedence for this before. Therefore I was within my authority to engage protocol Θ tsathoskr.”

“The Noema is not interested in precedence. Please continue.”

Though it couldn’t be told by looking at the strigiformes-like countenance of Zuril, he was flushed with concern. “Very well, our sensory array also confirmed that the military experimentation ground charge to Nenegin zar-Taliļ was destroyed by superluminal backforce.”

“By entity Θ?”

“No, the inhabitants of the planet refer to it as ‘Aredemos’ and it is classified as a B class entity. Clearly that classification was in error.”

The slate took a moment processing the information before it relayed what was likely a new question to it fed by what ever Av’sti or agent of the Noema was on the other side of it.
“Commandant Nu-Báshira, do you view Admiral zar-Taliļ’s ability to guide reconnaissance as ‘satisfactory’?”

There it was. He paused and considered his words carefully. “The Killamaran Catastrophe calls many aspects of his judgment into question.”

“The standing officer, Ezkshi, authorized a konul deployment. Can you confirm this?”

A small conflict waged within Zuril. Ezkshi had recommended an extension to his title, a prestige that if and when it cleared would certainly improve his ethos. But, unfortunately for Ezkshi, Cizran instinct reigned supreme. Zuril would look out for himself.

“I can. I believe the standing commander acted with authorization of the Liars, but I was not privy to command’s communications with the Noema. We used the artifact to escape a reaction between special magazine of the Nool Al-pas and entity Θ.”

“A science report has been established by information relayed from satellites near that section of space, Commandant. This is your opportunity to explain your perspective.”

“I can confirm a strange paradox. Our sensors detected elevated levels of psionic energy, but the state within entity Θ was ‘normal.’ The energy emission consequent from the creature and payload was...unexpected. Our independent luminosity tests rate this higher than 32 x 10^57 watts of energy. More than the quasar at the center of the Gamordena sector, more than any recorded energy reading that I could find within the Hall of Records.”

“There was an attempt of communication that was tracked across space from entity Θ to Cizra Su-Lahn.”

“My speculation would be that the communication was severed when entity Θ was destroyed.” Zuril responded matter-of-factly. Less of a speculation and more of a waste of a question. Nothing could survive that.

The kukull paused for a moment before its intonation changed, a different questioner, perhaps.

“One final request before the post-interview closed conference proceeds, Commandant. We attained some interesting information from a scrap heap near Gereza that will be presented in the sessions to follow. We are also investigating the connection between a former Gereza warden and the disappearance of prisoner #3091.

Tell us everything you know about this text Nenegin retrieved from Killamara.”

***

“Cipher… Zeptir… La’Nibity… La’Babity… La’boo…”

I… beheld a room of darkness that resembled the vast horrors that dwelled out in space; terrors the Cizran Empire could hardly comprehend. The Cizran Empire their hubris found their only worthy enemy was themselves. A thick darkness entangled all within its strands. All spawned from it and all would return to it. Oily blackness I learned to live with for what seem like eons. Only when its terrors relented did I get time to mull over the existential crisis that wracked my mind before the shade took over. In these periods of lucidity I remember thinking myself a cizran, or an aptosite, neither or both. It would come and go, the darkness felt as if were crawling in my…

“Cipher… Shark cape… Electropsionic amplitude...”

I… cringe and hiss like the creature of the night that I am when the idiot with questions flips the light on. He returns like a specter every eve to haunt me; this is my curse. The pawn on the cizran chessboard never knew my secrets until far too late. Were the cizrans not interfering with my abilities I would have used my edges to slash him to pieces. That I have paid the price for unification is a trifle in the face of the glories Karzar the Lord of Edge will reward me with when he finishes his invasion. The throw-away shuffles his paperwork and sits down across from me in the stark box room they call an inquiry chamber, and I call a prison. He looks at me with unsuppressed enthusiasm, calling himself “Executive Auditor 224.” I know him as well as every other cizran knows each other now that their hive mind is restored. He greets me, laying his papers out in front of him.

“Cipher… Cradle of Life… Cradle of Civilization… Cradle of Filth…”

I… hate him.

***

As Executive Auditor 224 entered the inquiry chamber he did his best to remain incorrigibly pleasant. Even if Zeptir Zuchrinchen didn’t want his assistance, it was his purpose in life to present it. Cizran process dictates a benefactor in the entire ordeal, and process was what made the world work. The auditor flipped the light on and the insectoid creature recoiled on the other side of the desk, hissing and rattling as he slashed at air. Unfazed, EA224 approached his side of the desk, ensuring his paperwork was in order.

“Greetings Zeptir, do you remember me? Executive Auditor 2224.”

“I am not Zeptir. Zeptir is dead. I…. AM… CIPHER!” The insect roared. Over the stretch that EA224 had continuously visited Zeptir he had begun to pity the creature. He was probably the closest thing that the insane creature had to a friend, and certainly the furious insect was one of the closest things to a friend he had. It was sad how the creature’s mental state had continuously decayed into madness. And how rapidly the onset occurred. The doctors were unable to provide any sort of assistance, as whatever he had contracted was beyond the scope of caste-available medicine as they knew it.

“How are you feeling today?”

“Astraelis empowers me this day, feeble pawn of paperwork!”

EA224 wrote that down, before continuing with a gesture, “Let’s talk about the day we captured you the…” he consulted his notes, but before he could speak Zeptir interrupted him, finishing his sentence, “--Great Mergence Event!”

“Yes, yes, that…” the auditor responded, in his notes he found the report filed by the apprehending cizran task force. ...Subject captured skittering through Ja’Regia, babbling and nude while smearing questionable substance upon other dwellers and attempting to build a cocoon in the busy district. When cited subject became combative and was apprehended.

Right… the exhibitionist.

“What can you tell me about this? What were you trying to accomplish?”

“The Great Mergeance event is complete! La’Nibi and I have solved a great problem for your race. How are you adapting to the adjoining of your people?”

EA224 glanced at the psychiatric notes and absently tapped the section on delusions. Were this insanity the insect spouted off true, then it would headline every news station in the Cizran Empire, but ever since Zeptir’s outburst, nothing had changed. Then he looked back to CIPHER and nodded patiently. “This cocoon you created was empty, was this where you were attempting to metamorphosize?”

Cipher hissed and flailed at the mention of the empty cocoon, but EA224 still couldn’t tell if it was because deep down the Cizran-impersonator knew he failed at whatever he was attempting to do, or because he truly believed he succeeded. This question continuously struck a nerve.

“You attacked the wrong me! You stupid shadow! You attacked the WRONG ME!”

EA224 grew a little nervous, he was unsure how much further he could push Cipher before the caretakers would intervene, but he still had more questions, and he still had his most important question.

“Cipher, what can you tell me about this Cradle?”

The creature recoiled as if it were struck with a heavy blow. His insanity bore in full effect. If he did have accomplices, it could be inferred he might have some heavy conditioning present. Especially if he were some sort of deep agent. EA224 wasn’t sure he really believed that, but someone very important wanted it looked into, so it was his duty to oblige.

“Snil… Kazar… Cradle of Life. Astraelis, Gaiyana, Obathera, Killamara and Deimobos are watching!”

The insect began twitching, and the door opened as two spherical golems entered the room to apply a sedative. A third sphere approached EA224, as he gathered his documentation. Turning to the open doorway, he could hear the faux-Cizran screeching behind him

“The Pantheon is assembled! The Pantheon is assembled! The Pantheon...!”

EA224 knew what the presence of the caretakers meant--that his time was up here, and that he would get no further useful information. That was alright, there was always tomorrow. And the next day. And the day after that. Until whenever whoever up high was convinced there was nothing left useful to glean from the vagrant.

The Meatspin

Yes, this thread is open in the sense that anyone can jump in, but if you do you should know what you're getting in to. It ain't for no wimps.

The Meatspin

Here is where all the inevitable and invariable arguments will go.

