It had been a bright and sunny day when Xia had ruined her life forever. The air had been dry enough that the heat hadn’t been oppressive and even if it had her lab was air conditioned, she’d even walked to work, a rarity but weather that splendid was simply too good to waste.

Her first cup of tea of the day, black tea leaves, oat milk, no sugar, was being left beside her mouse pad to go cold, and likely curdle before she remembered it, when she’d opened the email that would ruin her.

It was marked urgent, not in itself alarming, management always had an inflated sense of how important their whims were and as long as it didn’t get in the way of actual work then, as project lead, Xia was more than happy to indulge them especially when they were so close to moving into human trials.

She should have known better really, nothing ever went this well without some sort of sucker punch laying in wait for the moment it would be least expected.

To Dr. Moran,

Project funding has been cut due to upcoming merger, new parent company has no desire to continue line of research. Layoffs are likely and I will require evaluations of each team member to consider their future with the company.

Please dispose of all samples by end of day and have all hard drives with proprietary data handed in for wiping.

Yours sincerely

Rafael Markos

Department Head (R&D)

P.S Sorry Xi, I fought for this one but Vitatronics apparently has no desires to develop a cureall, if I’d pushed any harder we’d both be looking for new jobs.

Xia lost track of how many times she’d read those meagre lines, her life’s work just burning in her mind’s eye. Certainly the tea’s temperature had sunk beneath even her low standards for acceptability by the time she could bring herself to stop. Fortunately, or so she’d thought at the time, she was always the first one in and even her near hour long fugue had not seen her colleagues arrive yet.

She believed Raf when he swore he’d fought for the project, he’d been project lead before her but had been kicked upstairs and she’d been promoted to head it in his stead.

A more cynical mind would perhaps think that what was to come had been planned, making sure she got the email as soon as she got into the office, giving her time to think about it; and overthink about it.

By the time Zhi, Melissa and Alexander had entered the office she’d already planned her heist. The nanites were being kept in an inert suspension and she just knew that she would be being searched on the way out. She would not be the first scientist to try and smuggle something out of the building after their project got canned, or in one very memorable instance someone had tried to smuggle something into the building, the something being a kilo and a half of Semtex, gods knew where they’d gotten it.

Still no system was perfect and there was a fairly easy way to get the nanites out of the building. So she spent the day collecting up laptops and phones much to universal dismay, and come an hour before end of day she took the nanites out of the freezer they were kept in and walked them to the incinerator.

If anyone had been keeping a close eye on the cameras they might have noticed it took her a few seconds longer to round one corner and appear on the next camera but even then no one would have thought much of it. With tears in her eyes she dumped the contents of the sealed case into the incinerator, making sure the cameras caught it, then dumped the case in for good measure.

The day continued as normal after that, she handed over the assembled hardware, confirmed all relevant emails had been wiped and just like that quietly closed the book on that chapter of her life.

Walking out through the metal detector without incident and suffering through a pat down without comment, even if in her opinion the guard had been a lot grabbier than she needed to be – in fact to her surprise she would find that the hand on her breast pocket had in fact been slipping her her number. The drive home had been tense, she’d never done anything like this before and the nerves were getting to her to the point she accidentally cut up two drivers, the honking horns like blades on a raw nerve in her anxious state.

Despite her paranoia she made it home without incident, booting up her personal computer and just spending a couple hours relaxing online, a few videos, a couple social media spats, just chilling really. It was only as evening began to turn to night that she allowed herself to inspect her stolen goods. Smuggled out in the one place no one would think to look, or at the very least the one place they couldn’t reasonably check.

With a trembling hand she took a kitchen knife and sliced open her palm, the blood flowing slowly into the sink but not for long, even as she watched the cut healed, first scabbing over – though the scab was ever so slightly silver – then moments later the scab too was reabsorbed leaving unblemished and unscarred skin beneath. The first human trial was a success, provided there weren’t any side effects.

The first side effect revealed itself seconds later, a slow clapping from behind her.

