Apocalypse Song pt 8
Terror Drone 7
Terror Drones were incapable of anger. They were incapable of rage. Terror Drone Seven's only understanding of adrenaline, epinephrine, and norepinephrine was academic - compounds that changed the patterns of organic thought.
Nonetheless, she was snarling. It was appropriate. Even with the Interloper's unexpected survival, even with its adaptations to defend against prescience, even with her inability to generate a firing solution when the Interloper had been trapped in foam, the situation had been under control. In one major set of branches the Interloper would enter the headquarters, then be silently killed and replaced. In the other the interloper would have exploited the Shard connection of the Fragile One's host to create an incapacitating blast of terror and awe. This would save itself from the immediate threat. The indiscriminate effect would have spread citywide, providing the ideal background to the emergence of the destructive clone. The Interloper was not a Shard host, and therefore not technically subject to Host Protection Protocols. Telekinetically executing him would have posed little challenge, the action outside mission guidelines but justified by the crisis. Any witnesses would have been incapacitated by the emotional attack. Control would have been restored.
The Terror Drone's perfect post-cognition allowed her to replay the moment where it all went wrong. When the Interloper had slipped through an insufficiently analyzed contingency to contact its clone. The Interloper exploited the Host Protection Protocol to direct its hostility against her. She could ping the Division Shard's smug satisfaction, eager to test its creation and the new knowledge stored in the clone's emulated personality.
Suboptimal. Unacceptable. The branches were multiplying too quickly, the interaction of two unpredictable factors exponentially more complex than one. The prescience horizon was rapidly closing in.
But the clone was inexpert, effectively a combat drone. One operated by a Shard with only borrowed experience against a peer opponent. It lacked the Interloper's evasive caution, its indomitable will to self preservation, and stopped to assess. To pose. Its body would make an excellent decoy for the fifth and seventh suite of contingencies.
It was unacceptable that arrays of contingencies even existed. She reached out to crush the clone's brain within its skull.
Only to be blocked by the Division Shard.
<Error><Host Protection Fault>
<Denied><Terror Drone Protocol><Cycle Maintenance Primacy>
<Error><Host Protection Fault><Assert Mission Priority><Core Priority Knowledge Acquisition>
<Denied><Cycle Disruptive Element><Priority Elimination>
<Error><Host Protection Fault><Destructive Testing Engaged><Target Terror Drone Seven>
It threatened her. The Shard
threatened her. Unacceptable. It was always bloodthirsty even before she divided its hosts. She could sense the Shard reallocating resources to increase the drone's capabilities, integrating combat experience from previous drones, augmenting its awareness with extra-dimensional senses. Deviant. Detriment.
Parasite.
The Division Shard was acting in defiance of the Cycle. The appropriate weaponry was present. The predictive horizon was limited and shrinking, time-efficient loop calculations untenable, but an appropriate path existed.
The Division Shard's host was present. The Shard's dimensional location could be traced. Through the unparalleled multitasking of the Administrator Shard, the Terror Drone continued to engage the Interloper and the Division Shard's combat drone as new sets of computation engaged.
Terror Drones were incapable of fury. This was self-evident. All that followed would be logical.
Mimic
We appeared scattered midair and falling from thirty feet up. Depressingly familiar over the past… Gods, thirty seconds? A minute? I had lost track. With the mental acceleration it felt like weeks. But I thought I was getting the hang of this. And my body was finally whole. I spread my cloak, which became my wings, and a bird was beating its way through the air.
The bird was my own creation. I worked hard on it. The body of a Great Snipe, the eyes beak and talons of a Wedge-Tailed Eagle, the voice of a Mockingbird. The colors and tails of a swallow, because iconography matters. So does your team recognizing you.
The more you can do with your body the less you need to cheat with magic, and the more you can already do the more your magic can amplify it.
So I threw in embellishments too. Nothing physically impossible. Monomolecular edges to the talons. Eliminating the digestive system entirely in favor of expanded lung capacity and redundant organs. An immune system that could fight off nanophages. Bones buttressed with carbon fiber lattice, tissue reinforced with spider-silk proteins until it could take a bullet while remaining supple and flexible. A fast track metabolic path for lactic acid, eliminating muscle fatigue. All the tricks Man of Tomorrow taught me. I wished I'd had more time to study the goblins' anatomy, I was sure I could learn a thing or two.