The Meatspin

The beam’s contact with Earth F67X shone like a raging quasar; a beacon for the rest of the system to observe that would likely create many more Ayanda’s for every coffin it didn’t. There was no screaming, no explosion, no sound--only the deafened ringing that accompanied the bleeding ears of nearby soldiers before their brains melted to mush and their bodies sloughed into primordial stew for whatever next iteration of man chaos had planned.

The surrounding stone, concrete, and rebar the current situation inherited from the previous conflict evaporated into the devouring light. And the cleansing fire, a machination on the other side of the universe, scrubbed away life at the microscopic level rewriting it anew. Even Max, who was made of sturdier stuff than most, would succumb to the resplendent pillar’s wrath. The effulgent column’s fury lasted several seconds before it devolved into several shockwaves whose reach spread to unknowable lengths across the surface of the planet.

When the light subsided, and those who weren’t blinded could survey the surroundings, the only thing left behind upon the blasted tarn were equally blasted shadows of those who couldn’t weather its fury. The fallout from the beams impact would be seen upon the planet for the rest of its natural life, but with its withdrawal another entity traced it back to its nexus.

Max found himself in a familiar tomb with his consciousness quickly dissolving to an overwhelming will that shattered his sanity and toppled him over the brink into madness. He was so preoccupied dealing with the present and undoing events of the past that he was blinded to the dangers lurking in the immediate future. The blade he absently held in his hand had awakened when the Catalyst sparked the malign sentience within. This weapon, a “gift” from a demon merged with the multitude of different consciousness dwelling within his psyche, and with it brought a new overmind--a new directive.

Convert. Consume. Control.

A failsafe of a panicked civilization, and a reneging of a deal with another demon. This consciousness transformed Max, merging his technology with his body. His hair burned away and tendrils of chitin sprouted from his flesh. His canister rifle and munitions disassembled and melted into his skin like ingredients into a dish. He screamed into the emptiness of the Fault as biological and mechanical made foul pacts under his skin. In his agonizing howl, his jaw split and muscle and piston replaced the flesh anew. Xelas reacted violently with an entity it swore to imprison for the rest of eternity, and a battle waged at a microscopic level. This was a war the omnipotent arcane project could not possibly win, though. A voice burned into Max’s pained consciousness with the fire of the primeval creative flames of the universe.

“BEHOLD. THE DEATH AND REBIRTH OF THE VAL’GARA. I AM SAL’CHAZZAR, LAST VESTIGE OF THE GOD, IDEA.”

Max’s flesh exploded like someone had pulled the pin on a series of grenades that laid under his skin on every square inch of his body. He screamed in pain until only blood gurgled from his mutilated trachea. The voice burned away at his mind, body, and soul with a power he had only sensed once.

“SHEPHERD, BRING MY WAYWARD CHILDREN BACK AND BRING ORDER TO THIS ENTROPY.”

Another wave of explosions erupted within him, blasting away muscle and machine alike, and reforging it anew, stronger than before. His body twitched as Xelas’s protective silver membrane that leaked over his flesh bubbled ebony with corruption. ANITA’s warnings became a dinghy’s blinking SOS beacon during the apex of a category 5 hurricane’s wrath. Gennosuke and Forge’s cries were quashed under an ocean of harvested power. Max became a gleaming, convecting, accreting star of bioforce that was forcing the entirety of its volume down into a man-sized vessel. The expectation was impossible, and would force Xelas’s hand.

“GO, AND KNOW THAT IN OUR HAVOK, WE ESTABLISH LAW.”

Havok, a million different spirits of a billion different races combined in a harvested star mused, that name will suit us nicely.

Xelas pushed back one last time with effort that had only been seen once in its history. Internalizing all of its power and collapsing the bioforce star into what was instant singularity. Forming a supermassive black hole on one side of the multiversal fault, a supermassive white hole formed on the other, expelling a supercluster-sized physical being whose mass and density were infinite, and whose power was limitless. With the expelling of Xelas-comprised energy, a sheet of Bose-Einstein condensate comparable in scale to the Sloan Great Wall, swept across space. The creature’s mere existence was the onset Big Crunch within the Faultiverse, and began an infinite gravitational collapse of the realm’s space-time continuum. The arcane project had only one method it could attempt to purge its corrupted databanks.

Max, Gennosuke, Forge, Xelas, ANITA, Havok, Sal’Chazzar, all these entities were housed within the same supercluster-sized entity, whose body was the singularity and whose reach mobilized its event horizon. The existence of GalaXelas and pairing of his arrival after the galactic engine was sure to attract other greater powers, for if it were ignored its reach would extend across the Fault’s dimensional boundaries and consume the rest of the omniverse within its all-encompassing well. Spaghettification would not be the ultimate fate to await those who perished, instead they would be remade into a newly birthed cataclysm, a new system and a reinvigorated Val’gara.

Observers only had to witness the stars of the Fault, whose deaths were not slow, cancerous withering, but instead instant, violent obliteration. But like Idea to Sal’Chazzar, from the ashes of this universe would a new, better one spring forth in glorious brilliance. The rays its light would scour every corner of the multiverse until all were converted. It would endlessly consume opposition with a hunger that eclipsed the Great Machine that spurred its rebirth, and it would control the entropy of existence into a new, ordered manner in which all things progressed forth.

Unsolicited Invasion (Earth-F67X Chronicle)

The amount of interest Philippe Dubois gave to the events of the frenchman, Arthur, and the toppling building outside was about the same amount of interest he showed in the “health courtier’s” presentation. He paused for a moment chewing, as a backdrop of screams in both french and german provided a soothing dinner serenade for him. Chuckling to himself, he remembered that advisor. Oh, what an example he set! Count Dubois wasn’t ignorant to the fact of someone else entering the tent, but he already knew who it was, the litany of foreign swearing and screaming gave him away.

“Le fils prodigue revient.” He thought to himself.

Even now he could sense Steinbrook’s melodrama from here. He was not interested in being friends with this man, but watching him suffer did bring bourgeois some amusement. Just what was he so upset about? Of course Count Philippe Dubois le Bourgeois did not shower, at least not recently, the natural oils of his skin accumulated preventing any odor from occuring! At least, this is what his physician had told him, long ago. He departed the realm of sycophants on a mule, and sat feasting many miles away. As Arthur lifted his mask to eat, Philippe sensed a moment of vulnerability.

“Imprégnez-vous des odeurs et des arômes de notre fête!” He shouted, “Ce masque ne perturbe pas vos sens?!”

While shouting at Arthur he ripped the man’s protective mask from his head with an explosiveness one might consider would be of a man his size in pure muscle. His mouth opened jaw unhinged and crushed down on the apparatus with a cracking of glass, and crunching of plastic.

Through a full, half-chewing mouth he poked at the german, “Ici laisse moi t'aider.” Leaning over on one cheek, Philippe blew the tent open.

***

With every thundering resonance of Thomas’s skull colliding with Jacknathema, the half-herald could see the caving of the operative’s skull. He was literally killing himself on a spiritual attack--because the physical one was worthless. Jacknathema had adapted too far for the physical blows to even faze him. But the physical blows were never the intention, just the outlet of Thomas’s one and only overpowering emotion that he lived, died, and abided by--rage. Jacknathema had fury of his own, but Thomas’s assault would not end how he thought it would.

With the psi-emitter reinforcing both of their will powers, it was soon apparent that there were two different, conflicting wills within Jacknathema. Jack’s was the fury and Anathema’s was survival. Naught could happen but separation, and with it, Anathema returned to the tomb he was buried in. When the bomb dropped it was preceded by a number of things: by a triangulation of satellites far into the exosphere, by gross misconduct of agents who had no respect for the world in which they lived, and by a misappropriation of resources in what was a hectic power vacuum left by Heinzemann’s death.

The bomb threaded through the aperture created by Merse and contacted the two falling into the mantle--a direct nuclear hit. Like a charge of potent subterranean explosions, it sent rippling shockwaves through the bedrock beneath. The worldwave expanded outward as if the crust were a carpet and the might of this charge, though relatively low in radiation, rippled the pavement surface and buildings that stood in its way, snapping them loose like a doormat beaten out of dirt. Jack and Thomas both perished that day.

Anathema was the ground in which they tread.

