Gattsu

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.

Awake

-something that was difficult for him to comprehend. Max lowered his eye from the digital sight balking as his jaw slacked. What laid before him through the open doorway was not the crew’s quarters at all, but instead a fecal-brown esophageal gullet slowly undulating, contracting, and finally expanding. Silver phlegm drooled from its musculature, puddling at the doorway. The smell was rancid, like a two month rotted corpse that subsisted on a diet of rotten eggs. The stench stung tears to the corner of Mobius’s eyes, but did not break his trance-like stare. With the raw odor brought a tinge of iron taste to the air, like the operative had bitten his lip. The rush of sickening humidity was reminiscent of a living organism respiring.

Max’s eyes saccade as he took in details of the organ. Did he really enter? Or had he always been here. Max didn’t move, but the hallway’s pulsating muscle shoved him into its depths at a slow, rhythmic beckon. He could hear the cycle of the domain aspirating, death rattling, and then rejuvenating to breathing in a revolving door of suffering, death, and life. But this wasn’t life that was worth living, instead this was life with the sole purpose of suffering. Tortured life support. A glob of quicksilver mucus drizzled down Max’s shoulder and pooled at his feet like saliva from a hungry beast. A beast which had already swallowed the operative whole.

“What--” Max breathlessly whispered, and was instantly met with taste of iron that left him cottonmouth.

Mobius didn’t even realize that he dropped his carbine in his stupor. The only thing that now caught his attention were his hands. His palms were desiccated, lined with deep purple veins, and punctuated by the thinness of his fingers that could trace all the way to his very visible metacarpal bones.

“Oh..” was all he could manage in his astonishment, as he perceived himself almost with an out-of-body experience. “I…”

The ex-soldier’s body was withered to almost fetal atrophy. The fact that he was standing was a miracle, because his feet and legs fractured with every gentle nudge turned violent shove the floor goaded him with. Like a standing skeleton made of solidified dust, Mobius could count every rib, and even saw the feeble tapping of his own heart under his chest. His elbows, shoulders, knees and hips were like nodes on an emaciated weed. He was a weed. No. A corpse. He attempted to scream, but all his decrepit lungs could manage was a wheezing moan as they collapsed upon themselves, and the accent of his suffering was him suffocating on his own saliva in a death rattle.

That wasn’t the room’s death rattle… it was his.

Within that moment the most powerful urge welled inside Mobius. The urge to live. That desire was strong enough to pull him from his mummified corpse.

He gasped as he looked back over his shoulder, a cold sweat dampening his brow, and his twisted, white knuckles gripping tightly over Logic. The corpse was behind him, laid to rest as the esophageal wall swallowed it with the quiescent inevitability of a corpse in a cremation furnace.

The operative composed himself, noticing that the pauldrons of his body armor were missing. The kevlar shoulder pieces had completely dissolved.

As he continued down the throat, a new feeling surged within him: the opposite of what he felt before. Power. His muscles swelled, and heat expanded within his chest. An adrenal kick to the gonads filled his body with pure energy. He gritted his teeth as he felt a lighting storm surging through his nervous system. Saliva trailed from the corners of his mouth, as he began to froth with rabid fury. His heart slammed in his chest like a boxer flurrying a speed bag.

Max closed his eyes and his hands viced around the handle of the carbine. Surprisingly, the metal of the gun’s handle crumbled like a tin can in his unmodified grip. His body shook and buzzed as a paroxysm wracked his essence and, finally, he capitulated to the rush. The operative’s eyes sprang open, mouth gaped, and he screamed sound out of existence.

The desperate gaze of the operative met a beautiful patterned blue/green orb, whorled with strands of white. He recognized it; a child would. Earth. A marble in an ocean of black. He reached out and cupped the world in his palms. It was his marble, and he would protect it. The emotional scales that was weighed down with power was balanced with something else, now.

Love.

This was not lust or appreciation, but a paternal affection for something that he cradled. This planet was fragile. It needed him, and he would give anything to protect it. A new emotion welled inside him, as if it were injected in his body by some celestial scientist who experimented with his emotions. A guarded desire to defend this planet from something distant. He took that power, channeling it within himself, and departed.

Distance, time, speed, with his new power Max was unfettered by these concepts. When he willed himself to be there, he was, had always been, and always would be there. Existing there, not there, and everywhere, and nowhere. Before him in the vastness of space he stared down the End of all Things. The abstract darkness that existed within him, and permeated all things. The culmination of all things was its expiration.

This was not the freeze death, the great expansion, or the strange apocalyptic theories of the destruction of the universe. Instead, this was the destruction of all universes, of all recognition, of all time, of all space, of all concepts, of all emptiness, of all things. There was no after, only before. It was not an enemy to be faced, nor was it an obstacle to be overcome. Eternity ended past its event horizon. Beyond its event horizon was beyond indescribability, a space, a time, a place and none of these, a paradigm existence that was a swan song for the nihilist--not even nothingness, itself.

Max flew into this darkness. And he, too, ended.