“Magnificent.” Rafael breathed, “Bravery, ingenuity and defiance in the face of forces greater than you. Just magnificent.”

Xia whirled on the spot, knife still in her hand but the scientist let it drop almost instantly, the clatter to the floor shockingly loud to her ears as her eyes narrowed upon the object in her boss’ hands. She’d never seen a gun in real life before.

It was like that barrel was consuming the whole world, no matter how she tried she couldn’t drag her eyes away from it, it stole the words that wanted to pour forth.

“Your mistake was not arguing by the way.” The man with the gun continued conversationally. “Noone just lets their life’s work get burned. Now let’s see, they were able to deal with a laceration but what about something more significant.”

When asked with the benefit of hindsight the first thing Xia would recollect was just how little it hurt, there was a flash, a loud bang and the next thing she knew was sat on the cheap faux wood linoleum of her kitchen floor with a hand over her stomach, shirt slowly staining crimson beneath it.

It didn’t hurt as much as she’d imagined, at least not at first, just a growing feeling of numbness spreading out from under her splayed fingers. “You shot me.” She said numbly, what a stupid thing to say and yet it was the only thing coming to mind. “You actually shot me.”

The pain was coming through now, she’d expected a sharp pain or perhaps a shooting pain, no pun intended, but it was more of a burning sensation like someone was holding a candle, or perhaps an acetylene torch, to her abdomen.

“Let me see it.” Rafael demanded, kneeling in front of her to pull her hand away from the wound. That should have been a terrible mistake, Xia had been keeping pressure on it at least, she wished she could have said it was the result of half-remembered first aid training but in truth it had just been instinct, and it hadn’t been that much pressure.

“Good, the entry wound is already healed.” He observed, “Slight scarring but that’s fading too, I wonder how you managed to make that happen…” One hand reached around her, feeling the fabric of her shirt, “No exit wound. If I aimed right I should have hit your liver, if you’re still alive in ten minutes we’ll know they fixed the damage.”

With that he withdrew, in hindsight perhaps she should have gone for the gun, or at least done something, but she just sat there numbly, trying not to die and worried she was going into shock.

Finally she managed to summon up enough will to ask a single question, “Why?”

“It’s just the job Xi, nothing personal. For what little it’s worth I want you to survive this, we could use your brains. I couldn’t be more proud of you in truth, I was worried for a while you’d just torch them and have done with it, as it was I didn’t even have to cover up the theft, simply marvellous.”

Xia tried to parse that through her punch drunk brain, “You won’t get away with this, someone will have heard the shot, the police-“

“Will find us both long gone by the time they arrive, and they’re going to have much bigger problems than a missing biologist soon. It may not seem like it but this is the best thing that could happen to you.” He actually believed it Xia realized.

“Who do you really work for then?” She asked, trying to keep him talking, sure he planned to be gone soon but if she could run out the clock… well she’d almost certainly spend the rest of her life behind bars for theft, possibly even corporate espionage if things went badly enough, but right now she’d take it over kidnapping and possible murder.

“Oh no one you’d have heard of. Speaking of which.” He took out a small orb of what looked like polished glass, at least until it began to glow with a soft blue light, “Markos to Acquisitions, target is acquired, pull me out.”

She didn’t remember much after that beyond screaming until her throat was raw. With the nanites that took a long time.

*

That was a year ago. It felt like a lifetime, and perhaps it had been, certainly it was in many ways different Dr. Xia Moran who was working late at night in one of the few labs she had access to to try and weaponize a panacea.

The current Xia would have thrown the knife, would have closed the distance, ignored the bullets piercing through all too fragile flesh, and taken the gun from Rafael’s hands. Or at least she’d have tried, were Rafael the mild mannered scientist turned management he’d pretended to be it would likely have worked.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

She knew better now, Rafael Markos was a Class 2 Eternal, a master mage who could survive anything up to and including a beheading, was a master of at least two martial styles and had a punch that could shatter concrete. Gods above and below but she hated feeling inadequate and there was nothing like living amongst superhumans to engender that particular emotion.

