ALERT

RECALIBRATION IN EFFECT

CEASING BROAD SPECTRUM SUPPRESSION

LIMITED HIGH INTENSITY SUPPRESSION OF REACTIVE, TELEPATHIC, METALLOKINETIC AND TELEPORTATION POWERS

AWAIT TIMED WINDOW FOR USE OF POWERS

Shen was burning out. About time, I thought, he'd been strong, upper 5 or even lower 6 when it came to his Crafter and Technomancer abilities, especially when they'd been augmented by the AI controlling him. He'd been burning the candle at both ends for over a day now, the AI eking out every drop, swiftly alternating between modes so as to maintain a background suppression of most dangerous powers, and even covering a volume as massive as Mars and its immediate orbit.

Now, they were reigning him in, focusing on the most dangerous powers Lumen possessed; specifically the Reactive element of Consul's abilities. BULWARK was deemed beneath their notice, and dampening Technomancy and Biomancy would have hurt the remaining allied metahumans more than it would help (or so they reasoned). The ones with powers still under interdiction had to wait for random windows where the field would momentarily let up, so that they could quickly exercise them before it was clamped shut again.

With my XRAY access, I saw a message most didn't.

PROTOCOL GILGAMESH SPURNED ACTIVATED

APOTHEOSIS PROGRESSION SUPPRESSED, EFFECTIVENESS UNKNOWN

Another measure against Consul. I didn't know what made him go off the deep end, but he had been on the cusp of Apotheosis in the first place, and preventing a near maximal Class 6 from becoming stronger at an inconvenient time was as good a shout as any.

Well, I did know, or at least had a strong suspicion. Lady Purple was incredibly powerful, I'd never seen an official rating for her, her dossier was incredibly vague even with XRAY clearance, but she had to be much like Shen, borderline 6. She'd been fucking around with people on Earth while physically being across the system, and I didn't have concrete evidence that the limit she'd demonstrated in needing to chain her powers through sympathetic links was too strong an impediment.

There wasn't even an official bounty on her, unlike Lycosa or Monarch, but I didn't take that as a sign that she wasn't a threat. No, the people or nations motivated to kill her wouldn't be swayed by mere money.

Could she induce Apotheosis in Consul? Nobody seemed ready to take the risk.

Through the camera feeds, I saw the remaining metahumans on board the Agnimatajay breathe sighs of relief as they were spared the effects of the Anchor, they'd been several cuts above the norm to have even been functioning in the first place, but now they flared with newly reinvigorated energy. Drones were repaired in moments, the wounded healed with a touch. The mecha hosting Gargant perked up, warship-grade weaponry at the ready. A harried Ex Nihilist and a Crafter were roped in, and under the stern instruction of Gargant, began making that fucking thing as large as could still fit in the bay.

Maybe they'd catch Machina now, when he no longer had an excuse for not using his "Healing" abilities, but progress in that regard continued apace, and nobody seemed to be in a rush to press him into service. Florette was working hard enough for two, infusing her powers into the few remaining targets, then being drawn aside to conserve her strength in expectation of more wounded to come.

"Sen. I am forwarding the draft you're working on. I am aware it's incomplete, but important revisions will be propagated in real-time." The AI, Bahadur, informed me. I hoped it did a good job packaging it up, most of it had been frenzied stream of consciousness barely put legibly on digital paper.

I'd done my best to outline the risks posed by Lumen, without too much interference from Machina. Either he was too busy to care, or he thought what I knew wasn't likely to make a difference. Neither option was reassuring.

The skirmish against the undead vessels was going slowly, but primarily because the fleet had switched to a defensive posture with our metahumans. One by one, now forced to share the more powerful Teleporters, most of the fleet had teleported back to the night side of Mars, away from the bulk of the hostiles. We could have devoted more energy to hunting them down, but the emphasis was on keeping our metahumans ready for the worst.

Looking at Tieyi, I didn't blame them.

A portal had opened beyond the effective range of the living Reality Anchor, even when Shen had been taxing himself. A stream of metal had poured through, more and more, a never ending deluge of heavy elements given life. It hadn't been just that asteroid, even if it was initially as large as Kentucky before it was drained of material usable with metallokinesis, several automated depots laden with more had seemingly been subverted.