A combination of sweat and tears streamed down Max’s cheeks as he watched the noble sacrifice. This death was the ultimate death, the most final of all.

“I don’t understand,” he whispered, “what is all this?”

The shinguards of his armor were gone.

Mobius closed his eyes, settling his nerves as best as he could, he wasn’t sure if he could put what he saw behind him, but knew he had to. His boots slapped against the wet silver saliva of the throat, even as he continued into the belly of the beast. His resolve carried his weighted feet, even as the gullet attempted, to bog him down.

Cringing, the first sensation of change Max felt was a drop in humidity that left him in a cold sweat. His feet petered to a stop as he felt the sloshing slog wane. The pounding war drums that represented his heart rate slowed, diminuendo. His breathing steadied, and he blinked his eyes open through beads of sweat. Max found himself in a room not unlike the interrogation rooms he imagined Thomas had probably interrogated many-a-prisoner in. He wasn’t cuffed in, though. And he wasn’t starting down some gruff Dick Tracy on the other side. It was just him, a table, and a strange sword laid presentation style before him.

The operative had spent enough time around Gennosuke to figure out that this was a katana. Against his better judgment he approached it, cautiously, and his fingers curled around the hilt. A voice within him screamed against his folly, and begged him not to do it, but it was almost as if he were in a dream, and was incapable of deviating from its dark script.

As soon as he took the weapon in hand Mobius was assailed with a psychic force he could not grasp. The pressure that mounted inside of his skull was immediate--like an F53 taking off from ground to breaking the sound barrier. His teeth gnashed together so tightly he could feel a molar crack in the back of his jaw. He would have screamed but his trachea seized in rigor-like pain. His muscles tensed, flexing, and his appendages closed as if he were being electrocuted. Blood leaked from his ears, lacrimated from his eyes, dripped from his nose, and painted his clenched teeth in a crimson grin.

Max’s mind was conscious of the failings of his body, and he felt every wave of convulsion and every seizure that wracked him so. He was able to sense his organs shutting down like they were buildings in a great power outage. None of it compared to what he saw, though. What he touched minds with. It entered and flowed into him. His body could not possibly contain what was within that blade. A mental manifestation of himself screamed in hysterical agony, but even that was drowned out in the roaring bedlam that was housed within his mindscape.

Veins surfaced on his temples, and his teeth shattered as he began to tap into his superhuman strength that was amplified infinitely by whatever this thing was. His eyes exploded as an ocean’s worth of pressure popped them like Dionysus eating a grape. His bowels evacuated and soon the blood and drool that leaked from the corners of his mouth graduated into a bloody foam.

And then, and only then, when the agony transcended the capability that his physical form could withstand:

His head exploded.

Like a pulpy watermelon hit with a sledgehammer, Mobius’s head became an organic grenade. Shards of skull fragments shredded the wooden table in front of him and gray matter, covered in viscera-slicked gore painted the interrogation room in red. The skull bomb left behind a ragged, split stump that was once the mobius operative’s neck, and as his body fell to its knees, then prostrated, his muscle quivered with final convulsions that signified the end of Maxwell Lionheart’s life.

And he saw it all.

This vision had stopped Max dead in his tracks, and by the time it’s seizure-inducing mindscape subsided, he found himself swallowed in the hallway nearly up to his knees. The fatigue was beginning to settle in, transferring from his mind to his body, and it required some effort for him to pull himself out of the organic quicksand and force himself to trudge forward. He looked down, expecting to see sweat staining the front of his body armor, but instead his gaze was only met with bare chest.

Max continued with what little strength he had, pushing on into madness. His eyes were open, but he saw nothing, and his hands shook as he trained his weapon in front of him, defending himself against nothing. He knew he shouldn’t have come in here. He regretted every second of it.

Behind him, Max’s keen eyes heard the pattering of feet splashing around in the silvery liquid, and instinctively he wheeled around, but saw nothing. This half-second of automatic reaction was enough for them to catch him. Two sets of hands gripped his shoulders and arms, and a blast of daylight temporarily blinded him as he could feel heavy bodies tackling him to the ground, and shouting that he couldn’t make sense of over the ringing in his ears.

Before he even knew what happened he was on his stomach, and the arms were cuffing his hands behind his back. On the back of his skull he could feel a sensation he knew all too well--the cold muzzle of a gun.

“Target secure.” One of the heavily-distorted voices above him droned. “Moving delta code: 2237 to extraction point. ETA five minutes.”

The two sets of arms hoisted him to his feet, and with weary eyes Max regarded the destruction of the Argentinian city around him. He was back to the present. The cyclone leveled the block, and from the appearances of things a building had fallen on him. He half-walked and half-fell to a small, squat building that stood on the outskirts of the ground-zero block. His mouth felt like it had been on the business end of a dremel saw, and the only sound he could make was raspy gasps that existed straight from his labored lungs. The three figures he recognized--Mobius operatives. They were dressed in all the standard gear, with masks obfuscating their faces. One of them turned to him, pulling out a small flashlight and clicked it on in his eyes.