The nanites were also far improved from what they’d begun as, it turned out that Rafael had in fact copied the code for them, using magic rather than more traditional methods of violating copyright. Since then they’d had many significant changes, first and foremost the ability to produce and administer anaesthetics, but other improvements had been to allow them to address vitamin deficiencies, to draw materials out from the air when needed rather than having to rely exclusively upon what her blood and tissue had on offer, to stimulate various glands and, after a lot of simulation testing, they’d been used to increase her bone density.

All good and sensible improvements. All thoroughly defensive in nature.

She was getting tired of constantly playing defence.

A few more minutes of careful coding, a quick run through the simulation to make sure she hadn’t made any fatal errors, an upload to her nanites and boom she had a weapon.

A quick check of the clock told her that she had another hour until the deadline Guide had given her, time enough for a bite to eat.

She technically didn’t need food anymore, or rather she didn’t need it often, but she still felt hunger. She was reticent to let that particular signal to her brain get blocked, eating was one of the few pleasures allowed her and it often filled a social need as well.

Alas her dreams of dark chocolate brownies, a prawn mayonnaise sandwich and, most importantly of all, a steaming hot cup of coffee were to be dashed about half-way there.

‘Master Ouro of the Temporal Cascade requests your presence in the Sparring Hall.’ Guide informed her politely. ‘Unfortunately I had trouble locating you and thus must be blamed for your tardiness’

Translation: Guide had waited for her to finish, plus a few extra minutes so it wouldn’t be blatantly obvious.

“Thank you Guide. Please let him know I will be along as soon as I can.” She answered, turning on a black booted heel to head in the opposite direction.

The Sparring Hall was somewhere she normally needed an escort and was one of the few parts of the Citadel outside the Training Sector that she was allowed to access. She hadn’t seen much need if she were honest, she was being trained to act as a medical respondent so dick-measuring with swords really wasn’t in her wheelhouse, just the bare minimum needed to survive an encounter with one of the Beyond’s lesser spawn.

Still she had been here a few times, usually dragged there by Ouro who was quite partial to the sparring and thought it important she be there to witness any of the more interesting exhibition matches. To get there she had to pass through a checkpoint but she was a fairly familiar face by now and Guide was there to vouch for her.

Not ten minutes after being summoned she was stood in front of Master Ouro in his private sparring room, he was in his full combat gear. Robes a rainbow storm of enchanted gems and the iridescent silk of some strange beast. He had a helmet on, a rarity for any mage, a simple adamantium Corinthian helm but lacking the plume.

It was technically possible to enchant adamantium but even Ouro didn’t have the clout to get the artificers to do it for him. That kind of skill tended to be used on much larger projects, starting at starships and scaling up. Dyson Spheres were a lot more economical to build when you could tell the laws of physics to go take a smoke break.

Still even a couple centimetres of unenchanted adamantium could have stopped a sixteen inch shell dead. Sure the person inside the helmet would have had their brain liquified in the impact but the helmet would still have held.

He also had his battlestaff with him, a rarity considering he tended to rely on his blade instead, a single edged, straight bladed thing with a nifty spell piercing enchantment on the edge and a narrow, pressure triggered, disintegrator in the tip.

The staff was handcarved by Ouro himself, it had to be, there were few mages who could enchant in four dimensions, every time Xia looked at it the runes were different despite the fact she knew they were the same runes just at a different point in time. The cap was carved to look like a dragon’s head and if it did anything Xia was yet to see it do so.

“You took your time.” He told her shortly, the irony of a chronomancer complaining of tardiness apparently lost on him, or perhaps he’d just already heard every variation on that joke before.

“Guide struggled to find me.” She explained, moving to sit in one of the chairs overlooking the arenas, not that it was really an overlook on the main chamber, the Sparring Hall was an instanced space, an unknown number of copies of the blank and empty room all occupying the same space. Apparently there wasn’t even magic involved, a fact that boggled her brain. Spatial mechanics were far out of the realm of her expertise.