With Goldman being flung up, and the burrow collapsing in on itself, a moment of silence was all that was left behind. It was just as it had been when Merse dropped a city on Jack. Anathema’s spirit, bound to Jack, sought to reconstitute with whatever was available, molding the clay of earth to flesh. The radiation was bad deep in the earth, so he sought existing life closer to the surface, where the minerals blocked some of the harmful rays, and allowed for life to exist, even in its most minute of form. Anathema’s spirit, his astral body, corroborated nematodes, microbes, and other microorganisms at an astounding rate. It repeated the process of reinventing itself, losing some of its adaptations to an entirely new body, but Anathema persisted where Thomas had not.

A minute passed, two minutes, and finally a palm ripped from the ground like a ghoul from the grave. Anathema, fully Val’garan, pulled himself from Thomas and Jack’s tomb. He pulled aspects of himself from beneath Allure city, and from the astral plane, protecting himself from the forced passing.

Agron, Thomas, and Jack, however, all found themselves in a poorly designed interrogation chamber. Jack, now resembling the same slim, unassuming scientist from Moss Landing, stared back at the investigator. The biologist hadn’t aged a day since the attack, even though it was nearly thirty years ago. In fact, he wore the same out-of-style white button up, gray slacks, and black belt with loafers. Though looking harried and scuffed up, he almost appeared as if he had just escaped from the assault on Monterey, right down to the perspiration which slicked his short dark hair.

“You really don’t recognize me?” He stated with barely contained, tremulous fury.

Though his body remained the same, his mind had been broken, over and over again, and it wasn’t until the psion girl released him from his prison did he have the means to communicate in such a manner. Gone was the meek, shy, middle-class man from California, and though Thomas shouldn’t have been the full brunt of Jack’s fury, he still was. Thomas was the authority. Thomas was supposed to protect Jessica. Thomas was supposed to protect Jack. Thomas was supposed to protect everyone. Thomas failed. Not only did Thomas fail, but he BETRAYED his goal when he killed Jessica. Jack hated Thomas for his betrayal, because in his irrational train of thought, Thomas was the reason Jack became a Val’gara in the first place. Jack struggled to convey this into words.

“I call you a murderer because it’s what you are,” Jack said standing up and slamming his hands on the table, “you killed Jessica and you killed me!”

“You killed everyone in that city when you brought us here. You dropped a bomb on everyone to kill what you thought was a single Val’gara. You were wrong. For the first time in ever, I was in control, and you murdered the world because you’re some shit-head jock who thinks that if he’s not the center of goddamn existence then existence isn’t worth having!”

As Jack raged, a subtle blue aura began to whisp about his body, tongues and tendrils of barely perceptible mist licked the outline of his frame, like a near-invisible frame. He jammed a finger towards Thomas and Agron, collectively,

“Well guess-fucking what, Thomas. YOU’RE not worth happening, and the world would be better of if you never existed to begin with!”

***

Odis was a curious creature indeed, with form-shifting abilities the Operative had never seen before. His strategy was ineffective. Odis, or Panident, shifted himself into a plasma matter state, but what he didn’t count on is that the architecture of the Discorporate building was specifically meant to endure radiative emissions of this nature. Panident would win the battle of attrition, but a siege this was not.

As Odis attempted to radiate through the carbon nanotube, they shuttered and polarized, bouncing him within its walls, convecting him in the fusion process within. Instead of searing light and burning pain, the citizens of Capital city witnessed, on a crystal clear day, a blackening of the upper portion of the tower. The zenith of the edifice shifted as if it were a negative, and seemed to swallow light around it while emitting none, but visible by its distinct lack thereof. A protective measure that not only saved many lives, but also secured data from Panident’s insidious corruption.

Little did the Operative know that the end result would be the same. Only those who had been paying attention would notice the instantaneous shift in light and dark. Calculating approximate time before critical mass was achieved while simultaneously enacting New Roswell’s quantum entanglement warp technology a complex procedure for many, but was a simple and dismissive as an entry-level technician closing a pop-up for the operative.

“Goodbye,” the biocomputer thought to himself.

And the upper third of the tower vanished. Somewhere, several hundred light years away, a new star would be born.

--Payload AF138 Detonated -2.966309 x 40.069665

The operative regarded this literal earth-shattering news with casual disinterest, even while Iedereen fainted. His immediate response was to restrict all satellite access. The Allure official then, true to the information broker’s prediction, started listing all the resources he was sure Apollo would be happy to exploit. He neither had use for such things, nor the authority to negotiate such terms. He smacked his lips and made a watery sipping sound as he responded to her groveling.

“We’ll start with your scapegoat,” and as if on cue, the building lost power.

***

New orders. Directive: Merse. Spencer is no longer a concern, we have visual on Merse. District Alpha, Coordinates 3232 encryption key beta. You are clear to proceed we want target ALIVE. Over.

A bit late to the party, Sarge thought to himself.

“Boys, new directive.” Sarge projected, “We got a bead on Merse, coordinates uploaded, they want him kickin’.”

A mental sigh of disgust came from lanky Dex, “They’re the ones that gave us Overkill permission, and now they take it away?”

“Things change.” Sarge grimaced under his mask as the group closed in on the studio. He didn’t have to give Dex the order for him to put a lock on the “grid.” Dex already had his backpack off a few feet away from the building and was ready to send bio-pulses feeding through the building. This would knock out the power, probably not for long, but long enough.

Sarge scaled up near the top and gave Sweat a closed fist signal. Sweat’s burly form emotionlessly watched Sarge from behind his mask, timing with his superior through a series of three hand signals, and upon the last one they smashed in with an unsolicited invasion upon an unsuspected neighbor. Sarge dove forward, coming to a half roll while his auto-rifle was out, trained on Margaret, meanwhile Sweat, with speed that belied his bulky frame, was already upon the injured half-conscious Merse, gripping him in a sleeper and activating his beacon.

What Margaret probably saw was a blur of confusion as the operatives carried out a single fluid motion. Upon their breach, the power to the building blacked out, punctuated with a curt goodbye from the Tech Operative. As soon as the beacon was ignited, Dex, Sarge, Sweat, and Merse were all teleported to a secure location, leaving a very befuddled Ms. Iedereen.

***

A team of five waited in the stark, clinical room. The muted fluorescent lighting paired well with their hospital teals and bleached white attire. They waited with all the anticipation of a close sporting event, staring at an empty landing. A trio of three women shuffled up near the awaiting medical team. By comparison their pinstriped slacks and button-downs seemed ostentatious to the faceless slates that accompanied them in the room. In each of the three women’s arms they held a box containing all the paraphernalia they would need to hopefully keep their guest pristine and presentable.

The entire room held their breath, all hearing news of what had happened in Spain. Alert procedures were in effect. One of the women, a well-coiffed individual glanced down at the cross hatched quadrants of the landing, then back up to the blank wall behind it. Everyone simultaneously felt the tingle at the back of their necks that would throw them into a silent near-panic that heralded the arrival of their VIP. They shuffled with their boxes, automated machinery pulling out brushes and assisting them with their routines.

The teleportation channels were never great for keeping a pristine appearance. When Apollo apparated into the room with a flash of light and a pop, he immediately forged briskly forward through the care of his attendants who did their best to keep up with him. He looked for someone important--more important, rather. A uniformed soldier stood just outside the door as the medical team slunk back into the room.

“You’d better have something good.” Apollo demanded tersely, as one of the make up artists touched up the tachyon frays to his hair, brushed his attire without impeding his movement. Consummate professionals, but nothing less could be expected.

The Colonel didn’t miss a beat, “We do,” he replied, unflinchingly, as he shifted the dossier in his arms, “sector 32a. It’s a class 12 entity from Soran space.”

Apollo didn’t deign him with a response. The Colonel continued, metering his time. He had about twelve seconds to finish his report before they entered the briefing room and his clearance capped out.

“It calls itself ‘God’, but it’s anything but. We’ve appropriated it ‘Armstrong’ due to its nature, an interdimensional titan that we’ve been studying to improve our teleportation technology.”

Apollo glared at him, sidelong, “ I know what a Class 12 is.”