“He’s with us. Bag him.”

One of the operatives behind him pulled a sack over his head, but even in Max’s broken-down state he could still put together where he was and where he was going. They moved him forward three paces, clicked something plastic that caused the hairs on the back of his neck to stand up. A beacon--they activated a beacon. His hypothesis was ratified when a sensation churned his stomach and he felt as if he had just attempted to step on a stair that was not there. It coupled with a sharp pain to the back of the skull.

Time was difficult to discern as Mobius faded in and out of consciousness for what he guessed to be a few hours. When he woke, he woke to the raucousness of voices. Thousands of voices that murmured together in aggregate polyglot. His senses returned to him with dawdling lethargy. His vision faded once or twice, and Max simply felt as if he could not will himself to immediate consciousness.

“Before us,” a charismatic voice spoke, measured pauses and all, “lies a traitor responsible for the deaths of thousands.”

“But this is one, broken man, was not the mastermind, only the muscle.”

Max’s vision flickered in enough to catch the image of Apollo, dressed in his violet and black pinstripe slacks, deep vest accompanied with golden buttons, and his white dress shirt perfectly pressed underneath. What caught Mobius the most was Apollo’s eyes, filled with disdain and predatory nature. His vision drowsily drifted upwards to take in the orange sky and the skyscrapers that towered like solemn judges. One in particular, he recognized to be Discorporate Productions, it was the preeminent arbitrator of his fate, and its peak scowled at him from infinite heights.

He exhaled, unable to make out any of Apollo’s speech, and the breath burned his throat as if he were breathing fire. The ex-operative willed himself to move, and got far less return for his effort. Slumping over, he could see the throngs of people who had come to watch their glorious overlord speak. Apollo always did have a way with the people.

“...we shall not stand idly by while this corruption devours our homes, our families, our lives. We call for war! And know that I do not sit behind my desk, as leaders past, did. I strike the first blow! I fight with you on the front lines…”

In the din of a revelrous crowd Max’s superhuman sense picked up an almost imperceptible chk-click. Suddenly the threat that it implied squeezed what little adrenaline his body had left. Though his fight against Forge had spent him, his mind took stranglehold of his body, and he was able to shift himself onto his knees. As his senses swirled to full consciousness, Max found himself upon a dais, like an executioner’s platform, and a sea of people extended through the streets of Capital City in every direction. His heart pole vaulted in his chest against his sternum as he realized the gravity of the situation. But it was too late.

“...Our marvels reach the heavens! There is no greater feat than to be human! There is no enemy that we cannot defeat!”

Apollo whirled around, his eyes burning with fervor as he pressed the barrel of a gun to the front of Mobius’s head. For a moment, Max’s out-of-body experience showed him a look on his face that he would never forget. Naked, and beaten, Max resembled a prisoner of war. His hair was tousled about, and his lips were busted, his face bruised. He could see his nose twisted, crooked and broken. Two streams of long-dried blood decorated him with a crimson moustache. Though there was heavy swelling around his brow, both his eyes were shot wide open, pupils dilated. These gateways showed Max’s emotions most clearly, and all of Capital City could and would see it.

Unabated terror.

“THIS IS THE SOVEREIGN MANIFESTO!”

Darkness.

Max blinked back the throbbing in his eyes as he watched himself collapse onto the ground in a lifeless heap. This vision, too, subsided, and a corrosive touch ebbed away at his sanity. He could feel his flesh crawl with a shudder as he passed by, leaving behind his clumped corpse and the roaring of angry Capital City rioters. He was back in the throat of the beast, and his body began to reflect the fatigue his mind felt. But he pushed on, as he always did, and as he always would. One foot in front of another, he told himself.

And, suddenly, he felt his legs give out. No, the floor gave out under him, it dropped into a swift decline that sent him skidding down its silvery mucus-lined muscle. His velocity picked up and the muscles shifted as the living being shuddered off the unwanted pressure on its throat, which spiraled Max out of control. He tumbled violently down the shaft, head over heels, shoulder over shoulder, twisting his limbs as contractions pummeled and crushed him, and before long the abuse ended by expelling him through an esophageal sphincter into a vast void.

For Mobius, it was continuous falling. An endless descent into a hazy void that expanded in every direction without escape and without distraction. Max was trapped here, and soon eternity would rear its ugly head at him, and his mind, too, would be wiped to a bloody, angry pulp, like Forge. He felt he was close to his limit.. The void was warped from something it used to be, its emptiness was filled with malice perceived by the mind that was lost within. The heart of the beast.

He wasn’t sure what happened, but his body armor was ruined, and he could not find the carbine anywhere--in the chaos he must have lost it. He was right where he started: naked, defenseless, with nothing but his willpower to subsist upon. He centered himself as he tumbled through endless emptiness head over heels, and straightened his body into a pencil dive.

“I told you not to come here,” a familiar voice barbed, “but you didn’t listen. You’re stupider than you look.”

Max ignored Forge’s jeering and continued to rekindle his calm. “You thought the journey was bad? We are only getting started. I have the rest of your life to fuck with you, and I’m gunna show you exactly what waits for you with that silver cumstain.”