“I do worry about that.” He mused, “Guide used to be a lot… snappier. I know infomorphs can’t really get old but… I hope they’re okay. Still you’re here now, I hope you’re ready for your first big assignment because we’ve got orders.”

Xia forgot to act surprised, not that it would have mattered either way, it wasn’t like the people around her had been quiet about it. “What sort of orders? I’m meant to be in medical…”

“Precisely, you’re going to be medic for the team they’re having me put together.” Ouro grinned, almost bouncing from foot to foot, “This mission’s a juicy one apprentice, a really juicy one. We’re being sent deep into the Beyond and the team they’re giving me, we’re talking capital I Immortals, this is my chance to make a good impression, maybe finally get taken seriously by Council.”

She at least managed to refrain from rolling her eyes, “Couldn’t you have told me all this in a message Master?” Xia managed to keep it merely formal rather than outright waspish, if barely.

“There’s a complication.” He admits, dialling from manic back to stuffy and officious. “One of the Immortals is to be Bastion Zero.”

“Fuck.” The raven haired woman blurted before her mind could catch up with her mouth, she glanced nervously at her teacher, already braced for an outburst on propriety.

“Fuck indeed.” He agreed sagely, “Apparently there’s some recordings of him in the Sparring Hall, as well as a few combat simulations you can fight against if you have clearance. Let’s get a look at what we’re dealing with…” The mage crossing to the booth’s console, inputting his credentials and his desired opponent, grumbling in annoyance as he had to bypass several warnings and two separate health and safety wavers only for a large red ‘ACCESS DENIED’ to dominate the screen.

Xia had to restrain a chuckle at that, anything that frustrated the stuffy mage amused her. What she wasn’t expecting was for three of the Citadel guards, all in power armour and all carrying obnoxiously large guns that were aimed at Ouro, the three spreading out to be almost impossible to take out at once even as the magic nullifiers were stilled rolling into the room.

Ouro very slowly and carefully places his battlestaff on the floor, unclipping his sword belt before he raised his hands, keeping them flat as he did so, even with three nullifiers on the floor drawing in mana and disrupting spells as they formed a mage of his calibre would still be able to cast and if his fingers even so much as twitched he’d likely have been fired upon. “I am sure this is a dreadful misunderstanding.”

“It had better be.” A voice like milled gravel growled, the owner stepping into the doorway, Xia didn’t bother hiding her gasp. M’kal was a living legend, the archdemon a towering figure with bulging muscles and skin so deeply purple it might as well have been black, a crown of daemonfire dancing over his spiralling horns. The Master of Scout’s gaze held no fondness for his subordinate. “Explain why you attempted to unleash Bastion Zero.”

“I… what? I just loaded a simulation-“

Xia had never seen a demon facepalm before, another thing to cross off her bucket list. The demon’s sigh was so deep she imagined she could feel the pressure change in the room, “Please,” M’kal began, the literal fire in his eyes dying down to embers, “please tell me I didn’t just have to scramble a security team because you couldn’t be bothered to read a warning and forgot to get permission ahead of time.”

“What-? But-?” Ouro was flabbergasted, hands still high in the air, though with M’kal present and the utter bewilderment of the chronomancer, the security team at least were relaxing somewhat, guns now pointed at the floor rather than at Ouro’s chest. “But Susan said I had clearance.”

A second facepalm, much louder than the last and this time Xia wasn’t imagining the sigh actually changing the air currents in the room. “Of course she did. Dare I even ask why?”

“I’ve been assigned Bastion Zero to my exploratory team and I was hoping to take his measure before meeting him in person.” Ouro explained, slowly starting to lower his hands though he made no move to pick his staff back up.

“That is impossible.” The Master of Scouts replied, stepping over to Ouro to pick his datapad up off the floor, “I would have had to sign off on something like that personally and… huh.” It was a very solid huh. If it was a pier you could have moored oil tankers to it. “That’s not right.”

The demon was scrolling through the documents with increasing urgency, “When did I… Oh… well shit.” M’kal drew back to his full height, “The good news is there won’t be a disciplinary over this, for you at least. I, on the other claw, need to have a serious conversation with Susan.”