The composed Colonel could feel heat on the back of his neck, and his features flushed. “Yes, well, it attacked Soran, and another entity we have not yet identified repelled the titan, we believe the unknown is responsible for the assault on your office.”

“Dig deeper, Colonel,” Apollo commanded as a team of soldiers flung open a pair of double doors into a ready room filled with important military figures, dignitaries, and other high-ranking officials.

The doors shut behind him and he pushed his palms onto the granite surface of the countertop. “Gentlemen,” he grimaced, “tell me what the fuck is going on out there.”

A dignitary with a ghostly combover cleared his throat and bore the burden of the eye of sauron. The official was known for his canny ability to throw military commanders under the bus and not mince words.

“Since you arrived we’ve had another security breach.” He rolled an accusing glare at the dour bulldog faced General that sat across from him, who immediately took the reigns of the conversation.

“General Heinzemann is KIA. In the confusion a rogue agent--”

“Rogue agent?” Apollo clenched is teeth.

“Yes, Agent Alice authorized a C21 orbital drop in Allure.”

Apollo’s bloodshot eyes widened, staring through the general. “...what. She dropped an antimatter nuke… on… EARTH?”

“At the beck of Balvice, our transmissions show.”

The president exhaled sharply through his nostrils as he stared at the patterns in the stonework, shaking his head with near imperceptibility. “Our best soldiers, panicking like novices.”

His disappointment blossomed as he looked up from his hunched position, sweeping his gaze over all of them as he shook his head, this time his disapproval far more noticeable. “You have contact with the landmass’s leadership. You will forge the terms of their surrender.”

He turned and as he began to storm out of the room he yelled over his shoulder, “And get me Thomas and Alice we have much to reconcile for.”

***

The S.3451 cluster had long since been an active cluster, and from an observable distance a quasar erupted for millenia past its rose-ringed perimeter, disrupting the ivory center mass that hid the presence of the supermassive black hole that caused its rampage. This explosion traveled for millions upon millions of light years, observable to no one. Its overwhelming burst of 1040 watts of energy raged through the still silence of space, a blinding beacon of luminosity that sailed through an ocean of black

Just as the galactic engine changed civilizations, shattering some and uplifting others, just as it changed worlds, as it changed ecosystems, and life, so too did it change space, itself. Entering into a supermassive black hole on the other side of the universe this beam changed the properties of the collapsed star, and caused an eruption at the heart of S.3451 far to the other side of the universe. The unobservable nucleus of the universe soon expanded to a white hole, pouring space and defying conventional physics with mysterious mysticism.

This limb of the galactic engine transcended the scope of the mechanism. Now, a universal engine, the beam shot from the supermassive white whole and piggybacked off the nearby erupting sister celestial body, APM 04158. The beam moved with quantum celerity, traversing the entire distance of the constant stream of connected photons to their culmination--the center of reality, the nexus of all things, the Fault. Though the photons dispersed through the Faults chaotic energies and overwhelming entropy, the beam did not, it adapted, changed, and reconstituted as it was meant to. The beam radiated out into a wave, expanding for any exit that was possible, and there was but one. Tracing along residual energies and wiped-out vortices that had expelled a prisoner whose psychic malign to this day flavored the void, the wave burst through a rift that emitted the wave into real space.

The galactic wave washed forward immediately into a nebula of ice crystals that honed it, bouncing it about and heating the cloud up until cornflower blue flashes of light erupted from its hazing guts like a storm buried in an ominous cloud cover. The beam emerged from the cloud, a honed ray, razor-thin and moving with that previous quantum celerity, riding photons of other long-dead stars, until it reached its final destination. A homely aquamarine planet dusted with clouds of white… The planet Earth.

As the beam projected down through the planet's atmosphere, passing by the post-exosphere nanite prison that encompassed Panident, it rocked F67X’s technological infrastructure. The satellite array went down, for but a moment before automation rebooted it, and even the connected New Roswell Operative could feel the power it ushered forth. The beam lasered down into the center of Allure City, and though its diameter only encompassed a few blocks, its impact would leave a mark on Allure and the rest of Earth for years to come.

The city quaked as the ray blasted down into the center, disseminating concrete, exploding outwards into surrounding buildings, and at its epicenter a figure who bore the full evolutive brunt of Ua’s design. Far below the city the planet’s tectonic plates shifted, and a tsunami the scale F67X had never seen.

The navy wave that emerged from the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea was less a tidal wave and more a massive swell. As the african and eurasian plates ground, the Azores-Gibraltar Transform Fault suddenly crushed upwards into a full scale mountain range,that consumed the Strait of Gibraltar, and much of the Alboran Sea. What part of the swell managed to push into Africa would luckily be received by the uninhabitable zone and the Glasslands.

When the barrier re established itself, the remainder of the wave crept up its side like an amoeba swallowing bacteria. This would push New Roswell’s technology past capacity, and though the field diverted the flow of water back towards the mountain range, when it failed, the rains would bless Africa with great havoc that couldn’t be stopped by a hundred men or more.

While Africa would persevere, the Iberian peninsula was a far smaller landmass Portugal, Allure City, France, and Italy were in great danger.

***

If Max didn’t have enough to think about during his time within himself (his mission, and the strange sword that randomly shot through the stratosphere nearly impaling him) fate decided to throw another twist his direction. He didn’t recognize the comm the guest connected to him through, but he recognized the name. He picture his trainer frowning at him from New Roswell, the woman having a lecture chambered, hammer cocked on voice modulators and encryption hackers. But logic was ever the enemy of his instincts. Sadly his gut won out more than it should.

You’re kidding me. He thought with surprise, more that Tristan was alive, and less by the misnomer. Tristan never could get his codename right.

“Operative 2232, Callsign Mobius. Yes, Singh, this is Lionheart.” A million questions flooded into his head, and out through his commlink. “What happened? How did you get here?” He gave a palpable pause, maybe ever enough time for Tristan to respond, but cut him off, “I’m detecting another presence accompanying you… and--”

One of the orbiting satellites also had input in their conversation. The two of them could likely detect the power spike just moments before it fired, authorization codes spilling through their network in the second largest breach of Op security in the history of the organization. A beryl glow accreted around the spires numerous bristling awns, and crackles of bioforce and electricity skipped to the apex. Less than a second later a stream of the same blue pined down towards the planet somewhere on the iberian peninsula.

Max had caught the authorization codes, and if Tristan was on the Mobius network--as his communication with Lionheart suggested, so did he. Alice, and if Alice was involved with the nuke’s launch, so was Balvice.

Thomas, you idiot. He snarled.

“We’ll have to table this conversation, Singh. Damage control. Could use your help.”

Max shot down towards the planet at a speed only the most powerful of F67X’s machines could muster. The fact alone that he flew probably wasn’t enough to surprise the other Operative, but the speed at which he did was enough to convince any witnesses there was something decidedly different about Max. As he passed through the sundered cloud cover he had less than a second to view the chaos of the surrounding city. Anarchy reigned supreme as the the combined european military, ghost ops own forces, and other fast-acting contractors spilled in filling the streets with blood and violence. Xelas kicked his brain into overgear, and he comprehended the individual operations occurring.

He didn’t care. From orbit Max cleared the comparably small hole Merse created in the ground, and that Jacknathema and Thomas had swan dove into. As arcane markings burned into the flesh of his temples, his eyes glowed red, and with that he could see the residual energies Thomas left over when Alice tampered with his psi-disruptor. He and the other entity were tightly intertwined, and time wasn’t really on Max’s side. It would have to do. As he plummeted towards the mantle, he reached out and saw these energies coalescing into a rift. Xelas honed in on Thomas and Thomas alone’s essence. When Max breached the rift he was able to veritably chokeslam Thomas from whatever spirit world he inhabited to the material plane, cutting his interview short.

Spindly legs of silver shot out from Max’s back and pools of silver covered his flesh as the temperature became unbearable. These multi-jointed spider legs slammed into the sides of the burrow, even as the silver sheen boiled from the planets heat. ANITA surged with too many different warnings for Max to count, and Xelas didn’t play well with the AI as far as interpreting her desires to the operative. The legs bowed and bent like an elastic slingshot before they snapped the composite being and spirit-Thomas up and out of the hole.

