Location Unknown, Provisional Reality ARC, Time Unknown
- - - - -
Reality mends itself.
My Stability’s still shot. The Voiceless Singer’s still here. The magma-colored thing has consumed half the Research Mezzanine; James won’t stop screaming in my ear about all the possible answers it’s entombing in ever-expanding molten lava. The whole building smells like brimstone and molten metal, and sweat pours into my eyes.
But the Voiceless Singer staggers back away from me, like it’s scared and overwhelmed and…accepting at the same time.
Something has shifted—the balance of power. I’ve got it beat, and it knows it.
I use Absolution while I can. The Voiceless Singer’s watch is over, and it can rest.
It tries to fight—the fight of a doomed warrior. Its song ripples over me, but I ignore it. There’s nothing it can do to me; I’ve become more than it ever was—learned and grew and bonded with it. Absolution forces the music back, and the Voiceless Singer goes with it.
The song stops. A second later, the Voiceless Singer collapses into nothing, bending in on itself like a paper being folded into an origami flower. The explosion that rips from its nothingness hits me a moment later drains me. I’ve only felt this exhausted—this cold—once before. I scream. The shockwave slams into the magma monster, and it disappears—or almost all of it does. Its core keeps burning for a second.
It doesn’t vanish so much as it fades into the floor, dripping down into another part of the lab. The laboratory shimmers and bends a moment later, then wobbles back to ‘normal.’
I’ve done it. I’ve defeated the Voiceless Singer.
Now, I just want to go home.
SHOCKS Headquarters, Victoria, British Columbia - June 16, 2043, 11:13 PM
- - - - -
The plastic explosive went off with a whump that would have been shockingly muffled if Strauss wasn’t an old hand with the stuff. As it was, he was already halfway down the hall and around a corner, his jaw set against the mouthguard he’d shoved between his teeth for the shockwave.
He’d set explosives on every cell between the evacuation point in the SHOCKS garage and where he hoped the breach had started. A dozen different high-Geren to mid-Xuduo anomalies, all released from containment within half a second of each other. The effect would be chaos as they ripped through the halls in their search for freedom, revenge, or just murder. But if Daley had done his job correctly, it’d be more chaotic for the high-powered anomaly that had forced him to do this.
He started running down the hall, intent on returning to his squad.
“L4-5, right?”
The voice was familiar—like L4-3’s, but more mature—and Strauss felt himself compelled to nod. At the same time, his finger slipped from his trigger guard and rested, ready to start shooting.
The smoke parted, and Alice—L5-6—walked through the swirling clouds. She stared at him, both eyes burning. Not a single anomaly leaped toward her. In fact, behind her was nothing but silence.
“Great. We need to have a conversation, you and me. I want to know exactly what’s going on, and you’re going to tell me, right?”
“Right,” Strauss said through gritted teeth. He reached for his helmet and pressed a single button. Lambda-Four had a procedure for anomalies like this, and a needle shot through each eardrum, puncturing them before foam filled each ear like the most perfect earplug ever. It hurt like a bitch, but Strauss didn’t care. His eyes were locked on his enemy—on the girl who’d been carrying Li Mei around for weeks and who was displaying the infovampire’s powers.
He wasn’t getting to the trucks—not if this was Li Mei. But he wouldn’t let her through, either.
Strauss opened fire, the silent shots lighting up the hall. As the bullets ripped toward her, Li Mei turned to smoke.
And laughed.
Location Unknown, Provisional Reality ARC, Time Unknown
- - - - -
I just want to go home.
This reality’s done for, and I have business in R-0.
But before I go, I need to take care of a few things here, like the Void Root. It’s not supposed to be here, and now that the Voiceless Singer is gone, it’s growing. The careful equilibrium it hit with Provisional Reality ARC’s hyperreality’s been disrupted, and this whole world is going to collapse.
It’s ironic, in a way, that this reality’s Merge Prime couldn’t quite finish it off, but I could in just a few hours.
More importantly, James wants everything he can get.
[I’ve pulled all available processing loops, Claire. There’s nothing in R-0 worth watching—at least, not that I can see right now. I’ve got every camera I can find locked on the SHOCKS Headquarters building, but I can’t see inside. Just show me everything you can, and I’ll get what I can from it,] he says.
Fuck you, I don’t say to him. But I think it. Alice and the rest need me, and I’m here. If I can go home—and maybe the new Mergewalk will let me somehow—I should be going. The thing is, even if it lets me, James thinks it’s not likely to take me to the Experimental Sector. It’ll probably drop me in Berlin or Sudan or something—or in the middle of outer space. Space is part of R-0, after all.
So I’m scared? So what? You’d be scared, too, if you had to step into nothing and hope for the best.
Instead of swearing at James, I take a quick walk around the Research Mezzanine, looking for anything the fight didn’t completely destroy as James records. The floor grows hotter and hotter under my boots, and before long, a melting rubber smell fills the air; it’s my boots. “James, are you done here?”
