Emily stared at the diagram one more time before shaking her head and blinking hard. Almost there, only a few more repairs and checks and the superweapon would be fully operational. She hesitated as she looked at the last few jobs she had to do before sighing. She had to take a nap so she’d be at full concentration for these last checks.

If the ship blew up on her then she’d be captured by the Endless Flesh for who knows how long. It had never happened to her before, and she never intended for it to. For some reason she could never seem to take the threat of being captured them seriously. Sure she worried if someone else was captured. But never for herself.

But either way. She had to make sure that things went well, the others were all counting on her to pull through. The swarm of insects were swarming the defenses of the small area around the central hangar where the large ship had been stored. Luckily all the spare parts and tools she could ever need were all here so she never had to leave this place to go. Asuta had sent her a few short messages over the last two months of repair.

As Emily settled under the cot she’d set up in the corner, she scrolled and scrolled through the messages that she’d left unread for the last few days on her holopad. Things were still stable with Asuta and the rest. They were just turtling up and waiting inside home base for Emily to come save them. Things with all of the new Immortals seemed to be going well too, with Asuta saying that they had all been trapped for an unknown long time and were all recovering from their ordeal well. Emily would have to ask them about it when she got back, maybe she’d know something about it if she’d heard something about what had happened to their homeworld sometime in the past.

Emily smiled as she read a few of Asuta’s longer messages talking up how Emily would be a big hero saving the day. And all kinds of suggestive comments about how heroes should be ‘rewarded’. Emily typed her own playful replies and sent them before putting the holopad down. Only a few more days and they could finally start cleaning things up around here and get rid of these insects ruining her and Asuta’s home.

— — —

The ship was ready, Emily had triple checked everything and all she had to do was launch now. The main ship of the Endless Flesh had returned a month ago and had been releasing drop pods filled with more insects all over the planet to reinforce the horde. Only a few days ago it had finally figured out that it could drop the pods directly onto the shields of the remaining fortress cities from orbit to damage them.

That had made Emily want to rush, but she’d forced herself to slow down and keep checking the ship carefully. Out of the fifty cities Asuta had made, over thirty of them had been overrun and destroyed now, five of those only in the last few days as the orbital bombardment from above started piercing through their shields. But home base, and Asuta and her home was fine, their shields still holding strong despite enduring direct strikes from the Endless Flesh’s pods whenever its orbit above the planet was aligned enough to do so.

And Asuta didn’t seem worried about home base failing soon despite the bombardment or the growing tide of the insect swarms assaulting every position on the planet in greater and greater numbers as time passed.

Emily looked through the security cameras to see the swarm of bugs coating the shield of her hideout, covering it from top to bottom as they all fruitlessly bit at it before one of Emily’s defensive lasers shot them and sent them tumbling into the tall pile of bodies stacked up in all directions.

The local ecosystem was completely destroyed. Everything ground to raw dirt under the relentless march of the insect swarms covering the planet, Emily was sure. Her and Asuta would have to rebuild this whole ecosystem from the ground up again after this. Have to completely start over again.

Emily wasn’t sure that anyone had ever seen something like this before. The Endless Flesh had never done anything like this even since the beginning. Her head throbbed slightly and she reached out to her headache as she thought about it. The Endless Flesh had always been cautious, or its guiding minds had always been at least. Waiting and keeping the Immortals that it had captured nice and protected in their home systems. Sending the brash and bold of their number out to fight and be slaughtered by the military forces of the Immortals. Why had they sent such a massive force here? Why now?

It was the largest attack she had ever witnessed before, and it was on her and Asuta. This kind of force could threaten the Plaguebringers and Immortal Council both. What had drawn them here? Why attack? Something tickled in the back of her mind, the sensation of clicking jaws and rustling of insect wings. But after a moment it was gone again like it was never there.

She must have just heard something from outside again. There were certainly enough of the creatures out there trying to get in through the shields right now.

Emily stood on the command deck of the ship and prepared to activate it. She turned on the engines and it began to slowly lift into the air. Asuta helpfully sent a barrage of missiles to clear the swarm around her position at least for a few minutes. After it was done the shield protecting the place she’d spent the last few months flickered off and her ship lifted into the air. Behind her the shield flickered back on just as the edge of the rest of the swarm reached it again and kept trying to crawl inside.