As Max cleared the pit’s edge he slung Thomas forth, with the strength to send the wisp blocks of distance away were he a physical thing. Xelas doubled down on his desire to protect and save and coated this ghost in a silver exterior, giving its trajectory very corporeal consequences as it smashed through building after building. This cocoon of Xelas would nearly impact Goldman, (and even its wake sent a wave of debris towards the metal man that threatened to shred him apart.) Regardless of the the humanoid of precious metal’s response. The cocoon came to a stop, and after a few moments fragmented with a very real, fleshly body encapsulated within.

Back at ground zero Max landed upon palm, knee, and foot. Then took the half-second of downtime to survey the chaos of his surroundings. He shook his head, disgusted, but took a small chunk of solace in the fact that he thought he might of saved Balvice, at least.

“Crisis averted.” He exhaled.

In his adrenaline spiked rush, Max had ignored ANITA, an issue which had frequently caused himself problems in the past. He also didn’t hear the warnings of Gennosuke, nor the swearing of Forge, or the urgings of Xelas. He’d tunnel visioned, and by the time he realized what had happened it was too late. This branch of the galactic engine had met its mark.

In the center of Allure city.

Glasslands: A Griot's Tale (Earth-F67X Chronicle)

Danse’s vision pulsed as his eyes darted around, his peripherals hyper-aware to threats and movement. His breath came ragged as his heart pounded in his chest, verging on cardiac arrest. Against the evening backdrop he noticed something shifting in the shrubbery, and with a swiftness that indicated second-nature he trained his firearm on the perceived threat. Even though the weather had cooled dramatically from the african day temperature, sweat beaded down the Corporal’s temple.

A blank-faced south-african man stumbled out of the bush. Danse recognized the close-cropped hair, the young face (though devoid of the enthusiasm it once carried), and the slight build of Private Bekkers. All things considered he was a newbie, who just graduated basic training. The Corporal lowered the sights of his pistol, and considered for only a moment the disappointment of finding such hopes for a promising new recruit dashed by cowardice.

That moment was far too long.

Bekkers took two drunken steps forward, the first revealing his ruined left leg, the second revealing the charred and missing sections of his back where the uniform burned away. Then something leaped over his shoulders with a snarl, pouncing the distance like a hunting lion out of savannah grass. Danse’s shoulder jerked as he rattled off two shots, the first of which was wide, wild, and fled into the bush. For the second shot his combat enhancers and sensory focusers kicked in, and with a form that indicated a maneuver that was second-nature to him, delivered a round into the shoulder of the creature formerly known as Arentino Swain. It wasn’t enough, and Danse quickly became the sundered gazelle, as the creature jammed his fingers into the soldiers stomach, lifted him off his feet, and tore him apart.

The creature, a pale-skinned emaciated humanoid, crept away from Danse’s corpse in its preferred posture of toes and palms. Each arm feeling out ahead of the main body like the willowy limbs of a spider. Through ragged breaths and patchy hair that strung down his face, the creature formerly known Arentino glared at the distant firefight. He squinted his eyes, to view the plume of smoke in the distance, and scampered towards it.

Supernatural bound telepathy comforted the creature with ancient Khoisan click-consonants beckoning him forth. ”The story of the columns is close.“

Creeping forward, the escorting ATVs to the caravan lay in a disheveled wreck, strewn about blasted cape figs and shattered african junipers. The acrid smell of oxidized oil amalgamated with the smoky scent of burning wood. The creature kept low, and snuck about, making his way to the first of the vans: a hunk of metal that had been corkscrewed by some unseen force. He silently made his way to the unhinged rear doors and could see the upper half of one of the security details that had been sheared in two in the confrontation.

He hunched over the corpse, glancing over his shoulder before dabbing his thumb in the pool of blood and anointed the bisected body. With his thumb, his brush, and his nails, his scarifiers, he created his sigilry on the carcass’s forehead and imparted what little magic the bokor had at his disposal. “The body of flesh is empty. Where is my treasure?” He hissed through rotted, black teeth. A moment passed before the remains gasped, as if it had been drowning only a moment earlier. The corpse looked at him with frosted eyes and its jaw worked as if it had not been used in years.

“The first vehicle, fifty meters west,” it gurgled, “center console.”

Growing more and more suspicious of his surroundings the creature snuck forward to the foremost vehicle and, surprisingly, among the least damaged of the vehicles, even though its wheels popped off and its windows were all shattered. It was not merely mangled enough to not be recognized as the armored vehicle that it used to be. Its insides glowed a faint orange, but fire was never one to keep him from his prize. Swain snuck forwards clambering up the passenger side door and felt inside for the glove compartment.

No God's Sky

.

Unsolicited Invasion (Earth-F67X Chronicle)

Philippe finished his meal, unmindful of the viscera that oozed down the rolling meadow that were his chins. The taste of command always had the most distinctive flavor, the confidence tenderized the meat and seasoned it like ground cumin and coriander to poultry. He savored it as he sucked back juices into the back of his throat, and smacked on them like one would a fine wine.

The knight’s eyes rolled back into his head with pure ecstasy as he groaned, “Magnificent, truly spectacular.”

“Hey dicker Arsch! Ich bekomme, dass Sie hungrig sind, aber es gibt eine enorme Staatsgröße-Stadt, die Spanien RICHTIGES FUCKING NEXT TO US ersetzt hat! Warum nimmst du nicht deinen Whale Knight Ass da drüben und stinkst stattdessen DIESEN Platz, EH!?”

”Arthur”

The fat man stopped eating for a brief moment, stunned that someone would dare interrupt a gentleman’s feast. Someone was furiously screaming at him in an angry language. He didn’t understand what was being said to him, but also didn’t really care. He turned as far as his neck would allow to view the shouting figure of Arthur. Anger boiled within Philippe's voluminous gut like pasta roiling in a heated pot. A sacred principle of dinner had been violated! Where was this man’s etiquette? Instinctually he lashed back out at the german. In his anger he didn’t even realize he switched back to his native tongue.

“Tu ne vois pas que je profite d'un repas, paysan?!” He shrieked, his jowls wagged like the mediterranean tide, and spittle flew like a sea mist spray.

“Votre présence ici est une insulte pour tous. Va-t'en en train de japper Chihuahua!” Count Bourgeois flicked his wrist, shooing off Arthur dismissively with his ham-sized hands.

***

New Roswell

“Corruption seeks to worm its way into our communion.” The shaky, semi synthesized voice reverberated.

Inside the cold, dim room sat a slight man in an unimpressive brown-leather upholstered chair. The flooring was cold slate that seemed to dance with wisps of frost, even though the rooms only denizen was barefoot and bare chested. He looked ahead with synthetic gray implants, unseeing, but all-seeing. There were no screens in the room, but his sight took him far deeper than nearly any of New Roswell’s technicians had access to.

The apparatus above his shifted. An orrery of surgical and engineering implements above shifted with his thoughts. Countless fine-tuned precise mechanisms shifted in the nexus of a honeycombed hive that formed the ceiling of this room. The gray slates shifted as he looked about.

“Upload data drive: Apostle Paul.” The shaky voice commanded, and immediately the apparatus above unfolded into a flower of various power tools, soldering arms, and forecepts. They whirred and sparked as they disassembled the back on the man’s cranium, dismounting what appeared to be part of a synthetic brain from the inside of his skull. The entire process was remarkably quick, right down from the machine instantly reaching into one of the numerous honeycomb and pulling out an oblong, gray pack which it seamlessly slid into the base of the man’s skull with a spark and a click.

The thin man’s eyes shifted and he exhaled as he sensed the beginnings of a broadcast. His synapses flared and with the speed of a thought the supercomputer that was his modular brain redirected what was assuredly supposed to be a mass-broadcast message from Ms Iedereen. He waited patiently listening to her entire message, all the while analyzing the presence of another microorganism ever present through Allure, and attempting to spread through other areas--notedly the Capital, as well.