The operative couldn’t be prepared for the mental onslaught Forge oppressed him with. The previous graphic visions continued ceaselessly, each one a new tool unveiled from the repository of pain. He lived through all the visions, existing different times and places simultaneously as others and himself. Max saw Gennosuke withered and wretched, and it was him. He saw Forge, mutilated and disfigured, and it was him. He saw Thomas, skewered by his own skeleton, forced to watch a woman he cared very much for die, and it was him. He saw Apollo, crucified outside his office, and it was him. He saw Pawn, drawn and quartered by legions of dead, and it was him. He saw Tristan, who lived the scientific dharma wheel’s constant state of life and death, and life and death, and it was him. Max lived vicariously through every fatality.

Max suffered, forever, in the timeless rift that ruined Forge, but this didn’t sate the phantasm’s indignation. What afflicted Mobius was no longer human nor petitioner, but was a spirit of animus. Anger and pain reigned as the gods of this rift, and every moment of physical, psychological, and spiritual torture expanded their clergy. The Spirit of Animus’s gospel was to break him. To mold the man with its proverbs of pain into a protoplasm of sensations. A bundle of twitching spasmodic nerve clusters formed from the clay of quintessence. A thing whose only method of living was to feel unending anguish. The beast.

The Spirit of Animus was opposed with issues twofold. Firstly, the vicissitudes of the maladies inflicted upon Max wrought new and interesting ways of suffering. The idiosyncratic responses of Max’s pain would be prescribed to physical reaction. It would lose the sui generis that made Mobius... Mobius. Secondly, and more frustratingly so, was that the operative was still actively resisting it. Even though the Animus had broken his cerebral Resolve and disarmed the phrenic armaments that was his capability of Logic, he persisted through Will. No amount of violation, despoliation, or desecration changed that. Max did persevere.

In the absence of self, something else composited within Maxwell’s spirit. Untapped strength flowed through him, renewing his resolve, restoring his sense of logic, and steeling his will. It came in a phrase linguistically unfamiliar to him, but through some miracle transcribed itself in the grey matter of his brain. It settled in his ventricles, and pumped through his veins, traveling through his arteries. It filled his lungs, and settled his stomach. It reverberated through his psyche, and filled his tumultuous mind with a meadow of calm.

“Gam zeh ya’avor.”

A mantra that annealed Max into stone. He wasn’t sure where it came from, but it rooted deeply into his chest. He couldn’t even think of its origin, because any fraction of cerebration dedicated to anything other than his mantra resulted in agony beyond apperception.

“Gam zeh ya’avor.”

Over a course of what seemed like years Max had transcended the Spirit of Animus’s menagerie of misery, and its oceanic influence thus did wane like low tide. A metaphysical battle waged, and the inch that was given to Mobius was taken by the mile. He bulwarked himself against its malign influence and pushed the line. The counterbalance shifted, and though little physical ramifications manifested, the war of immaterialism raged. A skirmish that stretched into a battle that stretched into a war that stretched into a lifetime of strife that stretched into an eternity raged and rebounded within the rift until its infinitesimal gulf could not encompass the ferocity.

When the eons built to aeons Max soon found himself the hands that molded, but never did he lose sight of his purpose. He did not become the hands that would crush, but instead he would become the virtuous conqueror. And finally when his thoughts of ‘gam zeh ya’avor’ subsided an anamnesis returned to him, starting with a name.

Forge.

He dispelled the Spirit of Animus, and with it the pervasive darkness that Forged its malice. A cloud that clung to the silver creature like a haze of fat maggot-bearing flies. But the presence did not vacate, it merely moved. This would be his burden to bear now. The cancer slinked back into remission, waiting for its day. This was the true enemy. When the haze of enmity dispersed, Max could see distant nebulae, spiral galaxies, and somewhere within that abstract picture of light and darkness was his marble.

Gradually, his freefall slowed to a hover, and the operative’s insides settled. Max looked about the void, and knew that he had conquered Forge as he did Gennosuke. Closing his eyes, he focused his mind, willing the milieu to return to its natural state. Soundlessly, the void changes to the mausoleum that was the crew’s quarters. It resembled a morgue more than it did a barracks. Beds sat parallel to one another, spacing with uniform distance. Upon each of these beds there was a body with a cloth sheet draped over it. He didn’t focus too much on the cadavers, but he judged there to maybe be thirty within the cabin. The main sounds within the room was the metronome of respirators that pumped into these flesh bags. Instruments connected them and the ship, and pumped their vitae to somewhere Max could only guess. It was all metaphorical and metaphysical, but somewhere in here Forge and Gennosuke laid with the rest of those who contacted Xelas.

He pitied these bodies who were farmed for this creature’s livelihood, and resolved to never end up as they did.

With that, Max turned, opened the door, and left.