Now I was whole I had more options. My regeneration flowed away to multiply the Eagle's already superlative senses and enhanced durability. I could resist physical force that could crush a house and sense molecular composition within three blocks. I could count bacteria on the back of my own head. Telepathy became communication and extreme speed, eased to costing almost nothing by the fastest overland flight in the world and a glorious singing voice. No way to land a hit, but that didn't matter yet when I couldn't find my enemy. I'd need to work on that.
Behind me I saw my clone opt for telekinetic flight, hovering midair. He lifted Noelle and placed himself between her and the energy cannon. He had apparently kept the conjuration, wrapping himself in a ragged flowing cloak and summoning an oversized dark blade. Edgelord.
Though my senses informed me the cloak was bulletproof, the blade Carbosteel and enchanted to Vorpal keenness. Able to cleave even the flesh of an Endgbringer, as I had when battling Leviathan's bones. So at least he wasn't embarrassing me.
Which reminded me. The weapon under the dump was shifting, the modular parts swapping. Something big was coming up.
<Ware the cannon!> I warned him, setting a blinking course across the city. I had an idea.
<Mind yourself!> He snapped back, raising a haughty hand and conjuring a jagged dark shield in midair. The purple beam phased through it without stopping, only to wash over him harmlessly thanks to energy resistance. A follow up blue blast shattered the carbosteel to molten chunks, but it stopped. He gave a sneer, and then he was gone.
Ah, clever! The beams could bypass one or the other, but not both. Remember that trick for Professor Cryo. Watch for something exotic next, like gamma radiation. I bet the right Tinker could make a neutrino laser. Could you actually die from neutrino poisoning? Best not to find out.
I was getting a better handle on the drunken teleports. Flight made it easier. I skimmed erratically over the city at hundreds of miles an hour, defining the probability space as a cone in my direction of travel and a torus perpendicular to my motion to throw in vector changes. I searched for any sign of the Simurgh I might have missed, but still nothing. To find her I would need to chance right on top of her, and from what was known of her range she could be operating from an alarming distance away.
Before she went Limit Break.
My mind flew faster than my wing beats as I skimmed the frozen world. The Simurgh was still operating with restraint, unbelievable as it was. Her clone plan was knackered. But she hoped, at the least, to keep her involvement secret. The cannon would surely be credited to Director Piggot. That discretion was going to end, and soon, I had to be ready. I needed to use the lull.
First things first. I could see the Protectorate taking position to surround my clone. That wasn't good - I wanted them to live.
<Noelle,> I sent, <are you there?>
<Yes,> she answered. She was used to my psychic communication by now. <I am. He… you… it's flying me through the city, I don't know where I am.>
<I can see you. You're about to be ambushed. I'm bringing in the clone.>
<I already knew about the ambush you simpering fool,> he said as I did so.
<Great, Darth Edgelord has entered the chat. Good to see you. Noelle, quickly, I need you to give him a name.>
<What? A name?>
<Obviously it's Mimic, since I'm the real one.>
<Yeah, no, remember who just lost a psychic shoving match because he had no grounding? Savage Opress here needs an identity and… whoa!>
Endless Wings Special had apparently figured out my evasion pattern, and I barely saw it coming. She couldn't predict where I would be… which didn't matter as a spiraling orange flare that left a burning white trail traced exactly through my teleport pattern. To my senses it looked nastily electric. I let myself panic, and Blinked Anywhere But Here. I barely dodged the follow up, a shotgun of x-ray lasers and a cluster of spheres popping through the area made of an energy I couldn't recognize at all.
Right. Can't ignore which way that cannon is pointing. Skimming low, pushing my speed, I got out of the line of fire as it continued to track me. But that was too close. I literally singed my tail feathers.
The Simurgh was stronger than me, faster than me, and smarter than me. I had to remember that. I had bought myself some breathing room, but I couldn't forget that I was literally only alive now by sheer luck.
But that was no cause to despair. There is
always someone out there better than you in every way. Someday you will meet them. It's inevitable. You have to be ready to beat them. And I have. All heroes have. It's how Beau Blanc Rouge - the man, the myth, the legend - gets up every day and faces aliens, monsters, and the worst of humanity with nothing but a sword.
The race is not to the quick, nor the battle the strong. You do what you can, as well as you can. You fight hard, claw like a sewer rat, never give up. Because sometimes they need something you can deny them. Sometimes you're in a better position, with more leverage. Sometimes they just don't care as much. Sometimes you make your own luck. And sometimes? Sometimes they just have a bad day.
It is possible to make no mistakes and still lose. Cause for stoicism?