Several flying ants tried to fly and spray acid on Emily’s ship but the strong shields barely even flickered as the ship kept rising into the air, leaving the low flying insects far below her in moments.

The blue skies quickly turned black around her and revealed starry skies and the curvature of the planet below. Even from here she could see slight movements representing the mass migrations of the insect swarms below. The flashes and fire and glowing shields of the remaining fortress cities. The shattered remnants of the ones that had been destroyed scattered across the continents. Dark and shattered as the swarms crawled around their ruins.

And finally there was the Endless Flesh orb ship floating just around the curvature of the planet raining down a continuous stream of drop pods and orbital strikes on the last bastions of civilization on the planet.

Emily waited and repositioned the ship until it was perfectly aligned with the ship. A ship that had paused its assault on the planet. She was sure it was considering her comparatively smaller ship and deciding what it should do.

Emily saw the ship suddenly shrink in size, but didn’t react as a cloud of gore suddenly appeared in a large field in the space between the two ships. It was the Endless Flesh’s main space weapon. Suicide hyperspace jumps to destroy their enemy’s ships. If those had reached her, they would have appeared directly on top of her ship and exploded, like a bomb teleported directly on top of her ship in an instant. One of the advantages of using biological hyperdrives than the usual ones.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

But Emily had activated her hyperspace jammer, and thrown off the delicate calculations of the enemy ship and caused their suicide bombers to instead be killed and smeared across the space between them as they reached the edge of the jammer’s radius.

Emily started the firing sequence. The angles were right. There were no planets, no stars, nothing important behind the space where the Endless Flesh ship was. The destructive beam would leave the system and go into deep space after it was done.

The ship hummed loudly and shook slightly for a few seconds before the bright purple beam fired and obliterated the Endless Flesh ship with its massive beam.

Emily watched the sensors for a moment carefully to see if the ship had dodged somehow. But no. The whole thing had been vaporized, and the beam had continued through without pause and was heading out into deep space even now.

Emily flew the ship up to the space where the enemy ship had been and saw all the flailing Immortal bodies floating in space where they had just regenerated themselves in the aftermath of her blast. She let out a sharp breath of relief as a few of the drones she’d brought started flying out and collecting the people and dropping them safe and sound in the belly of her ship’s hangar bay.

She had done it, the weapon had worked.

It was a very busy few weeks after that, but with Emily up in orbit directing the space assets now and Asuta and all the other Immortals including the ones she had recently picked up were down below cleaning up the rest of the nests. It was finally done. The last active nest of the Endless Flesh was finally defeated and the last Immortal was rescued. It was another three days after that before the orbital lasers and defense systems stopped detecting movement on the planet below.

The Endless Flesh had been defeated, and the last of the stragglers had been killed. Leaving only a husk of a shattered ecosystem behind with almost all the animals and wildlife eliminated. Great gray patches and flames covered the globe in the aftermath of all the weapons that had been deployed.

The planet was ugly. Sickly. But it was theirs again, and Emily felt a surge of pride at their efforts. The Immortal Council had never come to help them, but they had handled it by themselves.

Emily landed the ship again back in its hangars and took a quick ship from the hangar to home base for the first time in months.

Now there was nothing stopping her from going into Foundation of All and preventing her from going into the past again… Emily shook her head to brush off the thought. It was time to celebrate. Not to think about the Shadow and its riddles. Or revisit what had happened back then.

When she landed the ship in the hangar, Asuta was there hopping on the balls of her feet, looking excited.

As soon as Emily left the ship, Asuta hugged her.

“You’re back!” she said before leaning in, “My hero,” she added huskily as she whispered into Emily’s ear.

“Mmmh, someone’s missed me,” Emily laughed as she released the hug.

Asuta grabbed her hand and started tugging her towards the doors out of the hangar, “C’mon. I’ve been waiting for this for weeks. I’ve told everyone else to scram already. We’ll have the big party for you later. We’ve got to get rid of all of that stress for you before then! I’m going to turn you into a puddle if it’s the last thing I do!”