Awake

Maxwell blinked long-crusted over eyes to semi consciousness as he regarded the haze about him in confusion. Gennosuke was gone, but that wouldn't cross his mind for a few minutes yet. The red emergency lights rotated scouring the room in sweeping cycles of red. That was one of his few sources of light and, compared to much of the ship, was generous. As Mobius rolled over and pushed himself up, his bones creaked and fatigue settled into his muscles.

How long was I out for? He thought.

A wave of nausea hit him, and he steeled himself against the ten pound pit that settled in his stomach. Looking up, he saw the other source of light in the room--a glowing, green reactor. He studied it for a moment, blinking as he steadied himself.

I should get out of here. If that thing’s leaking, then I could be in trouble.

Hobbling across the room, the Christmas hues were swallowed wholly by the hungry darkness of the hallway ahead. He stared at the ceiling as if he were searching for the ship's floorplan in its rivets and once he recalled the design he stepped into the pitch. His gut and his head were arguing like an old married couple. Max remembered hearing Annie speak to him over the now-defunct engineering communications room radio. There was power to the ship, so logically his next step should be to go to bridge. Then again, something in his gut told him that it was time to confront whatever was lurking within the crew’s cabin. He wouldn’t be safe until whatever it was had been dealt with.

He stopped in his tracks and considered things. Perhaps there was a happy medium. He’d go to neither and, instead, head to the armory to arm himself for the crew’s quarters. He believed the armory to be in the rear of the ship, but he wasn’t completely certain. Turning on his heel, he followed a hunch that the armory was the opposite way he came.

Fortune favored Max yet again, and after twenty minutes of meandering through dark corridors he stumbled into a strip where the generator was able to power lighting. He exhaled in relief as he crept up to the door that was labeled “Armory” in the Red Technocracy’s native tongue. Slipping into the light, he examined the door, then the keypad next to it. The pad suggested a bioscan was required in the form of a handprint. That would be a problem. Judging by the LED’s it was functioning, but that meant that the coupled security measures also were. The Red Technocracy’s spending seemed to go all into armaments, and their security protocols were sophisticated, to say the least.

I could hack it… he considered.

And perhaps he could, but he didn’t have ANITA, so there was a larger chance of failure. Lacking the confidence, and unwilling to risk the consequences, Max decided he’d find another way into the armory. He turned his shoulders and started looking around the lit sections, searching for anything he could use, anything that could help him, anything at all. Feeling around walls, he found what looked like a grate that was sprayed over with red paint. He blinked a few times as he mumbled pronunciations of the unconventional dialect, “Repair? No--maintenance. Maintenance!”

Crouching down, the operative forced his fingers through the grating and with a motion not too dissimilar from an angled deadlift he used his legs, back, and arm muscles to rip the cover from the wall. Peering into the darkness of the small access vent, he sighed, squared his shoulders, and crawled in. Though he was skilled in the art of stealth and subterfuge, Max was probably not Mobius Operative’s prime choice for shimmying through cramped maintenance vents. Leave that for Thomas or the new girl…

A combination of pausing to remember the girl’s name and getting his shoulders stuck in a corner halted his advance. The struggle was one of a few that would impede an expedient advance into the armory, but eventually in his struggle through claustrophobic vents he was able to dislodge the hanging vent and come crashing down into the barren room beyond.

The lit room was about thirty by thirty with weapon lockers lining the west edge. In the center were two rows of benches, and to the right were several suits of body armor still mounted on mannequins. To the north, and Max’s right stood the entryway to the room and exit to the hallway he’d snuck in through, and to the south there were two doorways both of which were shut. Quickly noting his surroundings, Max saw what he needed and immediately shifted through the body armor, finding something that would fit him.

The suits were of well-enough quality, likely comparable to what was now standard-issue for F67X infantry deployment. He was definitely getting a suit second-hand, a blast scar splayed across the plated chestpiece of the ensemble. He shrugged, deciding that the imperfections gave the piece character. As he slipped on the pants, and shoved his arms through the sleeves, he noted the brand tag that, for some reason, stood out to him more than it should have, probably because it was in english and not russian. Resolve, it said.

When he was done he moved over to the locker, flicking it open and pulling out one of the carbines within. He couldn’t recall the model of the standard-issue Red Technocracy military firearm, but this resembled what he had seen in the past. The exception to the rule was a large decal branded into the side of the assault rifle that also read, in english, Logic.

Getting out of the armory was much simpler than getting in. The security protocols didn’t prevent someone from exiting, only from entering. Even though parts of the hallway were lit, Max was able to use the digital scope to the assault rifle for the parts that weren’t. The twenty minute journey was nearly halved with that little aid.

Finally, he arrived at the nook that led to the crew’s quarters. It was just how he remembered it when he passed by it earlier. There was no sign, no Russian, telling him what it was. He knew. His gut told him. That ten pound pit in his stomach turned over and dumped into his heels. He could smell iron in the air, and something damp was pooled near his feet, not even a meter from the main entryway. It was crypt-quiet, the kind of solitude Mobius hadn’t experienced in a long time. He exhaled sharply and took a step towards the crew cabin, knowing only his own inhibitions kept him from entering.