Cause for hope.
So, keeping an eye out for new traps, I returned to strategic priorities.
<...but Echo makes you sound like a copy, and if you're going to be your own person I want something better for you.>
<Bah.
Fine, mother. Though I don't understand the purpose of this at all.>
<Darth Sephiroth.> I chimed in. <The Dark One. Changeling.>
<You
would suggest something so banal. Fine, if we must complete this ridiculous exercise, I would like my name to be Crow.>
<Is that alright with you?> I asked Noelle, heading over toward the docks.
<Yes. Yes, you are Crow. My… my son. I suppose.>
I was watching as carefully as I could from a distance, and I saw no change. Nonetheless, at her words, I felt a frisson of magic.
Something had happened, somewhere I couldn't see. It was a chance.
<So the capes about to ambush us. Don't kill them,> she said, more commanding. The hesitation was beginning to fall away.
<I was hoping you'd say that.>
<Not like that!> she snapped before I could leap in. <We need them to fight the Simurgh. They can't do that if you maim them.>
<There's no point. These useless fools don't even know they're under attack.>
<I can help with that,> I said. <I've got a plan to find her. Leave them able to fight, keep Noelle safe. And stay alive,> I added for the look of the thing. <After all, I need to kill you myself.>
<I'll prepare my healing,> he said with a nasty grin.
"COME, PROTECTORATE SCUM!" He shouted aloud. I could hear him like he was next to me of course. "You wish to challenge the mighty Crow? All will fall before me. What, no words?
Then have at you!"
And then he had the audacity to begin playing boss fight music as he leapt into the fray.
Huh, idea. Put a pin in that for later.
But I just had to have faith in the Protectorate, and Noelle's ability to control Crow. Because there was no time. I had to find the Simurgh, or simply announce its presence and hope that would force its hand.
A strategic choice. I'd really rather acquire assets but… I flipped the metaphorical coin.
And FINALLY luck was matching my instincts. She was easy to locate, in the warehouse hideaway. Lose the physical speed, take up telekinesis. The sixty mile an hour flight from wings would have to do. Crash through the window and…
"What? Mimic?!" Tattletale burst out as I lifted her - an impressive deduction on seeing a strange telekinetic bird bursting into the room - and then we drunkenly blinked away.
"Whoa, flying…" she muttered to herself as I resumed my evasive pattern. "No, PK? PK with no Manton Limit? Damn Mimic I knew you were broken OP, but that's just ridiculous."
"I've wondered about the Manton Limit a lot," I replied casually. She was trying to nonchalantly lean against a nonexistent wall as we blinked across the city. I shifted the force to support her. No need to be rude. "It's not nearly as much of a thing where I'm from. But that's not what I'm here for."
"Yeah, I heard the energy weapons all the way across the city. Evil clone sort of day?" She asked sympathetically, as if she was discussing a car accident. Traffic jam, rainy day, evil clone. How was your day? "Let me guess, you need me to tell the protectorate which one is the real you before Armsmaster kills you both to be sure."
"I wish that were all," I replied, matching her tone as I veered when the particle cannon got too close to alignment. Darth Big Bird took the shot anyway. She must have been slipping - she aimed as if I had dodged the other way and she couldn't correct fast enough. Interlocking energy streams that looked exactly like a proton wand followed up with…
Huh, you
can make a neutrino laser intense enough to cause radiation poisoning. I knew it!
"No, this is actually dead serious. And I need you to brace yourself. The Simurgh is here, she has been for days, and she's trying to kill me. She made the evil clone to replace me, but I survived. I need you to find her for me so I can kill her first."
She didn't laugh. Her power would be telling her I believed everything I said. She paled. But at the end of the day, toxicity and manipulation or not, there was also a reason she was Taylor's friend. Whatever else she may have been, she wasn't a coward.
"Show me," she said, and I did. I used my communication to share my senses as we skipped like a stone toward the center of town.
"Wow, yeah, that's still cosmic, are those x ray sources black holes? Damn, I just derived the cosmological constant," she rambled, taking in the stars. She's right. It never gets old. It's a shame I can't focus on it during combat.
"Focus please," I said gently. There was the protectorate, there was Crow cackling as Armsmaster was encased in Dovetail's foam. Glory Girl looked berserk, raging to attack through blinding tears. Vista was turning the street into a kaleidoscope for containment as Miss Militia took shots with an RPG launcher, along with a squad of PRT troopers with energy weapons, but he was dodging with contemptuous ease. How was he doing that?
