Halcyon System 3 Chapter Thirty-Seven

I’ve only survived a double disconnect in Knights of the Apocalypse ranked play one time.

I was playing Sunburst. The only person who didn’t disconnect was on Cobra Kyra. And, for some reason, that combination was all but invincible against the specific boss we were up against. It was the final boss of the Abattoir of the Immortals—a slow, low melee damage boss with huge amounts of area of effect damage.

The Cobra Kyra player was fantastic. She avoided almost every unnecessary hit, and the ones she did take, I could patch up. But neither of us messed up. Not once. It was one of the most beautiful eight minutes of my life on Knights of the Apocalypse.

And I never recorded it, so no one believed it happened.

The truth is funny like that sometimes.

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SHOCKS Black Sector, Location Unknown - June 25, 2043, 12:41 AM

- - - - -

It’s not Mr. Roberts.

And this thing that comes through never was.

He’s in the surgical experiment wing, dead. But whatever this is, it looks like him. For a second, my mouth fills with bile, and my head swims. His arms are chains, and his fingernails extend out like swords. His legs are split into the same insect legs and bulging muscles he had in the gym.

“What did Reality 389 choose you?” I ask. “You’re not a threat, so unless there’s something else?”

The not-Mr. Roberts looks at me. He screams/roars and charges me.

Last time, when I tried this, the anomaly shrugged off the fire lance rounds like they were nothing, so this time, it’s four gravity shots. That does the trick, jerking him off his feet. I follow it up with a barrage of reality skippers that hit him from all sides, then a Bullet Time that sends a gout of flame as thick as my waist toward the anomaly.

This time, it works, killing him quickly.

“Sidney, status?” I ask.

[Automated defenses booting up. I had to repair their software from scratch. James wrecked it completely on his rampage through here. And I’m not playing with a full deck of cards thanks to your sister and you.]

“Thanks,” I say.

I watch the portal carefully. If a hard-to-describe version of Mr. Roberts and a Xuduo-Danger angel are the best Merge Prime can throw at me, this fight’s as good as over. Neither of them was really a threat—though if there’s a second angel, I’ll have to get creative.

But nothing else comes through. It’s almost like…

For now, I ignore that feeling, that thought. Instead, I slowly, carefully disconnect the merge generator from the West End merge. Sidney helps me, but it still takes time I don’t want it to, even if it’s just a few minutes. Then I Mergewalk it into the SHOCKS Olympia main hall, where a handful of researchers have been working on the bomb—and waiting for the last component.

“Sidney, what’s going on with the West End merge?” I ask. Now that business is taken care of, I can start digging a little.

[One moment. I’m running about twenty processes, and one’s taking almost one hundred percent of the processing power on Earth. My Sri Lanka servers just caught fire from overclocking.]

“Okay. Sorry.” I wait a second. “I just kind of need to know. It’s not spitting out anomalies like it was. Did we break it?”

[I don’t—]

I don’t hear the rest of the sentence, as I’m Mergewalked away instead.

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Location Unknown, Location Unknown, Time Unknown

- - - - -

I’ve seen it before, but never like this.

The Halcyon System’s yellow orb is tiny. Compressed. Black smoke whirls around it, ripping into it and covering it and disappearing into the spaces between the edges and faces. Alice. She’s been hunting information for a long time, but it feels like she’s barely hurt the System.

[Clarice Alora Pendleton. High-Qishi-Danger anomalous humanoid. Uncontainable by SHOCKS, Atero-Danger designation pending.] The voice is James’s, but wrong. It feels like a slap. [The rules have been violated.]

“I don’t think so,” I say.

[What you think does not matter. A direct assault on either opponent constitutes a violation. This assault on my databases constitutes a violation.]

“Oh, that? I have no idea what’s going on there,” I say, lying. The truth’s a weapon, and right now, with the Halcyon System clearly reeling, it’s time to deploy it. “But I do have a complaint. A violation, even. You conceded my reality to your opponent, correct?”

[Correct. It was the correct way to restore balance to the game.]

“Then why am I here? You’re interfering in my reality by pulling me out.”

The Halcyon System doesn’t pause. Its colors flare red-orange as the black smog rips back out of it, then vanishes inside again. [This violation puts the sanctity of the game at large in jeopardy.]