[Not even close. Go up a level.]
“What are you trying to do, anyway? This reality is done for.” I head for the stairs; the elevator got destroyed during the fight with the Voiceless Singer.
[I’m taking advantage of an opportunity. This is the first post-Merge Prime reality on record in the Halcyon System, so I’m documenting what it did to fight back. From an immediate point of view, anything we learn here will give you—our—reality more of a fighting chance. We’ll be able to adjust our strategies to avoid the things that failed here. Longer-term, if R-0 doesn’t hold, the Halcyon System wants more information for future realities.]
There’s a lot to unpack there. As my boots stop sticking and I start scanning the second floor, I think about what James just said and how it changes my equations. It’s a real head-scratcher, because the Halcyon System feels so omnipotent that it has to be a bad guy—otherwise, wouldn’t it have stopped the apocalypse from ripping across Earth? But at the same time…
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I’ve outsmarted it. Outmaneuvered it. That makes it fallible, and if it failed against a kid, it’s possible that it’s memory’s not as good as I think it is. Maybe it doesn’t have records of other failed realities. “James, you’re not lying to me, right?”
[I don’t know if you’ve ever asked that before.] James laughs. [Thought it a lot, sure, but asked? No.]
“Okay.”
The lava breaches the floor below ours, and I start climbing. “That’s all, James,” I say.
[That’ll be enough. I’m Analyzing everything and trying to build a model.]
“Great.” I head for the elevator shaft and start climbing for the surface. It’s slow going, but I’m not about to try a micromerge jump with zero Stability. That’d only make things worse. “Where am I going?”
He knows what I want without me asking. [Anywhere on the surface should work. Once you’re there, I’ll try to find a place that’ll give you a window to Vancouver Island.]
SHOCKS Headquarters, Victoria, British Columbia - June 16, 2043, 11:18 PM
- - - - -
Director Paul Ramirez was equal parts furious and terrified.
Furious because he’d been outmaneuvered, and now he had to leave his headquarters building behind, along with all the experiments he’d been running. He’d made incredible strides in understanding different realities. If the world hadn’t been facing an apocalypse the likes of which SHOCKS had never seen before, SHOCKS VVI would be the premier posting on the planet and only a little behind SHOCKS Mars/Deimos.
As it was, he was leaving behind everything that wasn’t in his head.
That was why he was terrified. His career—and possibly his life—rested on getting SHOCKS Headquarters Victoria and Vancouver Island back under his control. But the only thing he could do was follow the chain of command, and Sergeant Strauss was well within his rights to order an evacuation.
Only a half-dozen trucks remained; the ones with the civilians had all left, and most of the other researchers were gone, too. A few dozen agents and that L4 trooper, Daley, waited with him for the next ride out. He’d taken command and made sure that both Munroe and Rodriguez were on some of the first trucks.
Paul was grateful for that.
“What’s going on out there?” he asked Daley.
The trooper just shrugged. “L4-5’s doing something stupid. If we survive this, taking Headquarters back’s gonna be a bitch and a half.”
A series of explosions rippled through the building. This set was bigger than the ones Daley had identified as plastic explosives. They shook the open-frame roof of the garage, and dust poured down on the two men.
“Director, it’s time for you to go,” someone shouted from a nearby truck.
Paul nodded, but made no move to leave. He’d only been the leader of SHOCKS VVI for a couple of weeks, an in that time, he’d made great strides in research and in dealing with Merge Prime. Equally importantly, he’d brought Claire Pendleton back into the fold, and with that, the research potential of having her in line with SHOCKS’s goals for the future. He didn’t want to leave it all behind.
Gunfire opened up somewhere in the building. Three short bursts, a pause, then another, longer burst. Paul waited one second. Two seconds. Then another series of bursts. The only SHOCKS employees still in the building were a handful of researchers who’d volunteered to ride the ship down with some of the Qishi-Danger anomalies who needed constant observation…and Strauss.
As the gunfire continued, someone grabbed Director Ramirez and carried him to the waiting truck.
Location Unknown, Provisional Reality ARC, Time Unknown
- - - - -
This reality breaks and burns, but this time, it’s no vision.
This time, it’s a ridiculously powerful anomaly that reminds me of the burning man—if the burning man spanned the length of a city and was made of molten stone so hot steel melted and asphalt boiled anywhere in a mile radius around it.
“James, how long?”
[Soon.]
“That’s not a time length!” I say between gritted teeth. I can’t do math with soon, and the math’s not looking great.
[Fifteen seconds. I’ll tell you when.]
Fifteen seconds. That’s not long; I’ve been waiting for the last twenty minutes. I can wait fifteen more seconds.
My foot taps the steel and concrete as I swing it back and forth over the edge; I’m sitting on the corner of a skyscraper’s roof, watching the city burn and melt and evaporate all at the same time. There’s something beautiful about it, in a way—at least when it’s not my city. When it’s one that’s already been lost. My gaze pans across the view for almost five seconds—an eternity.
