John opened his eyes then closed them again. He realised it didn’t make any difference. He could see through his eyelids with an effort of will. He glanced around seeing through the walls and when he looked down, the entire planet that was hanging below.
He was in a BFO, he could see the outlines around him as the ship’s internal structure and armour spread out into a saucer shape. The whirling power of the engines fascinated him for a moment but his mind went blank as he tried to understand the process. A movement at the periphery of his vision caught his attention and he snapped to focus on it.
Halfway across the ship was another room, a good sized space lined with tables and chairs. Within it several people were pacing back and forth, gesticulating wildly with mouths opening and closing to suggest they were shouting at the others.
Vic and Evie are pissed. Your new vision is weird John, it partially translates across the implant. What’s it like? sent Bob.
“Fucking weird is about right,” John muttered aloud as he raised a hand to rub his eyes and found he could see through the hand as it rubbed at his distended eyelids. “Who’s over there?” he waved a hand in the direction of the meeting he could see.
“The team, plus some of the council,” Bob replied from a speaker on the wall. “Life is there as well,” Bob finished quietly. “You aren’t going to do anything crazy? He knocked you out before you killed Magic but he didn’t hurt you. Magic caught you so you didn’t fall.”
“I’m calmer now. I’m still not happy. Informed consent for medical procedures is a big thing in my book,” John grumbled. He blipped through the ship to arrive in the room and everyone fell silent. Evie barrelled into him to give him a bear hug, pulling back to examine him and flinching when she saw his face.
“This will take some getting used to, love,” said Vic, moving in to take his left hand in her right.
“John, this violation cannot be tolerated. Magic crossed a line and needs to be collared!” said Mindscar in a gentle voice. “I’m glad you’re ok.” John looked at her, he looked through her and followed the lines of her augmentations where they had deviated from natural biology. Something looked off but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Her musculature and circulatory system matched the others in the room and the implants in her brain were the most minimal variants, capable of little more than voice and text chat. The lines in her brain weren’t right though.
“I’ll make that decision,” John said softly. “It’s actually an amazing upgrade for me. I can see pretty much everything.” Mindscar’s face went still for a fraction of a second before resuming her sympathetic demeanour.
“Nonetheless it was a gross violation of your rights! If Magic is willing to be so cavalier with one of Earth's strongest fighters what will he do with the people trapped in his domain! It will be as bad for them as Death’s lands!” Mindscar said.
“Domain? What are you talking about?” asked John.
“You’ve been out for a day, Traveller. I apologise for Magic’s actions. Truly he meant no harm. He cannot make many permanent rituals and he chose to use one on you,” said Life.
“Domains?” John repeated, glaring at the short man.
“Not the best way of putting it. Areas of responsibility might be better. Death is taking over the site of the Spire, there is a lot of high level monster flesh for him to… work with. I’ll be looking after Europe and the steppes. Magic is going to monitor Africa, Liberty will take North America. Frost is going to keep an eye on South America and War is going to rove around helping the rest of us,” said Life with a shrug.
“You’re claiming lands?” he asked, glancing around at the other Signatories and noting the absence of Belisarius. “Where’s bell end?” he wondered.
“Belisarius is not happy about Liberty stepping in to take over ‘his’ territory. He’s withdrawn from the Accords,” said Mindscar bitterly. Belisarius had been one of her strongest allies on the council and his loss stung.
“The Accords are dead anyway. Ryn is more powerful than 90% of the Sigs now,” said Vic, sadness mingled with pride in her voice.
“The territory system, the nobility, is built in for a reason. The System understands what fighting the Void is like. We don’t need it in this case. Normally a Kingdom would gradually grow as people banded together, either against the monsters or each other. We’re kind of imposing it from the top down,” smiled Life.
“And what about the poor bastards in Death and Magic’s ‘realms’?” asked Param.
“They will both be very hands off in their approach. Their lands will end up some of the safest on the planet, once they get dug in,” replied Life.
“Dug in?” asked Breaker in his German accent.
“Digging in is what we all have to do now. We need to turn our world into a fortress and our species into a weapon. Between us my team can do much of the first but orbital facilities and weapons platforms are beyond us. Powers like the Dragon and the Shelly’s, coupled with myself, will turn the natural world into a blade against the invaders. Humans will have to go off world to get serious levels. In the near future, a decade or so, some of you will come back more powerful than we are now. We’ll welcome you with open arms when you do, you’ll be the hope of humanity.”
“Life, you’ve said your team was older when the Advent came?” asked Mindscar.
“I said old, not older,” Life chuckled. “We were all in our sixties or seventies.”
“How can you be so naïve then? People are mostly good but there are plenty of bad apples! Unleashing humanity will let the psychos run rampant!” she barked back.