In a breach of character, the prosthetic riddled individual reached out to Ms. Iedereen directly in her broadcasting studio. He displayed himself mechanical brain and all on whatever screens and cameras were present in her studio.

“Welcome, Ms. Iedereen, that was a lovely speech,” he commended with a childlike innocence. His guffaw revealed an ichor filled mouth of blackened gums and grayed teeth, “it’s so nice to meet you.”

As he spoke to to Iedereen, he began to isolate instances of Panident. Spain was overrun with the creature, all he could do was contain it with accessible electromagnetic frequencies. However, the instance of Panident in the Capital City he would smite with righteous fury. He bombarded the top of the tower with lethal levels of gamma radiation, warped in using his sophisticated mastery of warp technology to drop the energy spikes directly where the tachyon emissions lingered. Secondly he would surge the area with an electromagnetic pulse. The first would nearly dissolve Odis, the second purging Panident’s presence.

He looked directly at her, canting and raising his head as if he were looking at cautiously at a cornered creature inside a cage, “I hope you realize how much trouble you all are in,” he taunted trembling with a nervous excitement. The black ichor began to trickle down his pale, hairless chin.

***

With a deafening bang, one of the second most devastating terrorist attacks took place in Capital City. An explosion occurred that was powerful enough to destroy half of the Discorporate Tower, a monument that soared to the sky and pierced the clouds. The kind of force that caused this would cause quakes on the foundation. The steel that was a part of the structure melted under the intense heat, and the glass shattered, the concrete pulverized, but the main structure of carbon nanotube still stood. This didn’t stop the floors of the tower to collapse in the upper half, killing everyone on these levels that hadn’t yet been reached by demons.

New Roswell didn’t turn a blind eye to this. A prismatic sheen flickered through the area where Odis was and suddenly the tachyons warped in intense, mutated radiation that bounced off the carbon nanotubes, instantly heating up the interior like the inside of a half-mile pressure cooker. From the outsiders perspective, half of the tower became a glowing edifice of plasma, sterilizing everything within. Soon the interior rivaled the temperature of the sun, though always remaining controlled destruction.

The second wave was the spontaneous crackling of violet energy that surged through the open floors of the containment zone. The surge that followed would overload Panident’s processing ability, shutting him down and leaving him vulnerable to the fusion-level temperatures that incinerated everything within the containment zone.

***

Jack worked hard to keep Anathema in check, but with every wound he endured he could feel a piece of him sift away. While he had not, perhaps could not, suffer a mortal wound, Anathema let him feel the pain of every wound; regardless of his body’s reaction, the psychological damage was mounting. He powered through the explosions left in Agron’s wake. Shaking them off as he chased with reckless abandon, snarling and baying like a vengeful hellhound. His howl was cut short when a gas pipe the length of several street blocks skewered through his diaphragm, twisting about him in a cage of metal. Before the ex-Val’gara could react, a gunshot ignited the pipe from the inside, causing it to explode in a violent gas-based explosion.

Luckily for Jacknathema, his reactive adaptation had heat-treated his body, as well as inured him to concussive force from the pounding he took before. Previous adaptations kept him from losing all his vitals instantly, but the trauma of watching ones flesh boil shouldn’t have been understated. The pike carried with it a blessing. A pathway had cleared between him and Thomas. He inhaled, every orifice glowing like a white-hot conductor, and expelled a pillar of flame, belching forth directly at Thomas. This beam of superheated material instantly diffused the surrounding bedrock in molten magma that not only surrounded the Mobius Operative, but that would threaten to incinerate him if a direct hit from the beam didn’t.

Before he could fully reorganize and knit his insides from the massive explosion, the matter around both he and Thomas disintegrated. Another thing that Anathema had garnered an immunity to, was being completely obliterated, erased from existence, or otherwise wholly annihilated by some matter displacement ability. This was an ability that Anathema’s body had generated to combat psychocorrosion. The Q-cells were still present even in Jacknathema, and while all the matter around the ex-herald vanished, the creature, itself, remained. The same could not be necessarily said, however, for Thomas.

If Thomas survived either of the previous two assaults, then what followed could be the final nail in the coffin. Straightening himself in divebomb, he would collide with Thomas, his descent sped up by Merse’s gravity-shifting ability. What loose unburnt, unarmored flesh on his face flapped with the breakneck speeds at which he plummeted. When he hit Thomas, he jammed his the bones of his forearms into the torso of Thomas grinding them against the skeleton of the ex-cop, even as bone fused to bone. He gritted his teeth as he grabbed the operative’s torso and roared at him,

“I’M A MURDERER, YOU’RE A MURDERER. I GUESS THIS IS WHERE WE ATONE.” And with that, Jack’s eyes shifted downwards, to the awaiting mantle of the planet, and the kamikaze dive that would take them both there.

Unsolicited Invasion (Earth-F67X Chronicle)

The distant setting sun bowed in worship to the Discorporate Tower. An edifice, whose heights pierced the cloud cover with ferocious defiance. The building was a testament to man’s ingenuity, might, and resourcefulness. Most specifically, it glorified one man: Apollo Amon, chairman of the United Council, and leader of Earth. A lofty title deserved lofty engineering, and the Discorporate building was the culmination of the planet’s architecture. This building stood tall and strong, and the people took confidence and comfort in its presence--it was indelible, and withstanding the bombing strengthened this claim. It was also a symbol of the affluent, the famous, and the influential. Not everyone was allowed through the ground floor’s golden gates. For entry required august personage.

Odis Lyndon Gallagher had likely worked weeks, months, or even years to gain free entry into the building. It probably took him much longer to get an audience with the Apollo Amon. However, the man who bursted from the bathroom and into the president’s grand lobby was not suitable to meet with the president--it was questionable if Odis would ever be worthy to meet with Amon.

The antechamber leading to Apollo’s office was nearly as grandiose. A massive set of double doors depicting Auguste Rodin’s most famous work, was parted ever-so-slightly. A beam of light lined down the marble floor of the lobby, shining with heavenly radiance. Though the door depicted the inferno could be construed as a barrier, its insurmountability was maximized by a woman of much smaller stature. The woman instantly sidestepped in front of Odis exuding an aire of nonconfrontational professionalism. Her perfect smile revealed perfect teeth on the perfect face of a perfect woman.

“I’m sorry,” she interjected, her voice stern, but soft and pleasing to the ear. “You must be Mr. Gallagher.”

She regarded him as if they had known each other forever, with courtesy that belied her professional detachment from a man who had a million collars popped.

“It seems you did not receive our notice,” she said with faux-contrition,” unfortunately due to extenuating international circumstances, all of Mr. Amon’s appointments have been postponed.”

It was as if the door, itself, agreed to her rejection of Fearis, as it silently shifted to a close, and with it, the light of Odis’s life’s work.

“His earliest convenience would be two months from this Thursday. If that won't work with your schedule then you can go down the 90th floor for scheduling. Again, we apologize.” She said, with one arm extended towards the elevators.

***

A cool spasm rippled across his skin and numbed his limbs with icy dread. The silence of space aided his attempts to contemplate. His head throbbed with every word Apollo said to him, he couldn’t handle the information that was conveyed to him, there were just too many things that didn’t make sense. Nothing made sense, and yet, it all happened.

He felt different. He wanted to escape and it was almost instinctive how he flew through the atmosphere. Even from so far above, he could still see every detail of the planet below. The untouched forests, and the vast cities, the rebuilding in South America, and the chaos in Europe. He turned his attention to the Discorporate Tower and could hear Apollo’s secretary talking to someone. He comprehended everything, every crooked drug deal outside of Apollo’s safe zone in South America felt like it was happening in front of him, every business deal of the Zaibatsus that ruled over much of asia he was a fly on the wall for, and every bullet fired and civilian killed he was a witness to in Spain. He could feel Gennosuke urging him to go to Spain; save those people and stop the bloodshed. He could also feel Forge tugging him in a different direction: why do you care about these people, just leave them to their fate.