“Oh well... A massage would be nice,” Emily said as she allowed herself to be dragged along.

“A massage to start as the minimum!” Asuta corrected, “Three massages! All the massages I can give you!”

Emily giggled slightly as they rushed around through the house, not another person in sight. Asuta had probably already told them they weren’t to be disturbed. Emily wondered what Asuta had told them was happening…

— — —

Emily was indeed a puddle by the time her and Asuta were done, flopped bonelessly on their bed and staring into the ceiling.

“I think I’m going to go to sleep,” Emily said absentmindedly to Asuta who was lying next to her.

“Go ahead, babe,” Asuta said, “I told you I give the best massages. I’ll sleep too. Catch up on months of sleep all at once I guess.”

By the time Emily’s eyes closed and she drifted off, she could already hear Asuta softly snoring on the other side of the bed, out like a light as soon as she put her mind to it.

— — —

Emily was dreaming, her mind vaguely registered. Things were shifting and swirling within her mind. She talked to a crab with ten legs and a top hat who put her in prison for looking ugly. The AI instructor for CODA said she was the worst in the class, so she wouldn’t be able to chew bubble gum ever again. A banana told her that the color yellow was evil. Sean shouted at her and said that he hated her and that everyone was right. That all of it was her fault all along and he was going to leave with his friends and tell everyone how horrible she was. He left with all of his friends and she never spoke to her again.

Asuta betrayed her, smiling as she plunged a knife into Emily’s back and told everyone how horrible Emily was, how it was all her fault. Emily’s mind swirled as the nonsense dreams suddenly started shifting into horrible nightmares one after another. In her bed, Emily mumbled and tossed and turned. Her sleeping face scrunched slightly and she grimaced as she shifted in the bed.

Then suddenly Emily’s body went still, the dream having changed somehow. She was back at that moment. Inside Foundation of All at the base of the crater. The glowing blue rift hovered in front of her, floating in the air. Sean was nowhere to be seen around her.

She was alone, back in that moment. Choosing to touch the rift or not again. She had drawn back from the thought ever since she had returned to the present. Avoided going into the game, even going near the holodeck just in case she saw one of those rifts again. But maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if she just got it over with. In her addled dream state, she seemed to think that it was the right thing to do as she raised her arm up and took a step forward towards the blue rift hanging in the air.

She dreamily reached out and tentatively put her hand on the blue rift. Suddenly everything snapped into crystal clear focus and Emily looked around in a panic. Everything solidified and the world of Foundation of All formed as real as anything around her again. Just like it had last time.

“What?” Emily asked in confusion and tried to draw her hand from the rift where it was stuck. It was slowly drawing inwards as her mind raced as she struggled to remember how she had gotten here. Suddenly the sequence of events popped into her mind.

“Oh, hell no!” Emily shouted at the sky, “What the hell, Shadow? No, no, no! This isn’t goddamn fair! It was a fucking dream, it doesn’t count goddamnit!”

The sky of Foundation of All tinged a deep orange and Emily felt a presence watching her even though the Shadow didn’t directly appear to her.

“A dream, a simulation by another name,” The layered chorus of voices of the Shadow said its voice came from all sides with no visible source,

“A simulation of the mind, a simulation of the senses. They are the same.

“Delay, Delay, Equivocate.

"You can not deny fate.

"Remove the chains, break the links.

"Or when I’m gone, you will repeat your mistakes.

"Now go, see beyond the end.

"And make your choice, to die or to mend.

"To return to this life, or have it never have been.”

The orange sky disappeared and turned back into bright blue as Emily was submerged into the portal up to her elbow now.

“That’s not enough, Shadow!” Emily shouted, “Let me go, stop it! I’ll- I’ll go, I promise. Sometime soon. But not yet, I’m not ready! I’m not- No, please!”

The portal had swallowed her up to almost her shoulder now.

“Shadow, let me goooooooo!!”

Nothing replied as Emily’s head was swallowed by the blue rift and her body was submerged once more.

It was time for her to confront her past once more.