“What should we do in the meantime sir?” Ouro asked, finally collecting his equipment from the floor and starting to fumble with the buckle of his belt, perhaps a little shaken.

“Just do what you were going to do, it’s not an awful idea and at this point the wheels are in motion. I need to go stop a bunch of people from panicking because Susan apparently knows the full name of the monster we keep in the basement.” The demon shook his head in all too human annoyance, “And I need to learn to actually read the paperwork I’m given.”

He crossed to the console, having to hunch over it and began to very gently put in overrides on the touchscreen using a clawtip that was more like a short sword. “There we go. Good luck.”

“Why do we need permission just to fight a simulation?” Xia asked, finding her voice now the prospect of violence seemed off the table.

“Ah, that. Well…” The demon gave an overmuscled shrug, “it’s an accurate simulation, even at the lower bounds, apparently whatever maintains the database can’t actually lie about what the opponent can do, so even if we put in limits if we don’t know they can do it… there’s a small chance… practically nonexistent… that Bastion Zero can attack the real you through the simulation.”

With that pleasant thought M’kal left, ducking his head under the door frame to avoid catching his horns, the security team following after him.

Master Ouro stared at the empty doorframe before slowly crossing the room to close it, locking it for good measure, the leather skinned mage looked a little bit dazed, certainly not in a fit state to be confronting the scariest monster the Citadel, theoretically, could call upon.

M’kal was a living legend, the demon a former scout leader himself, coming to prominence when, cut off on a scouting trip gone wrong, he and his team had emerged into a world undergoing its final death throes under siege by the Mother of Swarms.

Only the demon had emerged alive, with his spatial mage dead he’d had to hold out against the great swarm, each warform more adjusted to kill him specifically than the last, it had taken over a thousand years to extract him, his scout team simply assumed dead until someone had noticed that there was a light on the Multiversal Map thought long extinguished.

That was the kind of power needed to be a senior power in the Citadel, to be boasted about, an exemplar of what could be achieved through hard work, training and, even the Citadel’s propaganda machine would admit, a bit of luck.

Bastion Zero was not that sort of power, Bastion Zero was the kind of power you didn’t talk about just in case it somehow heard you. Noone knew what he could do. Noone especially wanted to. Noone knew how he was contained. All people knew was the name.

The name was a spectacular case of bureaucracy gone byzantine. Bastions were numbered by order of discovery or creation, and the Citadel of Eternity was designated Bastion One. What to do when it was determined at a later date that one of the Citadel’s founders was themselves immortal? Bastion Zero was the answer. When later founders were found to be of Bastion status the categorizers simply gave up, declaring the use of negative numbers simply too ridiculous and a mockery of the system, but Bastion Zero remained.

Ouro didn’t immediately cross to the console to get shunted into the empty sparring chamber his private room overlooked, instead he poured himself a drink, a calming tonic, apparently favouring the alchemical over the alcoholic. Downing it in a single gulp he poured a second measure, moving to the sofa looking out on the chamber and began slowly nursing it.

That left Xia at something of a loose end, she wasn’t exactly enamoured with the idea of sharing the sofa with him but just standing there awkwardly wasn’t appealing either and Master Ouro had views on apprentices who spoke out of turn. He’d never turned physical but the man had a bellow that could rattle windows.

Four minutes of this uneasy silence, four minutes of her life that Xia would have paid good money to get back, but eventually Ouro stood, knocking back the last of his drink and startling just a little at the sight of her. Great, he’d forgotten she was even there. Again.

“Well young Xia, let’s face the dreaded Bastion Zero shall we?” He suggested with the forced optimism of a man who’s stepped off of a cliff and is trying to flap his arms to fly. With a quick few inputs he selected the Citadel’s greatest monster at his weakest possible setting and was gone.

With his absence Xia relaxed again, taking the time to even grab some popcorn before sitting on the couch. The popcorn fell to the ground unheeded as she looked into the sparring hall and saw the face of a monster. The face of the monster.