Perfect. “Actually, this is fine. This is exactly where I want to be right now. You see, I have a problem. I’m going to explain it to you like you’re James, since you’re using his voice, and then we’ll see if we arrive at the same conclusion.

Sidney speaks up in my aug. [Alice needs five minutes to finish the job.]

“Great. Thanks, James,” I say, this time deliberately misnaming him. “That’s right. You didn’t kill all of him, and he’s back. Now, let’s chat. You see, I’ve got two problems.”

I reach into the air, touching nothing. I’m safe here, but my hand won’t stop trembling. If the Halcyon System could kill me, it would have by now. That’s the truth—it’s one of the three key truths I’m relying on right now. “Let me show you this equation. Tell me what you think.”

[There is less than a tenth of a percent chance of it working,] the System says before I can even start drawing the symbols. [Your position is hopeless. Surrender to Merge Prime and restore balance to the game.]

“No, I don’t think I will.”

My equation blossoms into reality as I work. It’s only visible in my augment, and even then, only for a moment as heat streaks from my constantly-moving hand. I don’t bother drawing the Revolver. The real weapon is the two mistakes in the equation. It takes two minutes of work to make sure everything’s correct, and the whole time, the System rants about the game, and balance, and how it saved James for me. How I owe it.

“Actually, I wanted to talk about that, because you did save him for me. But you also tried to kill him, and that balances out in my math. Two opposites. Simplify the math. Thanks! You’ve helped me out.”

I know I’m playing with fire. But I also know that the longer I stall, the fewer options the Halcyon System has.

It knows it, too. [I am informing Merge Prime of this violation and allowing it free rein to take over your reality. Additional merge gates will open, and your reality will be torn apart. This charade means nothing, and has only reduced your reality’s chance of survival.]

“Incorrect, but that does match up with the first problem I have. I need to know how to kill a trillion merges all at once.” I point at the math. At the missing Truth where my unsolved Inquiry should be. “You’re right. I have no skill that can solve that part of the equation. But you know who did? Sergeant Arnold Strauss, Recovery and Stabilization Team Lambda-4.”

The Halcyon System’s eyes flicker to the bomb that’s half-disassembled in the corner. [That did not kill Merge Prime, and this one has been rendered inert. Gambit failed. The game continues.]

I grin, feeling more like Li Mei than I ever have. The System has once again fallen into my trap. “Incorrect. The game is over. I’m taking my ball and going home. Now, Sidney.”

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SHOCKS Olympia Administrative Wing, Washington, USA  - June 25, 2043, 12:44 AM

- - - - -

Team Two was four researchers.

They’d been hard at work, assembling a single, massive device in the SHOCKS Olympia Administrative Wing’s main hall. Everyone else—the teachers, their families, the agents, and every staffer who wasn’t one of the four, was locked inside containment cells in the Geren-Danger wing under Mount Carrie. It wasn’t pleasant. It wasn’t safe. But it was a hell of a lot safer than being anywhere near Mount Olympia when the signal to fire hit.

It was also irrelevant.

Director Ramirez had approved the design. Team Two had assembled it. And they’d gotten it done just in time. Now, they hunkered down and waited for the assembly of Universal Reality Anchors, explosives, timers, and a half-dozen Xuduo-Danger anomalies they’d added to increase its range to detonate—plus one anomaly that they didn’t recognize, but that Claire insisted would fix everything. They had monitoring equipment in their cell.

So, when Sidney triggered it, they knew instantly. Not because the monitoring equipment told them so, but because…

Reality.

Broke.

All four researchers experienced the sensation of staring at themselves as their bodies disintegrated. So did the walls of SHOCKS Olympia.

So did Mount Olympia.

One moment, the immovable mountain stood over them, trillions of tons of sandstone, shale, and basalt protecting the facility from the end of the world. The next, it all vanished, turning to dust. The researchers' disembodied consciousnesses watched as the blast wave they’d created spread across the Olympic Peninsula, with no indication of slowing, reducing everything to ash. It was like a supervolcano had gone off, but with no heat or pain. Just an end.

The end of everything.