Allying with Forge, not out of apathy, but out of a numb sensation that followed over processing. He couldn’t bring himself to care about Apollo’s mission, Spain, or anything occurring down on the planet, far, far below him. Not when he saw what he saw. Max was anything but human to begin with--now, more than ever. The military conditioned him, special forces tempered his nerves, and his promotion to the Mobius Operatives had reinforced his temperament. Nothing prepared him for what he saw in that room. Nothing would ever prepare him for it. There were no words to describe what he experienced. It had driven him here, to the brink of insanity, and all these voices were nudging him towards the vast metaphorical chasm before him.

***

New Roswell.

The white coated technician sat at his desk--the core of his duties covered in automation. His eyes jerk as they change focus between matrices and variates. Electron levels remained normal, a minimal influence of tachyon emissions in and around Discorporate towers, abberant quantum particle functions were non existent. Then, suddenly nearly every one of his screens exploded in a series of warnings, ecstatic data, and errors.

It certainly surprised the technician, but the real emergency responder was automated. Apollo was already in New Roswell. He tapped at his headset and addressed the rest of the emergency-warp team.

“We have a Class A at the Discorporate Tower and…” He glossed over the intercontinental displays, “Hemisphere Alpha, Region: Delta, Sigma, Omega, Alpha. All locations are under aberrant influence.”

The fingers of this particular technician and thousands of others just like him fanned over the interface. “Emergency protocols are enacted, portals closed, recommend dispatching multiple teams throughout Hemisphere Alpha for those that slipped through the cracks.”

***

“Have a--”

Before the secretary could finish her sentence, the hinges of the office doors flung open, and the otherworldly howls rang through the foyer like screams in a torture chamber. It was proven that she was too perfect, as a multi-limbed demon with awkward sacroiliac locomotion contorted through, gripping her by the torso and sundered her in half spilling violet nanofluid on the spotless marble floors. Its face flowered out as it shrieked at Odis, and soon he too was overswept with a high tide of demons.

The demon’s blackened bodies scrawled and squirmed over the ceiling, walls, and floor encroaching upon the businessmen more like a virulent fungus than a collective army. Their arms and tendrils were appendages all to a conglomerate being of lust, gluttony, anger, and violence. As the secretaries body was dismembered and fed the gorging flesh-blob, it did not sate their appetite or slow their advance by any stretch of the meaning. They sought to devour Panident’s new host.

This phenomenon was perpetrated by one most heinous, certainly a criminal of caliber of Merse Granstrum. Apollo was immediately transported to safety with emergency teleportation technologies and in the wake of its effects the gift was immediately shunted by a sudden tachyon emission into the atmosphere. The temperamental teleportation aftershock of New Roswell’s powerful reactors causing a malign reaction with the overwhelming magic of the weapon.

***

There was no one there to receive the sheathed silver sword, or the disclaimer that came with it. No one except semi sentient demons who were far more interested in ripping Fearis, and everyone else in the building, to pieces. Instead, the weapon was shunted by a tachyon disruption that whisked Apollo to safety. Though powerful enough to survive the temporal anomaly, its destination sent it shooting like a railgun through the atmosphere and into earthen orbit, where its velocity would surely break the planet's gravitational hold and send it into its everlasting peregrination. After blinking through the building, it shunted upwards, screaming like a subsonic jet. This weapon sheathed became flying death—a ricocheted bullet. As it tore through the planet’s atmosphere, it glowed red, like an inverse comet, but the friction didn’t even begin to mar its surface. It cut through the atmosphere, and its trajectory intersected with a brooding humanoid.

It was moving impossibly fast—faster than Max’s canister rifle rounds. He didn’t even know it was coming, but without knowing or even understanding the threat something else guided his hand and without looking at the Sword of Sal’chazzar, his arm snapped out gripping around the burning-hot scabbard. Thought it retained the heat of molten metal, its scorching surface did not burn his flesh. A silvery liquid coated his skin, wrapping around the sheath of the blade. He turned his head to regard the weapon looking upon it with only minimal interest.

***

The slime-coat protected the prehensile appendage from Merse’s corrosive fog. Anathema had fought enough creatures with this kind of capability in his lifetime to anticipate this. Just like that, the fight was over. In the back of Jacknathema’s head Anathema salivated for the kill, the mantis shrimp punches would puncture Merse’s body, sundering him, but someone else interfered. A reverberated crack signified the tension snapping between his crustacean appendages, and his tongue sundered from unforeseen projectiles. Jacknathema’s eyes darted around wildly and unsynchronized as they scanned for the source they soon found rocketing from debris.

Jack’s weakness got the better of the compartmentalized creature, and recognition flickered through his face as, for a moment, he took his attention off Merse and looked upon Thomas. He could not even manage a breathless gasp as he watched the Operative fly towards him. A single thought was all he could manage: Seriously…?

This blast from the past packed a punch that split his ribcage and tore apart the front of his body. His face, instinctively began to reknit, even as agron’s mineral-melding particulate attempted to impede him. The flow of progress continued, in every imaginable venue that could be considered. If it meant that he had to resort to a cartilage based super-compact fatty structure in place of a skeletal system, that would be what it was.

Blades of bones pierced into Jacknathema’s exposed core, fusing together with his own skeletal mass, even as cartilage began to block their efficacy. For an instant, Jack was actively defenseless--even as most of his words were drowned out, a few managed to pierce the veil of fury.

“THOMAS” The first hit came breaking three sets of lower ribs and puncturing his diaphragm to the point where he could barely speak.

“WHAT ARE YOU” The second hit one of his arms meagerly flickered in the way, deflecting the punch to his chest as opposed to his face, it shattered his ribcage open like a cooked clam, exposing layers of musculature that pulsed with his pumping heart.

“DOING” The third strike was delivered directly to his face he could feel his cheekbone break and part of the jagged shards that would compose the rest of his skull puncture into his brain, but that wouldn’t stop Anathema’s regeneration and reactive adaptation.

“ITS ME” This punch struck against his shoulder, only marginally grazing him. His body’s natural defenses began to overcome the assault. How he could still speak after the fourth hit was miraculous. But the bones reknit, layers of cartilage covered over his rib cage structure and enforced his chest cavity, the musculature swelled and hardened, closing, and Agron’s minute essence-driven particles began to crystalize on the outside of his flesh as a blocked-off carapace, barred from entry.

“JACK” The fifth hit was like a strike against solid stone. Thomas’s enhanced knuckles cracked against the aegis that was Jacknathema’s body. Anathema’s hatred poured into the quasi-Val’garan monstrosity, and with one of his once-broken arms he reached up, clasping around Thomas’s jaw, his arm flexing with herculean strength, as his hulking hands gripped around half of the operative’s skull.

“GET OFF.” He said, and with that his counter attack came. He pushed off the ground with his own tide of rage, spiking Thomas into the ground, skull first. Anathema insidiously began to supplant memories of Jessica Lynn into Jack’s mind--specifically her last moments as a living human.

Thomas murdered her.

That was all that was needed. With a shadowed face, Jacknathema shattered his teeth into jagged shards, his eyes bulging and bloodshot, and the muscles of his shoulders and back growing instantaneously, at a rate that began a cycle of shredded flesh and renewed hide. Thomas was still mobile enough to avoid Jack’s first strike--and luckily so. A wrecking ball fist that was the size of the human’s torso impacted the ground, fissuring the pavement underneath. The shockwaves sent by the strike shook loose the foundations of some of the nearby structures, and deeper in the ground sundered a gas line that belched for noxious aerosol into the area around them, once again clouding the two in a hazy cloud of extremely flammable material.

Jacknathema had already been burned once in this encounter--he would be fine surviving an explosion, but Thomas might not be so lucky if someone were to capitalize on the opportunity.

“YOU KILLED HER.” He roared thick, viscous spittle showering down as he raised his arms, the mapwork chords of veins surfacing as he let go of the operative’s face and raised his arms in furious protest to the sky. Then he delivered a series of thunderous hammerfists down atop the human that would likely rearrange his anatomy.