It wasn't so far that the fleet couldn't reach out and hit it, fusion warheads had been sent to destroy the portal, but were forced to detonate at less than optimal ranges for fear he'd take over the metal components. While I saw weapons with teleportation devices, they seemed too valuable to use up so early in the engagement, especially given that Lumen could likely just make a new portal. I'd seen so myself, the man with a glowing arm who had met me in the Nevadan desert had used some kind of gizmo, almost like a 3D pen made for extruding plastic, to draw the portal. Didn't seem like he was making it himself, likely just drawing the attention of the true creator.

Even railguns were ineffective, the sabots stolen away and contributing a pitiful amount to the roiling mass. Lasers still pounded the growing ball, but even as they boiled away kilotons, it was simply allowed to radiate away heat and then re-assembled into the larger organism.

My, Hu Junya, you've had a glow up.

I knew there were other munitions still being reserved, primarily amat, maybe some of the graviton torpedos should the previous frenzy of murder not deplete them all. I still suspected they'd be ineffective, the metal didn't really care how much it was pummeled or vaporized, it would just flow together all the same. Perhaps tossing a black hole at it would work, but that wasn't easy for even the Kill Star, or so the tac told me. Turns out they held their cards close to the black hearts beating in their chest, unwilling to tell the UN their plans or intent. The rogue AI came first and foremost, as soon as they had a solid target they'd give it all they had.

Well, I guess they didn't think the UN fleet was said target, or it would quickly cease to be quite as solid.

Did Bahadur and the others suspect? They were engaging in near maximal caution, but measures that could stand up to a Centaur AGI or even a lone Technomancer would prove ineffective against both. The fleet doctrine was built on the assumption the aliens hadn't gotten their hands on any significant number of metahumans, let alone powerful ones. A great deal of blood and human lives were shed to keep it that way. Ask Grim, or don't, it's a painful subject.

Huh. Hadn't thought about him in ages, maybe he was having a good day back on Earth. I could almost see his glum hangdog face, with the barely controlled stubble.

At any rate, even if we could only slow down the Dyson Swarm's construction instead of eliminating it for good, the multiple breeding facilities the aliens tirelessly built for cloning humans were more susceptible to bombs teleported places you didn't want them to be. And plenty of Clairvoyants excelled at locating high densities of humans, be they living seemingly normal lives in hidden colonies or dreaming in VR.

Worryingly, the imaging techniques the fleet threw at Tieyi showed a core of something opaque to the best scans, even gravimetry. Inhumanly dense, almost an impediment to neutrinos, if we had a convenient source on the far side, which we didn't. I thought of neutronium, after all, Lumen had shown they could harness it when El Presidente paid them. What were they hiding in there? Supes who weren't as resistant to artillery bombardment as their metal buddy was?

At any rate, we hadn't dug that deep into the core of the living planetesimal, the UN fleet was holding fire with the majority of their munitions, believing a concentrated alpha strike would better cripple or destroy him.

Even at this distance, I could see his power at play, gently tugging at the drones that came closest, even if they were more than capable of overcoming it. Yeah, Apotheosis had been kind to Junya, if the Chinese had known he'd get this powerful, they'd have had no compunctions about glassing New Taipei to deny anyone else access to him, if they couldn't get him themselves.

I was momentarily bombarded with notifications, informing me that I had been added to several working groups within the UNSC Command and Control network. As expected, it was mostly the AIs doing the heavy lifting, but a few moderately augmented humans like me and the odd supe in a supervisory role all had a say in things.

Task List:

1) Optimize allocation of resources for dealing with multiple threats, namely Consul, Lumen, and the Centaur AI. Severe losses have broken down the existing contingency plans and chain of command for dedicated metahuman squads, do your best to find useful synergies.

2) Consider ways of using metahuman powers to enhance infosec by preventing infiltration of computational hardware by said AI.

I tried to cheekily delete option 2, or mark it as "failed before you idiots noticed", but as I was sadly becoming accustomed to, I found my efforts channeled elsewhere.

Consul had been a massive wrench in the works, UN policy was to tread lightly when it came to him, while he wasn't held to be a truly existential threat, he had the potential to kill billions before he could be neutralized. I concurred with the general consensus that it was imprudent to divert the bulk of our forces to tackling him, he currently seemed busy destroying a few very expensive drones, and had even engaged one of the zombie ships that had been flying his way on engines forcibly stuck on full throttle.