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Location Unknown, Location Unknown, Time Unknown

- - - - -

“You see,” I say, “I can’t win. I can’t beat you, and I can’t beat Merge Prime. Not at your game. You’re both too strong. Too experienced. You gave me all the power I could need to defend my reality, but not all the power I’d need to win. Even the makeshift system I came up with couldn’t do that.”

[What are you doing?] the Halcyon System asks. [What is this?]

“Don’t your calculations work anymore?” My heart rate’s flatlining. If I’m right, I’ve just ended my whole reality—and I don’t know if I can fix it. But I do know one thing.

Sidney’s talking to me. [It’s working. I’m going to lose connectivity soon, but this is killing the…killing the merges. It’s…working]

He dies talking to me. I ignore it. I don’t know if my plan will work. The math could be wrong. But I know I’ve pulled the keystone, and now the plastic orca’s falling apart. If I’m lucky, I’ll be able to pick up the pieces. “So, that’s the answer to my first Inquiry. I asked ‘How can I kill a trillion merges?’ And the answer was that I couldn’t. So if I couldn’t kill a trillion merges, I only had one solution.”

[But why?] the System asks.

I smile. I’m beyond its calculations. “Because if I can’t win, I can press the power button. I can take my ball and go home. And sometimes, the only way to win is not to play.”

[But why?] it repeats.

“Because, as my family knows, I’m a sore loser,” I lie.

The truth is a weapon, and if there’s any one memory of Reality Zero I want out there, it’s this. The end of it. Its destruction.

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SHOCKS Olympia Administrative Wing, Washington, USA  - June 25, 2043, 12:46 AM

- - - - -

Reality had cracked. Then, it had shattered. Now, it was well and truly broken.

The bomb was the only thing left for thousands of miles.

Not even the Earth remained. It sat in exactly the place in space where the SHOCKS Olympia Administrative Wing would have been. Nothing remained except for it. And for a small room the researchers who’d built it had attached to it. That room—more of a hallway—led to a door. And that door led to the black sector.

The only anomaly that had survived, besides the components of the bomb necessary to destroy an entire reality, was a blue and green spark. Claire had insisted on its inclusion into the design, though it hadn’t reacted when she touched it, and even though it hadn’t done anything to assist the explosion. That had been the permanence-enhancing anomaly Doctor Twitchy had designed into the merge generator.

It was, in theory, Atero-Danger, but SHOCKS’s database had been unable to activate its helpful features with any real consistency. It had been used, though. Not by Claire, but by a man who hadn’t been a man—a man Claire had killed.

The device—the bomb, the black sector, and the spark—hung mid-air. The bomb sat, expended. The black sector seethed. And the two sparks hovered, waiting for someone to pick them up, make them orb-shaped, and use them again.

They all waited.

It had nothing better to do. There was nothing better to do. The sun winked out as the bomb’s destruction accelerated. Within a matter of minutes, there was nothing left at all.

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Location Unknown, Location Unknown, Time Unknown

- - - - -

Alice burped.

She couldn’t help it. No infovampire had ever eaten so well, so quickly. Even the abomination that had consumed all of Li Mei’s reality had done it slowly. But not her. She’d eaten everything. Every single scrap of information the Halcyon System had about Reality Zero.

And there was a lot.

The Halcyon System had been omniscient. It knew everything there was to know about Alice’s home reality. Or, rather, it had known. The farmlands that had once grown binary fruits of information about Reality Zero were barren.

“Sidney, tell Claire I’m done,” she said.

Sidney didn’t respond.

Alice struggled for a moment. Then she reformed herself and exited the Halcyon System. Her sister stood there, in a suit that made her look older than her fifteen years, her hand on the ceramic grip of the Revolver. Claire couldn’t stop shaking.

She reached out, took Claire’s hand from the gun’s grip, and let her Mom persona take over. “Claire, it’s finished. Let’s get out of here.”

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“Soon,” I say. I squeeze Alice’s hand, and she squeezes mine back. Both of us know what we’re coming back to when we leave: a door, a hallway, and nothing else. “Very soon. You have one more thing to consume.”

[What…who?] The System’s faces contract until it’s a diamond, then a pyramid.