“Perhaps. The threat of our intervention, and I mean all of us-” he waved a hand at all the Signatories in the room, “-will contain the worst of it. I believe part of John’s job in the past has involved dealing with dangerous individuals who ignore the law and human decency? You already have a protocol in place.”
“Killing kids gone mad from power levelling isn’t a good protocol,” John rumbled quietly. “Do you dream Life? Or have you changed your body so you don’t need to anymore?” John could see through Life and he wasn’t even close to human. Internally he appeared to be structured more like a tree, with bark and pith and core all replacing the normal layout of a human body.
“I still dream, John. Mindscar, take a look in my mind,” he said, swinging his gimlet eyes to focus on the psyker.
Mindscar focussed on him for a moment then gasped and recoiled. Tears streamed down from her eyes that she wiped away frantically.
“Fuck!” she muttered. “That’s just you though. The other Monarchs aren’t like you. Death and Magic feel dead or mad on the surface. God knows what Frost and Liberty are like!”
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“Death lost his wife in the first wave. He hasn’t been the same since. Magic, well, John knows what Magic is like. He’s broken but his only concern is survival, his own and our species,” Life said with a shrug. “We are what we are. We’re all amalgamations of scars.”
“There isn’t much we can do against you anyway,” said Starfall. “You put John down without breaking a sweat. I couldn’t do that.”
“We don’t need to do anything,” said Felix. “We can simply go off-world ourselves if we want the power to change things!”
“Power!” echoed Felicity.
“And leave the Church behind? Leave Wayfaire and the Topping? We’ve got responsibilities.” John smiled at the twins as they glared at him.
“We forsook the Church. Our oaths were real and true,” said Felicity.
“True. Did the Saint not do the same?” finished Felix.
“I’m not a bloody Saint,” John complained as a chair appeared behind him and he sat down. “Yes I was ‘real and true’. But we have friends- Family!- that we have to be sure are safe.”
“Give us a few months, please, all of you.” Life’s voice cut through the tension. “You’ll get to see that the changes we demand are only for the best.”
“For the greater good?” Evie’s voice was cutting. “I’ve heard that type of thing before!”
“Not that. The best. Sarah, you’ve seen my dreams. There is one that stands out amid reliving the horror, isn’t there?” Mindscar leaned back and nodded reluctantly.
“Yes, it’s complex, more conceptual than an image. The image is victory. Victory over the Void and a safe planet for humanity. It’s about avoiding extinction. There’s a harshness to it, sacrifices to be made and debts to be paid.”
“Nothing good is easy. There are probably other people out in the cosmos already, they’ll be an unknown until they come back and we can get a sense of their capabilities but we’re counting on them as well.” Life rose to his feet slowly and John blinked at the way his flesh moved in comparison to a normal person.
“We need you more than you can know. Please help us?” Life said.
***
The Carnival had portalled back to the Bunker and the whole team were sitting around a comfortably appointed room buried deep underground.
“We can’t just leave!” said Vic. “What about Ryn? What if the Monarchs are crazies? If nothing else you need to be here to manage the portals!”
“What can we do if’n they are doolally?” muttered Reg. “That Life bloke put John to sleep in a blink of an eye! From bloody miles away as well!”
“Bob can’t come anyway,” grumbled Evie. “But we need to go. If they do turn out to be pricks we’ll need the levels.”
“I can come actually. I’ve been planning on it for some time. I can send Doris and Bob-Prime, plus a small army of drones in the stash,” Bob’s voice came from a speaker on the wall. His sudden deficit of drones was being remedied as quickly as he could. In light of getting to salvage the machines he lost in the Loire it was just a question of a few weeks and he would be back at full strength. “I wouldn’t miss out on it for the world, think of all the exotic materials I can get my manipulators on!”
“So you two both want to come?” asked John. Evie nodded and Bob agreed. Vic turned a glare on her husband.
“What about Ryn? What about the portals?” she asked icily.
“Base the kids out of Mars. Leave a single portal that I can seal. There’ll still be loads of me’s here. I’ll be leaving several server farms to run the planned orbital defences and keep BME running smoothly. She can spend some time with Uncle Bob,” he offered.
“What about disconnection? Won’t the local Bob’s start getting a bit… individualistic?” asked Flash.
“Nope. That issue was solved. When we get back I’ll need to reintegrate. No biggie.”
“I would not like to leave my packs but there are capable leaders among them now,” said Zeeg. “I’ve gotten used to being the strongest on Earth. I want to get that back as soon as possible.”
“That’s three for going. Reg?” asked John.
“Four you mean?” the old man squinted at John.
“I’m undecided. Vic is against, Evie, Bob and Zeeg are for. What about you?” John said.