The plan was to send Gargant and a rotating contingent of 6s and 5s to keep him busy. Gargant was a powerhouse, even in his grossly diminished new mech, and could probably keep up for a good while. Bloody hell, I managed to get a peek of the specs of the classified mech they were constructing for him on the side of the wormhole where it wouldn't need to be disassembled, and if it worked like expected, it would be an absolute monster. I'm talking stand in the Mariana Trench and have nostrils peeking out of the waves tall, it's a good thing it was being built in micro gravity, because without Gargant personally present to control it, it would likely collapse under its own weight immediately. I resolved to make sure he made it out alive if I could help it, the firepower and versatility the thing had rivalled even a Kill Star.

I was mildly disappointed to see that the Class 6 Pyrokinetic know as Agnimata (the ship being named as an ode to her victory) was in fact absent. This wasn't too surprising, many or even most of the best supes hadn't been in the fleet, they were low mass and extremely valuable cargo, thus usually teleported right to the wormhole at Sedna, often joining the previous Taskforce until the one they were nominally attached to arrived. Then again, mixed bag, the same was true for most USSF supes, and casualties had been horrendous enough already.

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

Speaking of fire, I had a moment to look at the ship which had Little Jupiter aboard. While he had been a US citizen, some arcane agreement had seen him handed over to the UN well before things got hot on Mars, hence he'd been on our side instead. Perhaps it was a thank you for us capturing him? Who the fuck knows or cares, once he made it to AC that would rapidly become an entirely academic debate. I'd seen him still the sandstorms, and now he did the opposite, churning the Martian atmosphere to mix the hotspots with cooler air from the poles, in a bid to minimize the amount of time everyone had to wait it out in shelters. Yeah, this wasn't his fight, but perhaps if he lived to take part in an engagement around a Gas Giant..

"This is unfortunate. Why is he getting stronger despite the suppression?" I heard a disembodied voice ask, drawing my consciousness back to the minimal VR environment where several others were frantically multi-tasking.

I looked over to what he was alarmed by, and gulped myself.

There was a large amount of data on Consul's reaction to a Reality Anchor, apparently he'd personally demanded quite a bit of exposure when someone had suggested it would weaken his powers enough that either mundane transhumanism or other metahuman powers might work. Didn't go well at all, either the suppression was too weak and he didn't notice, or when the most powerful Anchors (other than the living one in Shen) managed to focus him down, they'd only let procedures be performed with extreme difficulty, but with a very quick reversal the moment he left the field. While different reasons were officially cited, the fear behind the scenes was that he'd become resistant to the effect altogether, and further use in his presence stopped.

This was the first time he'd been getting it full blast straight from the source, Shen, from the Bàdào, was orders of magnitude stronger and more versatile than the artifacts he'd built. Sensors had shown Consul struggling in the broad spectrum suppression, but quickly starting to recover. Now, they'd decided to opt for simply attacking the Reactive element instead, while leaving his Bruiser or Telekinesis untouched. This seemed to have good effect on target, he'd become slower and less durable- I saw an agile drone douse him in medium intensity laser fire and his screaming agony as it burnt away skin and got deep into the muscle before it became ineffective.

We were doing our best not to kill him, despite his berserk state. It's hard to put a price tag on a Class 6, and just the damage to human morale from losing one of the most famous supes around would be debilitating. The aim was to knock him out, or physically neutralize him and hope that sufficed.

I'd remembered hearing that he'd been ineffective in AC, as the alien weaponry had been adapted to stun or disorient him. Unfortunately, that was far from the whole picture, he could adapt to that given enough time, it wasn't possible to just flashbang him indefinitely unless you also threw him deep into a star. The other option they preferred, namely leaving him lost and marooned away from anything of value, wouldn't work when we had Mars in the wings, he could easily chew up the whole planet and potentially make his way to Earth.

I saw the microsecond by microsecond update on the cost-benefit analysis, each tick moving us to the point where the brass decided it was best to simply attempt to kill him outright. I emphasize attempt, because holy shit was the bastard tougher than I'd accounted for.