“The second Inquiry I had was much different. ‘Why West End High?’ It’s been something I’ve needed to know for a month, and I’ve abandoned that line of questioning over and over. But it’s a critical question. The bomb ended Merge Prime, but the keystone would have just had it all rebuilt—assuming our fix works.”

“You’re really talking to it?” Alice asks. She’s shaking just as much as I am.

“Yes. Just a minute longer, and we’ll be ready. I want to gloat.” I have no desire to gloat. I’m stalling, even though every second is filled with the agonizing truth that if my math was wrong, I can’t go back. Neither of us can. But the longer I wait, the more certain I’ll be of the final part. “But why West End High? Why the Truth Club’s circle, and the girls’ bathroom in the math wing? I needed to know the answer. For myself, if not for any other reason.

“It doesn’t matter anymore. But I think I understand it. That circle, the Truth Club’s circle, meant nothing. West End was a single point on the map. Merge Prime could have chosen to start its takeover anywhere, and the Revolver could have been placed in any bathroom. I got lucky, that’s all.” I unfurl my angel wings a little.

That’s not the truth. The truth is something the Halcyon System and Merge Prime both know, but I need them to not realize just what I’ve done—and how I’ve done it.

I can’t wait any longer. It’s been long enough. I have to know what I’ve done. It’s time to go home.

“Which means you got unlucky. Alice, can you remove anything that’s not supposed to be there?” I ask. The pressure from her infovampiric rage state washes over me, and I ignore it.

“Yes,” she says. She dives back into the Halcyon System. She’s done so much damage inside of it that it probably doesn’t even know what we are, much less anything about where we’re from. But I’m not going to take a chance. The only memory I want in its database is that of Reality Zero dying.

A second later, she reappears. “Done.”

And just like that, I Mergewalk.

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SHOCKS Black Sector, Location Unknown - June 25, 2043, 12:51 AM

- - - - -

I’m exhausted. That’s the truth.

So is Alice. She’s practically falling asleep on her feet. But we can’t rest right now. I blast a thinling out of the way, and we open the door out of the black sector. “Eat the knowledge of the door,” I say.

“Way ahead of you,” she says. And the door seems to vanish behind us.

We stand in a hallway. A long, narrow hallway, with doors lining it on every side and a powerful anomaly running through the walls. I don’t remember the designation, and it doesn’t matter. It’s a reality-shaper, and right now, it’s the only thing keeping the structure we’re in from succumbing to the extremely low reality levels outside.

Alice follows me through the hall. Every door would lead to a containment cell, if there were any containment cells to lead to. One of them would lead to the one that four SHOCKS researchers bunkered down in, if they weren’t gone. There’s only two doors that lead anywhere, now that Alice has eaten the one leading back to the black sector. One at the far end, where the bomb is. And one to the side.

I ignore the twisting in my gut. The aching, pounding headache. The tinnitus is back with a vengeance. This is, by far, the worst I’ve ever felt. It’d be easy to give up, right here and right now, in my moment of victory. It all seems hopeless.

Instead, I open the main door. The bomb hangs there, in the middle of a void. There’s nothing left.

I was meant to be a guardian angel, but, in order to win at an unwinnable game, I’ve ripped all of Reality Zero apart. There are no stars. No planets. Nothing but empty nothingness, as far as I can see. This is what should have happened to Merge Prime’s origin reality. Instead, I’ve done it to my own.

The math was simple, in the end. All the variables clicked into place. It was a perfect mathematical equation, and in the end, there was absolutely nothing I could do to save Reality Zero. I didn’t possess the power, the knowledge, or anything else I needed to make it happen.

I was too weak, even though Merge Prime knew I was the biggest obstacle in its way and the System made me its champion. All Reality Zero would have had at my hands was a slow extinction through Merge Prime, or a suffocating death in the iron grip of other anomalous system users.

I took the ball. I went home.

And if everyone had to die to make it happen, so be it.

After all, it’s not over yet. I am become death, the destroyer of worlds—an instantaneous apocalypse to defeat the others’ desired ends.

Someone else will have to be the creator, though. Two someones.

Three, after all, is a number of power—and I’ll need three for the Truth Club when this is over—even if one of them is a member I never thought I’d induct.

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