“I wouldn’t do that…”

A voice spoke behind him that caused Max to wheel around, drop to one knee, and narrow in on his sights. No one. You would think I’d be more used to this kind of thing by now, the operative grimaced, exasperated, that was Forge’s voice.

Rising to his feet, he ignored Forge’s warning. The last time he saw the guy, his face was half missing and he had turned into a cannibal. His advice, even if it agrees with the gut theory, isn’t my compass.

“Getting out of here is.” Max assented in a half-mental, half-verbal conversation with himself.

His eyes widened in tandem with the door he pulled it open.

Inside, he saw-

Awake

The brute’s quick adaptation gave Kouga pause as he looked to the intense face of the operative.  Perhaps he held some potential, after all.  Perhaps he would be selected, or maybe even more.  Gennosuke had watched before as others had failed the symbiosis and Xelas devoured them.  He was the first, the first to endure Xelas’ unending gluttony.  Before him, Xelas was a being able to walk on its own, but the price of the creature’s sins were surely weighing down on it.  He watched as someone tried to forcibly bond a god to Xelas, and how it devoured him in this realm.   

Dionysus was far too proud, and far too stubborn.  He had not heeded Gennosuke’s urging and the rain devoured him.  Forge was different--he listened, but that wasn't enough.  Forge was not of a sound mind far before being inhabited by Xelas.  He also remembered that the man was of unfortunate circumstances--the rift likely would have caused any man to go mad, but Forge already walked the path.  Mzadech, however, he was unmolded potential.  He had a strong mind, and a strong body; he was willful.  Perhaps he could survive the tax of Xelas.

“If you insist,”  Gennosuke acquiesced.

He could sense Mobius relaxing, and Gennosuke exhaled a long, drawn-out breath, then closed his eyes.

***

Mobius lowered his fists and unballed them as he watched Gennosuke’s shoulders sag and his eyelids draw shut. Something in the back of Max’s mind told him what to do, Relax.  He complied, and did his best to force some of the tension out despite the circumstances.  He did not, however, shut his eyes.  Two minutes passed by and Max was beginning to wonder what the point of this was.  Meditation hardly seemed like the solution his problems.

That was when Gennosuke’s eyes shot open--concentric rings of yellow and red veined with strange green ripples.  His eyes glowed and the roomed darkened--or perhaps his eyes contrasted with the ever-present darkness to give that effect.  Mobius felt a force hit his body, but he was unsure what it was, and then all the sounds of the reactor came to a standstill.  In fact, all the noises he had previous heard were gone.  The room was dead silent.

He couldn't move.  Max’s limbs were frozen in place as the environment around him began to change. 

The reactor’s light cycled like a rising sun through the sky, taking position at high noon.  He could feel its lambent light shining down on him, but that feeling would subside.  The radioactivity naturalized into ambient outdoor light, and bathed the murky, changing landscape into something different, something he had never seen before, personally, but knew what it was. 

Gennosuke, too, at this point changed.  His skin tightened around his skull, and his cheeks sunk in, like some sort of horrific malnourished ghoul.  His sockets also sunk in and his lips receded around his jaw and mandible creating a visage of a human skull.  His eyes remained fixated on Mobius, and Max felt compelled to look back--he was unable to turn his gaze from the hideous mummy that stood before him.

The landscape rapidly changed around them.  Below, the tainted waters bubbled and boiled, sprouting into tributaries and solidifying into what looked like a canopy of cauliflower, which fell thousands of feet below them.  Trees, one would recognize--a forest.  A vast, expansive forest.  The untamed wilds smashed the barriers of the room and ship, and soon they were overlooking a forest that spanned a thousand miles.  As the reactor, now a setting sun, settled just above the horizon he could see it, where the wall used to be behind Gennosuke’s grinning skull.

The skull changed, once again.  Like some horrible time-lapsed photo Gennosuke grew younger, but all too rapidly.  His skin expanded, and ballooned as it filled with flesh and meat once again.  Health returned to his face, but in a method that appeared artificial and all too unhealthy.  Color returned to the Kouga ninja, but his eyes remained the same--through death and to life.  Hair grew atop the patchy skull of the man, and fashioned itself into a messy ponytail oriented towards the back of his head.  After the transformation Gennosuke appeared less haggard than he had ever been.

The environment was not done, yet, though.  The steel catwalk that they once stood on solidified and dusted up, as they found themselves standing on a narrow mountain pass. Thousands of feet below the forest stretched on.  He could tell they were near the mountain's peak, as an eagle passed by, screeching before it flew out of sight.  It was daytime, he guessed, and with the setting sun’s position in the sky it now appeared to be around six o’clock.  His eyes were fixated on Gennosuke’s, even though his back was to the mountain wall.  Gennosuke stood on the edge of the cliff face, as the world began to slow to a stop.

You must take it, Gennosuke’s voice demanded in his head.  In my place you will take it.