Remember one of the Munchkins suggesting freezing him in time with a Chronomancer, or my own take of throwing him into a black hole? The former had been tried, and if the particular flavor of redaction was suggestive, it had been around the time of the debacle with the twin. Consul was supposed to be chronologically around forty, but someone had tried to throw him into stasis. You'd expect having the flow of time literally halted would be a good bet for stopping his Reactive powers from working, but we're dealing with a potential Class 7 here. Within moments, he'd begun to visibly age inside the field, at an astounding rate. By the time the field was shut off, who knows how long had passed, but he was decades older by most biological clocks, almost sixty. And he'd been awake and conscious through the whole ordeal. Yeah, that was a moment when a lot of telepathic potential was burnt to excise the memories and restore some degree of sanity, moving the date of failure for WHISPERING SENATORS decades forward. He did have some form of slower than baseline aging, so his perceived time had been much longer, but he didn't appear to be biologically immortal and that misguided endeavor had stolen much of his lifespan, and exacerbated some health conditions that the dossier didn't elaborate on.

Nobody had decided to see how his powers interacted with the natural time dilation of a black hole, but we were still trying less than lethal techniques first.

As for what had my colleague's knickers in a twist. Despite the suppression, in some ways he was performing above spec, becoming faster, stronger, less disoriented, tracking targets despite the attempts to deny him his senses. This was completely unexpected, his Reactive powers had never made him outright superior, just resistant to damage.

That cost-benefit analysis was starting to tip alarmingly to one side.

"What did we notice?" I asked, drawing up the projections and sensor data from another drone that was now doing its best to lead him towards the zombie ships after its previous counterpart with the lasers had been demolished.

"Improved senses, speed and agility. Our blinding lasers are losing effect, and targeted disorientation with Graviton flux is being held back as a last resort."

Normally he'd at least blink, or even shut his eyes and attempt to shield himself if doused with light. Now, the drone found him shrugging off enough coherent light that just the scattered reflection off his skin made the cameras struggle to focus. Was this a sign of Apotheosis? Our Clairvoyants didn't think so, but they were wrong more often than they'd admit or I'd like.

At least he was chasing the drone I was watching, and getting closer to the majority of the undead fleet.

On the other hand, Tieyi approached, unheeding of the abuse unleashed upon him by the fleet from standoff range. Turns out that an ocean of metal is incredibly difficult to destroy, when simply destroying the integrity of the structures built out of it wasn't an option. Shoot holes in it, and he'd plug them, vaporize kilotons and the moments later he'd draw the gas or vapor back into the roiling mass. How did you even kill him? Post Apotheosis, his human form was a choice, and if there was a minimum amount of material within his range below which he simply ceased to exist, we were miles away from finding out.

"They're moving, under there. Multiple vessels of some nature, with neutronium hulls."

Yes, within the leviathan of liquid, vague blurs of incredible exterior density with volumes of air or gas inside moved about, still using the hundreds of meters of material in the way to render themselves immune to damage. The whole thing was getting incredibly hot from sheer bombardment, and Tieyi had taken to intentionally extending tendrils or his own metallokinetic equivalent of our droplet radiators. Almost nostalgic, if it wasn't for the fact that I had plenty of qualms about being on the opposing side.

More of Lumen then, unknown numbers and even less clarity on powers.

"Deploy Gargant, and the rotating contingent of supporting metahumans. Remember, we're trying to keep him suppressed, avoid unnecessary risk, and do not draw him towards civilian population centers. Or the Kill Star." I heard Gupta order. It seemed that Turing wasn't being cooperative, not that they ever were, and there was a decent chance that they'd treat Consul like they had the USSF metahumans, and they had the firepower for a fighting chance.

"This is not the time for Turing to be standoffish, surely they must see that we need their assistance?" A Chinese Admiral interjected.

"Even we are suspect in their eyes, they're restricting us to dumb comms and low bandwidth signals." Bahadur spoke up on the Fleet Admiral's behalf, the Chinese man shaking his head in disbelief. "If they think even the UN fleet is compromised, what's left to fight for?"

Right. About that. I had minimal insight into how Turing works, but I had little doubt we'd be discovered sooner or later. Maybe, if Machina and Prometheus were aiming to lay low and didn't actively tamper with the fleet more than they had, it might come to light in a post-engagement scan. I knew those were incredibly thorough, after what Turing had seen, anything capable of storing data or performing computation worth a damn would be poured over with a fine-tooth comb. As I've said before, I'm perfectly okay with this, even if I end up uploaded and then incinerated as is standard protocol for suspected Infiltrators.

Am I one? I'd hope not, but that's what they all say. The best secrets are those kept from yourself, mundane lie detectors and even most telepathic screening can't tell a wholeheartedly held inaccuracy from the truth, or else we'd solve all of physics by sitting some idiot in front of them and then having him consider random equations in his head. Not even Xiao is that good.