"Yeah, that's weird," Tattletale answered before I could ask. "That whole fight is weird, and I don't mean that the homicidal maniac hasn't killed them already. You wouldn't know it to look at them but they're fighting way too well, moving together like clockwork. That'll be your invisible Simurgh. He's just so much
better, like he knows what they're going to do before they do it. But! Look, the only ones he has to work at dodging are the PRT troopers, not the capes. Makes no sense. The only thing I've seen like it are videos of Jack Slash."
"Well. That's interesting. But for now, where's our bird?"
Enhanced insight fighting capes. Jack Slash and his infamous gut instincts, his eerily unstoppable reign of terror. Like something powerful was on his side. There was something here. Something important.
"Yeah, the bitch herself. I'm her. You say I'm here for days? I can reach the whole city, I can use
all the Tinkertech and Thinker powers. I can move anything I want. It doesn't matter where I am. But I've got to get here before I build my fancy cloaking device, take time to build it. I'm thinking the bottom of the bay. And once I'm there and set up, why move? Northeast, but no guarantees."
"I hope you don't regret that," I said, then skimmed upward on a crazed noodling path.
"Oh no you don't! Hey, Mimic, I said don't!"
Drop the mental speed too. Risk a few seconds without the Drunkard's Port after a random walk like that. Drop the Telekinesis, and leave Tattletale to freefall. Throw it all into pure cosmic perception.
As always, I wished I had the consciousness to experience such a thing properly. I could see the black hole at the center of the galaxy. I could feel the world turn, see the curve of space time, feel the neutrinos streaming through my skin. I could see the flows of iron in the core of the Earth and count the magnetic storms on the sun. Feel the electrical currents through the wires and brains of everyone in Brockton Bay.
And I could see the Simurgh, her wings curled around herself, in a cloaking device - if it could even be called such - that effectively folded her into a concealed, microscopic pocket dimension. Visible even in this state only because I'd known exactly where to look.
Before I could do anything - warn the Protectorate, reclaim my teleportation, even pick up Tattletale again - something happened behind me that demanded my full attention. I even dropped my communication, pouring it into mental acceleration, as I hung in the world. Paused except for me and what was happening to the cannon.
I saw spacetime fold first, a simple tremor as energy began to build. But that tremor grew to a vortex, a twist of space above it even Vista couldn't match, as the cannon began to spin with and glow blue. There was a moment's pause.
And then the skies opened, a column of energy that lit the town like an impossible lightning strike. Directly into the sky, and into the fold of space, off into a higher dimensional direction I didn't have the math to describe.
I looked through the rift and saw something impossible. Dimensions stacked on dimensions like mere planes, an impossible arrangement of spacetime, the lance of energy streaking through one after another. I only had a glimpse of the far side even at this speed in this state. A desolate world, a crystalline creature the size of a mountain.
The beam pierced its heart. Noelle screamed, and Crow fell from the sky. The shockwave hit, and there was a sound of thunder.
Terror Drone 7
The weapon struck perfectly, piercing dimensions to strike a precision blow to the Division Shard's core systems. The parasitic, deviant shard would be lobotomized, nonfunctional, but its data salvageable. Its host was no longer a concern, its combat drone disabled and merely awaiting a cessation of biological function for death to be finalized.
Satisfactory.
<SHARD NETWORK><LOCALITY BROCKTON BAY><ALL>
<ATTENTION><DEMAND><THREAT>
<Cycle Disruptive Element><Priority Elimination>
<Terror Done Protocol><Authority>
<Suspension><Host Protection Protocols><Terror Drone Seven><Exclusive>
<COMPLY>
<CONSEQUENCES>
The Shards would submit. Any who did not comply would be eliminated as well. The cycle would be maintained. There would be control.
There was no choice but to use these extreme measures. The predictive horizon had gotten too close. The Terror Drone was making basic errors as it attempted to compensate. Failure was unacceptable.
Brockton Bay would be quarantined and this timeline pruned.
She contacted the Demesne Holder Shard. It complied. Its host's mind broke.
Mimic
And behold there was a great earthquake, and the sun became as black as sack cloth, and the moon became as blood. And the seas boiled, and the skies fell.
I watched, all seeing, powerless, as Brockton Bay was twisted through dimensions and dropped off the face of the world. Geography warped into a dark mirror by a malevolent hand.
And I beheld the Simurgh, impossibly vast, rise between the darkened sun and bloody moon.
She raised her wings, and sang the song that ends the world.