In front of him he could see the yawning opening to a cave that plunged into the depths of the mountain.  Finally regaining his ability to move again, Max noticed Gennosuke had faded away, but the operative intrinsically knew what he had to do.  He approached the entrance of the cave and could hear woeful wailing of a man inside. Almost as if he were in a trance Mobius stepped inside the cave.  The sun’s light did not reach inside, the interior of the surprisingly cramped quarters was dark, mournful, and reeked of death.

As his eyes adjusted to the level of light within the cave, he could see a small camp perhaps a hundred yards in front of him.  He wasn't sure what would happen, and was unarmed save for his fists, so he decided to take this one stealthily.  Hunching low to the ground, Max prowled forwards like some sort of hunting predator.  The dismal moan once again filled the cave; this was the wail of someone bereft of something very valuable to them.  A depressed cry at a funeral, a sob of shock, Max wasn't sure what was happening, but he could see a figure hunched over at the camp ahead, as well as a few tents.

The figure never seemed to notice Max as he snuck up to the camp, but he still couldn't clearly see who it was at the camp up ahead.  However, he could see them crouched over what looked like a journal.  Perhaps thirty feet in front of them, and at the dead end of the cave there was a pedestal with a prism poised atop of it.  This prism created the only source of light throughout the cave, and it entranced Max much more than the bodies and journal that absorbed the attention of the young man and his now-revealed small group of compatriots.  The light shone rays that visibly divided the cavern in multicolored prismatic light.

Max drew his attention back down to the figure who, moments before, had furiously flipped to the back of the journal.  Suddenly the man shrieked and threw down the journal, jumping to his feet.  Something within the journal had psychologically assailed him with grief, and the young man, who Mobius now recognized as the wild and tearful-eyed Kouga he had seen moments before.  His eyes were different however, this time.  They were the eyes of a normal man, and Gennosuke was showing the emotions of a normal man, as well.  Things seemed to move in slow motion for Mobius as Gennosuke lumbered forward in grief-filled rage like some sort of Frankensteinian monstrosity, unable to cope with whatever revelation had just changed his life.

STOP HIM! Gennosuke’s voice screamed in his head.

Breaking his stealth, Max shot forward like an olympic runner from a runner’s stance.  He was much farther than Gennosuke, but he was also much faster.  The men at the camp, startled by the intrusion drew their weapons, but they would never catch Max at his top speed, not unaware as they were.  They yelled something at their leader in a language he understood to be Japanese, but in an archaic dialect that made it difficult to transcribe just exactly the phrasing of their warning.

The men charged forth with their blades raised, but they were behind Max and he would not pay them any attention.  His feet pounded against the rough ground of the cave, as he could feel stones and sharp gravel piercing through the arches of his feet.  He fought through the pain and blazed forward, one arm in front of the other, chopping through the air, exhaling furiously.  He could see Gennosuke, screaming and swinging his arms as he trudged another step towards the pedestal, and what Mobius felt was his ultimate doom.  Less than a second passed, but to Max it felt like an eternity of wondering whether he would make it before Gennosuke.  His chest burned as he pushed everything into every step he could manage.

“Don’t!” Max roared with the ferocity and warning of an impending tsunami.

Charging forward he watched as Gennosuke’s right hand passed just inches from artifact.  It was now or never.  Max outstretched his arm and leaped--this was the only way to escape, to free himself.  He felt as if he were about to take off and fly as he cleared the dais.  The operative twisted his body, kicking the back of his calf into Gennosuke’s side just as the grief-filled man knocked the podium again, dislodging the prism and causing it to fall over. Mobius planted his foot in Gennosuke’s back as the initial impact had not yet caused the ninja to fall over, then he pushed off, which sent the Kouga flying off the dais and into his men.  Max rocketed forth, his arm outstretched and his palm facing up.  With his body parallel to the ground he found the prism falling into his open, waiting hand, as if destiny had ordained this union.

When he landed, it was not a soft landing.  Max plowed into the stone pedestal, uprooting it, and smashing it as he tumbled over the dais and into the wall behind it.  He rolled over, ignoring the pain, and shot to his feet to witness the shocked sojourners behind him.  “Live your life, Gennosuke,” He said as he presented the prism to them, “in a way that would make your brother proud.” Max said, feeling as if he were channeling the extra-planar essence of Gennosuke back aboard the Red Technocracy ship.

Just then his eyes drew to the prism, which he could see started to crack in his very hand.  The gem could no longer contain the light and power within, and it shattered like a grenade, radiating its blinding light throughout the cave.  Mobius was blinded, and felt like his eyes were being burnt out of their sockets.  Pain shot through his entire body, and his scream of pain was drown out by the waves of roaring energy that might just cause the mountain to crumble, and the forest to burn, below.  

Max fell to his knees, and blacked out.

***

Gennosuke had stood there staring at Max back in the engineering room.  He could see trails of blood beginning to tear around the corners of the operatives eyes.  It’s happening. He thought to himself.  He watched as Mobius’ eyes changed.  The man’s pupil’s dilated and expanded, then shrank, then the iris warped into different colors.  His mouth gaped, and seconds later prismatic light shot from every orifice of the man’s body. 