“I’ll go if we agree to it. Christ knows what’d happen to ye fools if I stayed in Seahaven,” Reg grumbled.
“I’ll go. It might give Claire some time to calm down about South America!” chuckled Flash.
Raoul and Sam looked at each other silently for a long moment then nodded at each other.
“We’ll come,” said the big man simply, with a bored shrug. “We’re not going to break up the team and we need to get the levels. When we get back I’ll see how War does in a proper spar.”
John looked at Vic who was glancing around the whole team.
“I just don’t know! I don’t want to miss out on so much of Ryn’s life! She’s just a girl.”
“She’s almost as strong as us now. You’ve seen what she can do since hitting forty one. Love, in a few years she’ll be wanting to go off-world as well. Now everyone knows how strong we can get there’s going to be hundreds, thousands of people signing up. Hell there might already be thousands out there already. We might be a lot further down the totem pole than we think,” John said gently.
“But our little girl!” Vic blurted, rising to her feet and pacing back and forth.
“Vic, we can’t protect anyone anymore. The Monarchs can do what they want. Life and War seem ok but if Magic goes loco, or Liberty turns out to be a complete psycho, we can’t stop them. This is the only way,” John replied, rising to embrace her in a hug. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she pressed her face into his shoulder.
“Why not ask her how she feels about it?” said Evie. “The little twerps got a good head on her shoulders. If she’s happy to camp out at uncle Bob’s Martian mansion for a few years then it’s fine?”
“Maybe. You’ve all forgotten one crucial fact,” Vic pulled away from John and dried her eyes.
“Eh?” said Reg.
“We need two more team members to be able to sign up.”
***
Epilogue:
Legate Anton scurried through the back streets of the Eternal City. When they rebuilt Rome they’d leant heavily on the Roman aesthetic. Scrollwork adorned the marble pillars that lined the front of almost every building. As a bit of a history buff he knew how grossly Hollywood this reinvention of the Empire was. There was little attention paid to historical accuracy in pursuit of appearance.
He knew he was in deep shit. His plans had come to nought. All his allies in Rome had vanished, presumed dead. Every one of his contacts in the Reich and the Court were either blocking him or dead. His bodyguards had all fled when that unkillable level seventy three had strolled into the Imperial palace and laid waste to it. So much for loyalty, he had thought bitterly as he scrambled to escape via secret tunnels leading from his office to the riverside port.
His focus now was on making it to the airship hub, a tall structure with berths for a dozen airships at a time. It kept passing across his field of view as he wove his way towards it by a circuitous route to hopefully evade any attempts to intercept his flight. Flight. What a marvellous word! He needed to board the ship heading to Omara on the coast of the Arabian Sea. From there he could move overland towards the hidden facility behind the Wall where his forces had illicitly harvested so much Essence.
The operation had been simple in practice. Slipping teams onto rotas was done by discreet bribes to the Council officials who oversaw that part of the paperwork and then the Essence was passed up the chain until it reached the Legates. They had then used it to boost up their army in advance of the attack on the Court.
His thoughts turned even more bitter as he thought of the army. Millions of Essence poured down the drain due the utter incompetence of his officials. These “Monarchs” had been back on Earth for weeks but none of his spies, nor traders nor anyone had noticed the bastards!
He needed to disappear, regroup and find Goodman. If he could get his Identify information altered he could at least live some sort of a normal existence. He pulled his hood down lower over his eyes. It was a simple garment, similar to the hoodies popular before Advent and made of cheap materials. No more lavish monster fur robes for poor Anton.
“Where are you rushing off to my friend?” asked a familiar voice from just behind him. Anton spun, reaching for a device clipped to his belt but he froze and then beamed a happy grin.
“Goodman! Just the man!” he whispered fiercely. “I need a favour from you and I’ll be sure to make it worth your while once this minor setback is behind me!”
Goodman stopped leaning against a wall, a wall Anton was certain had been un-leant-upon a moment earlier and strolled round, looking Anton up and down as he went.
“I’m afraid there is little use in a broken tool,” giggled Goodman, flashing pearly white teeth at the Legate.
“If I can reach my base I can make this all go away!” he muttered, unnerved by the laughing black man.
“Oh, why would I let that happen? Are you aware of the concept of a loose end?” Anton paled but nodded reflexively. “Good. I am not one for leaving such threads to hang. Or perhaps I prefer to hang threads like that? Who knows? I rarely do!” a mirthful chuckle echoed down the narrow street, which Anton suddenly realised was completely devoid of other people.
“Step into my world, little man, and see what becomes of you?” a rose coloured portal, framed by pale pink stone, rose up in front of Anton and some force seized his limbs, marching him through like a badly worked marionette. Magic followed, giggling to himself as he let the illusion fall and the floating torso followed Anton into the unknown.