"Sen. It says in the records that you've met Shen." Bahadur asked me, his immense form looming incongruously over the rest of us at the virtual table. Whatever standardization Turing performs on its AI, it doesn't preclude them from having peccadillos, and this guy's shtick seemed to be intentionally being imposing. A genie? That's not even an Indian thing, but whatever, if I really cared I could set the program to show him as a rabbit or a bucket full of binary.

"The Administrator? Or the one on the Bàdào?" I asked, wearily. A few power naps can't mitigate everything I've been through.

"I'm well aware of your interactions with both, but in this case, the latter. I'd like you to speak to him, please." The AI told me. While phrased politely, it had the force of an order, and I don't outrank a military AGI.

"He can talk? Isn't he, well.." I stammered in surprise.

"He can be made lucid, and my evaluation of his psychometrics suggests he's likely to be more cooperative if you're the one speaking to him."

"Alright, I'll do it. But he's hooked up to another AI isn't he? Can't you just make him do whatever you want? That's the whole point of the procedure isn't it?" I asked him. I'd know, I'd had a significant hand in it. It would defeat the purpose (or at least the purpose pursued after the original goal of curing MRS failed) of having their power be at our beck and call. Call me pessimistic, but after you've scooped out most of someone's brain and hooked it up to a computer without much in the way of consent, they'd be rather uncooperative at best.

"You haven't been involved in more recent advances, but the basics are still true, you can get more out of them if they're not fighting the control systems."

He was right, I had washed my hands of it when Florence had been assassinated, and the original framework had seen plenty of revisions and tweaks.

"Well, hook me in?" I suggested. No need to leave my comfy chair, even if it's virtual.

"Negative. You're going to be teleported, Class 2 short range. She's coming as we speak."

I felt a thrill run through my spine, but the compulsion I was under made me protest nonetheless.

"Surely that's not necessary, is it? Patch him in, don't tell me you can't spare the bandwidth, and I'm concerned that if I leave the Agnimatajay, it'll be too risky for me to make it back."

"I'm afraid that's not an option, and rest assured that if we need you that urgently, a Class 3 or above will perform the pickup. You can continue some of your work from there, if you must stay, but otherwise this comes down from above, tightened comms sec as well as a rare outright order from Turing."

I conjured more feeble excuses but made no progress, it seemed that Machina or Prometheus couldn't find an excuse for me staying that wouldn't raise suspicions further.

My cocoon sussurated open, and I found myself looking at a pudgy woman licking her lips as she stared at me. The staring was expected, I looked like shit, my hair falling out in clumps, what remained frizzled from exposure to boiling shock fluid. When I get back home, remind me to use the skin care routine Anjana bought for me, and which I've completely neglected since she's no longer around to scold me about it.

"You're Anjana Sen's husband aren't you? Big fan!" She beamed, looking at me closely. "Thought you'd be more handsome though!"

"She didn't marry me for my looks. Look, can you just get me there and back quick? I don't have time to chat." I said tersely, a fangirl for my wife being the last person I wanted to meet.

"Nah, we've got a minute, I need to wait for a timed window when the block on teleportation goes down, too weak to do so otherwise you see. Now, if I was as good as your wife.." She chattered on till my ears bled, and I hoped she didn't notice when I tuned her out entirely and resumed my work. Anjana had a sizeable following, especially in the close-knit Teleporter community, and her fame had only increased when the draft release revealed she was actually a Class 5. It seemed this woman, whose name I didn't care to learn, had met her a few times, and kept up with the limited news that made it to the civilian world from AC. I doubt she had particularly high clearance, or she wouldn't be so peachy. Maybe she was temporarily assigned to the UN and would be dropped off before they went to Sedna, Class 2s are quite limited after all.

I wasn't listening, so I was mildly startled when she grabbed my hand and concentrated hard, before apparating us away. This was decidedly uncomfortable, not the quick and clean jumps I've usually experienced, more like chunks of me were being transported at a time and tenuously linked together in the interim. Unlike Iskra's slower jump, there wasn't much to see, my vision faded to black barring a sudden barrage of visual noise, and when it returned, I was standing in the arrivals bay of the Bàdào, with hardly a moment to thank her before she vanished again.

Here's hoping the Chinese didn't wisen up to my actions when they'd roped me in to deal with Hu Junya, but if they had, I'd likely be dead by now.