Gennosuke shielded himself from the artifact’s power as he witnessed hues of red dominate they yellow and green.  Mobius was obtaining the Kouga doujutsu, and he was seen as worthy by the artifact that Gennosuke had obtained long ago.  He was sure there would be some repercussions in the meddling of time, but Xelas was recreating history as he knew it.

Max fell to his knees, his eyes, nostrils, ears, and mouth smoking as if he had a round on the electric chair.  Prostrating himself in unconsciousness, Max was out, but deep down, Gennosuke knew he had succeeded.

He was not done yet, though. 

There was much more for Mobius to do.

Awake

He could sense the relief in the A.I.’s voice.  In her time with him, Mobius’ mannerisms had rubbed off plenty on Anita, she picked up on subtleties like inflection, emotion, and nuanced nonverbal communication—she even mimicked many of it.  Or did she actually express it; Max wasn’t sure.  One thing he was sure of was that he was happy to hear a familiar voice.

“Oh, good, you’re cognizant.” She said, “Are you alright?”

“I-I’m fine.” He said

“Good, you need to get up and we need to move on. You’re in danger.”

“I need to know what’s going on,” Max started, “I’m not sure what I’m dealing with.”

“Operative 2237, the last thing that happened in my database was…”  The unmistakable and unwelcoming screech of static filled the receiver, drowning out Anita’s explanation.

“Hello? Annie?” He said as he concentrated on her garbled speech through the white noise. 

“Annie, I can’t hear you.”

The faint crimson illumination provided by a protruding emergency light wavered as the light flickered on and off.  Mobius glanced up at the light as it flitted.  Shit, he thought with a frown, this section must be losing power.  He cut the feed to the communication receiver—he had lost the signal.  Back to square one, Mobius would have to take some time to gather his thoughts.  There was only one Red Technocracy ship that had ever touched down on F67X, and that was in a battle the local media had dubbed an “Extraterrestrial Intervention.”  It was shortly after first contact.  He wasn’t sure where he was now, but he was fairly certain that old Roswell had a replica of the cruiser somewhere in its vaults.  Here he was wandering a fully to-size wrecked ship.

“Well,” he said to himself, “plan B. Find an escape pod.”

“Unwise.”

The voice contradicted him just as the emergency light faded, but the radioactivity from the reactor provided him with enough ambient light to see a shadowy figure moving about the room.  Mobius recognized the eastern-tinged voice as Gennosuke, who he had met earlier.  The operative was up at the ready the second he heard the voice, his powerful fists brought to bear.

“The Kouga are the darkness, which melds with the night. Were I your enemy you would be lost and gone.”

Gennosuke’s pseudo-threat didn’t ease Max at all.  In fact the operative could feel his shoulders tighten. 

“There is no escaping this place, Mzadech, but there is a method of…suspending it. However, you must obey.”

Obey, scoffed Mobius, I’ve been doing that shit all my life.

“You are not in the realm of mortal men.” Gennosuke continued, “To survive, you must learn the rules.”

“I don’t want to survive. I want to conquer.”

Max could tell his words took Gennosuke aback.  In fact, the words surprised him even as he spoke them.  Conquer? What did he want with this place? Was he resigned to his fate to become the same thing that Forge had?  He rationalized his thought process and determined that he wasn't going down without a fight.  He and only he would be in control.  Mobius would not be puppeteered around—not in his own body.  He would be in control; he would fight the red sunset.

All the sudden he could feel Gennosuke’s amusement, as if the ninja were smirking at him—though he couldn't see it.

“Hm. Alright, but first you must learn.”

Max stared at the silhouette, attempting to figure out what Gennosuke meant by “learn.”  His ponderings were interrupted by the emergency light behind him, flickering back on, bathing the narrow doorway in front of him in red, and illuminating the catwalk in front of him.  Where the silhouette of Gennosuke once was now there was nothing.

“You must heighten your senses.” Kouga’s voice behind him demanded.

Whirling around, Max looked to find himself face-to-face with the ninja, who had somehow materialized behind him.  Instinctively, Max threw a punch, but his fist met only the hard steel of the technocrat’s hull.  Unfazed by the pain, he immediately whirled around just as Kouga spoke again.

“You must sharpen your skills.”

The operative rushed out the doorway in a blur, and leaped off his foot with all the practice of a skilled martial artist, kicking where Gennosuke stood, but met nothing but the catwalk railing, which he felt give somewhat.

“Violence is an anathema.”

This time the voice came from the reactor, itself.  Max whipped his head around and squinted his eyes to make out Gennosuke’s figure crouched upon the reactor, his face grimly lit by the lambent green glow of the radioactivity.

“Your mind is your greatest asset here.”  Gennosuke said, as he raised himself from his kneeling position.  He vanished.

“Focus-“

Max punched into the wall directly next to Gennosuke, who stood in the threshold of the Communication room’s doorway.  He could have crumbled Kouga’s face in, but he didn't.

“Then cut the fortune cookie shit and teach me something, Master Miyagi.”