“How long?”
[Claire, there’s no way you’ll hit SHOCKS Headquarters. We don’t even know for sure that your upgraded Mergewalk will open its own merge,] James says. [Relax.]
“I can’t. It will.”
[How do you know?]
I don’t. But right now, I don’t need the truth. I need hope that this is going to work. That I’m not too late. That everything will be alright.
I wish Alice was here to lie to me about that.
[Time,] James says after far too long.
I don’t say anything. Instead, I stand and walk back toward the stairs down. One step. Two. Three. My foot goes up for the fourth, but it doesn’t come down on the roof. Everything goes black—the pitch black of the void. When it stops, the world’s only slightly less dark, and my Revolver’s in my hand and glowing purple, the Mergebreaker shells ready to go.
SHOCKS Headquarters, Victoria, British Columbia - June 16, 2043, 11:19 PM
- - - - -
Strauss wasn’t winning this fight.
He’d pumped five of his six magazines into the Alice/Li Mei creature, and the best he’d been able to say for himself was that he’d hit most of his shots, but the monster kept coming, swirling into smoke the moment he pulled the trigger and just taking the hits. It wasn’t even trying to kill him, but it had given up trying to talk. He couldn’t hear a word it said anyway.
The last magazine trembled in his fingers, but he lined it up and shoved it into place with a click he felt instead of hearing. His other empty magazines littered the floor behind Li Mei. The only thing they’d done was slow her down a little, maybe.
His plastic explosive hadn’t accomplished a damn thing, either.
Every single Xuduo-Danger anomaly he’d freed had taken one look at the Alice/Li Mei hybrid and either fled or stayed in their open cells and waited for her to pass. She hadn’t even bothered looking at them.
Right now, he was tucked into an alcove where something big had once been housed. Still was housed; it kept hiss-growling at him from the dark cell, but it wouldn’t come out—not even to kill him. He had no more magazines, one worthless smoke grenade, and his go-bag of gadgets was with Daley.
He was out of options, and the garage sat just a few yards behind him. There were still people in there. Maybe even civilians. Strauss couldn’t call for help; the best case was that Daley came out. More likely, it’d be some agents, or maybe even one of the gun-toting teachers he’d helped disarm during onboarding.
None of them would help him right now, and he couldn’t let Li Mei through.
Strauss threw himself into the hall, firing a short burst toward the blonde girl. The bullets hit, but as they did, she turned to smoke that swirled and eddied in the shots’ wake. It bought another couple of seconds, and he fired again as she rematerialized, forcing her to go smoke again.
When she came out of it, her mouth moved. Strauss didn’t try to read her lips; he could, but it’d be like listening to her—a mistake when he couldn’t afford one. He spun and ran, retreating toward the garage door.
Li Mei followed, but another spray of bullets stopped her, and Strauss went to a knee with his back foot against the steel door.
She stopped, cocked a head, and watched him with her two red-black eyes. The pajamas she’d been changed into after her sister returned her here were torn and hung in tatters that reminded Strauss of the ragged bandages she used to wear. Underneath was smooth pink skin—completely unmarred by the fighting.
Strauss imagined it jet-black like Li Mei’s.
He fired again as she moved forward like lightning. The rifle clicked on an empty magazine, and the quick-release dropped it to the floor. Strauss ditched the gun and pulled his service pistol. Five shots with one hand as his other groped for the door handle.
He pulled it open and fired the other five shots. They did nothing. He hadn’t expected them to. The slide clicked back, and he dropped the handgun, too. There was only one truck—half-loaded with agents who took one look at the smoke that swirled into the room with blazing red eyes and threw themselves through the vehicle’s tail door. Someone pulled it shut, and the engine revved loud enough for Strauss to feel it through the floor. The tail lights disappeared down the tunnel.
Strauss let them go. They were following orders; his orders.
The Alice/Li Mei thing let them go, too. She didn’t even try to stop them. And she didn’t go for the kill with Strauss, either. She knocked him to the floor, turned to smoke, and loomed over him like a titan. An eighteen-year-old, high-school-graduate titan. She pointed at her ears, then at Strauss.
He shook his head. Even if he cleared the earplugs, he’d destroyed his eardrums. Short of surgical repair, she’d never be able to speak to him. He’d won, anyway. The rest of SHOCKS was out and on their way to the docks. With any luck, they’d get across the water to Port Angeles, and from there, up into the mountains to SHOCKS Headquarters Olympia. If it still existed.
The Alice/Li Mei thing’s eyes narrowed, and she launched herself at Strauss. He tried to roll out of the way but was too slow. He tried to reach for the grenade hanging from his chest but couldn’t pull the pin.
Li Mei surrounded him in shadow that ripped into his flesh. He couldn’t hear his own screaming.
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