***

The smell of manure wafted alongside the lazy trot of Phillipe Duboi le Bougeouis’s donkey. The decrescendo of clopping hooves against cracked asphalt announced his arrival to the military perimeter. He licked his dry, chapped lips as he looked upon a buffet. He smelled gourmet appetizers in little scents none other could pick up. The grainy, dry aroma of some of the soldier’s rations didn’t escape his senses.

The fact that he made the journey from el Castillo Gordo without devouring his ride spoke to his determination. This clearly manifested in beads of sweat that trickled down his temples. He pulled a kerchief from his pocket, dabbed his upper lip, wiped his brow, and then consumed the cloth. As he swung off the mule, who huffed what almost sounded like a sigh of relief. He trekked his way into camp like he was supposed to be there.

This ruse was ill-played. Security was tight around the perimeter camp, the roads had been blocked off and soldiers stood, armed and vigilant. As he approached one such officer thrust his palm out in warning when the count was within earshot. “Stop,” the guard commanded, “this area is restricted.”

Phillipe chewed his upper lip and driveled a weak response: “But I’m hungry.”

“I said leave. NOW.” The soldier said as he slashed at the air with his extended arm.

The soldier’s compatriot leveled his fully automatic on the slobbering count, who was still slowly advancing. “Final warning,” the guard shouted, “do not advance any further or you will be shot!”

Loathe as they were to put down a civilian, the strangely dressed simpleton continued towards them, with no heed to their warnings. The large man’s hands were outstretched to either side of him, palms facing the guards, like two open shooting targets. The two began to frantically yell at him to stop, until their guns railed off drowning out all conversation, and peppering the man with slugs.

Banana clips emptied on their rifles, and much to their dismay and surprise, the rotund individual still stood, unmarred by the high caliber fire. Before the smoke even cleared from their muzzles, but not before their hearts skipped a beat, a wide gleam split across Count Bougeouis’ face. A beaming smile that peeled his lips back like some sort of mummified corpse, and pulled the fat of his jowls tightly around the frame of his face. He was all reddened gums and yellowed teeth in a mirthless grin that was more threatening than it was anything else.

The two quickly ejected their clips, and jammed another into the bottom of the guns, just as the count lurched forward into a wolf like lunge, jaw unhinged, and cackling madly to the tune of their screams.

Awake

Stepping through the threshold, Max left behind the acrid medicinal smell that irritated his nose, into not the bend of corridors he remembered. Instead, strode into a small foyer, with a large metal doorway embossed in a fading, rusted sigil. The symbol, he recognized as communist propaganda native to the Red Technocracy. The shift in space, and milieu neither surprised nor bothered the agent at this point. In fact, when he left the crew’s quarters, he vaguely remembered subtly wishing he could just skip to the bridge.

Something was happening within this world, that he didn’t quite understand, but that space, time, and events shaped to conform to his wishes. Deciding not to poke the bear too much, he approached the doorway, waving his hand in front of it in his best Jedi impression and commanded, “Open.”

The door did not move, and nothing changed. A stark reality that mellowed his bravado with a healthy dose of diffidentness. “Right,” he cleared his throat, “well, I’m sure there’s a panel around here, too.”

What, you thought overcoming an enhanced empathic assault made you a god all the sudden? Get real, you idiot. Forge hissed in the back of his skull.

Good to know you’re not gone, Mobius countered, your abrasive commentary would have been sorely missed.

Get fuckin’ used to it.

Instinctively finding the security panel, Max used the task of hacking the electronics to distract him from the new voice that had manifested in his head. He had barely gotten used to adding Gennosuke’s self-righteous patronizing, much less Forge’s caustic insults. A small spark connotated his success, and he could hear the subtle thrumm of power surging into the doorway. With another flick of the cable, the door shifted open, hydraulics and all.

Steam leaked from hidden pneumatics into the entryway like a roiling fog inside a forbidden bog. Max ignored it, stepping cautiously into the spartan interior. He had seen many ships, most of the time the bridge was every bit as much as a place of function and command as it was a lesson of intimidation. Not so for the bridge of this Red Technocracy ship. The interior resembled the angular simplicity of chiseled stone, and all the control panels, of which some here and there flickered haphazardly with newfound power and life, were meekly tucked and compartmentalized.

Max traced his vision through the dim light, even as the door hissed shut behind him. The bridge was as silent as a crypt, it was anticlimactic for what he initially expected. Raising his hand, he balled and uncurled his fist as a green glow began to envelope the appendage. He crept up to the captain’s chair, a large, uncomfortable looking thing, and viewed the singular panel on its side--a master control. In a motion that was every bit as symbolic as it was literal, Mobius eased himself down into the throne. The soldiers glowing right hand came to rest down upon the console.

Here we go… Let there be light. He thought to himself as he began to channel positive bioforce into the controls.

The ship’s array flickered with drowsy recognition as Max soldered broken circuits, repaired conduits, and renewed the connection between the bridge and the ship’s main power grid. One of the few things that had gone right in the mindscape he was trapped in. He exhaled as he could feel the tax on his body--with no serum to back up his energy expenditure, the fatigue quickly set in. When his eyes drifted open he caught the end of the console’s advance; its apex reached at a comfortable waist-level whilst seated. Upon it a flat, holographic display flickered to life, which raced through russian, numerals, and red technocracy code faster than he cared to pay attention to.

The display that it settled to was one he was sure was not standard issue. There were no prompts, no menus, and no feedback aside from a large all-encompassing red button. He couldn’t help but think that the red button resembled the looming light source he witnessed outside. The finality he had built up, and all the struggles he faced culminated in something clean, facile, and simple. The zenith of his challenges was to push a button.

“Well, kid, this is where you sign your soul away…” Forge jeered from over his left shoulder.

Mobius didn’t look at him.

“This shall bring you back to your present-state.” Gennosuke informed from the other.

Another voice seemed to emanate from the red ocular--a staticky petition that repeated in semi-understandable terms.

Attention! Oper----- 223- --u are in ---ger pl---- re-u-n to con----sness! ---ecting mul--ple ----ings in you- ------ity!

Max hovered his hand over the button for a moment, recognizing the entreaty as ANITA’s. His eyes widened as he put the message together and slammed his fist into the button, which plunged through it, past the console. Welling in its own self-created gravitational pull, his fist crashed through the floor, into the ground, which delved through the mindscape and into the infinity that would jolt his mind back to consciousness.

***

The drowning man gasped his first breath of air. Choked with cinders, dust, and smoke, Max’s first breath filled him with a fit of coughing and hacking that forced him onto his forearms, and he heaved from a half plank position. The sound and smell of a raging fire filled his ears and nostrils, but was nearly overpowered by the sounds of sirens, screams, and calamity. He pushed himself up to a kneeling position to take in his surrounds as soon as he gulped an able breath of air. Blinking the smoke-stung tears from his eyes he twisted his neck, viewing the chaos with a numb shock.

The vortex had destroyed… everything. A potluck of asphalt and concrete spiderwebbed with fissures, and in places it broke away collapsing into open ravines. The buildings were leveled, but in the horizon he could see twisting, tortured structures illuminated hellscape crimson by way of faroff flames. A thick thunderhead of smoke filled the sky, blotting out the sun. The only light was cast by the raging flames of what used to be the citizen’s lives. There were no bodies to be seen--only ash would have remained, and even that whipped away in the cyclone.

God… he flinched, as he witnessed wide-eyed the devastation.

A moment of clarity seized him as he addressed ANITA: Annie, how many are dead?

Attention! Operative 2232, you are in danger please return to consciousness--You are awake, and you are too late. ANITA responded, cutting off her warning message just as Max heard the clicking of multiple rifles around him, and saw the soft glow of an energy shield--more specifically a containment shield envelope him.

He recognized it to be standard Mobius Operative protocol, and it was not of the friendly variety. It was a neutralization protocol for arresting high-priority high-danger targets. He sighed as he slowly rose to his feet and looked up to the smog-choked sky, defeated and exhausted.

To answer your question: Two thousand two hundred thirty one confirmed casualties according to my spatial database, Operative 2232.

He shook his head, and lowered it. When escaping from one nightmare he felt as if he were plunged into another.

But this was one nightmare from which he would never be awake.