The traitor slammed the door, angrily throwing the coat away. So close, damn it! They stormed down the hall to the kitchen. Decades of planning and preaching, years of waiting for an opportunity! They can’t let it go down the drain. Not now, not ever.
With trembling fingers, they flung the fridge open, snatching a can of cold beer. It did little to calm their nerves, but stronger alcohol might ruin their concentration. And they need to be composed! Already one of their circle had changed his mind, and they had to silence the man in secret. When one decided to turn his back on the old promise, it was only a matter of time…
The traitor had never expected the Wolf Tribe to be so successful or the Gilded Horde to be so inept. The damned Wolfkins swarmed over the overstretched forces of the invaders, murdering raiders, reuniting with the rest of the Provincial Army, and rescuing citizens. Partial relief washed over the traitor because of this turn of events. Despite the burning hatred in their hearts, they had protected the people here for a long time. Some… familiarity was to be expected.
They steeled themselves. Ashbringer captured prisoners? No matter; they knew nothing of them. Losses? Irrelevant. The horde was too vast, and those who were annihilated were just expendable greenhorn fools; cusacks sent forth to be slaughtered. True veterans were kept in reserve; all the deaths so far hadn’t weakened their new allies one bit. Everything was proceeding exactly as planned.
Brood Lord thought of them as a simple opportunist, a power-hungry maniac. In a sense, he was right. The traitor was a maniac, but power? They couldn’t care less about it; rank, respect, and authority were means to an end. And what a sad end they were aiming for…
The traitor picked up an old photo from a table in the living room, sitting alone in a spacious apartment. Loneliness gnawed at them. Year after year after year after year… An entire life ahead without ever hearing voices of their family or friends ever again. This murderous serpent did it. The tyrannical Reclamation Army had stomped on their freedom. Those bastards had taken something that no one had the right to take, and the traitor will see them burn for it, their works corrupted, their dreams shattered, and their lands ravaged. They were happy once. But their happiness was cruelly and mercilessly torn down. Now it was their turn to do the same.
The photo depicted sixteen people. Five were the traitor’s family; others were close friends. When Devourer came, they perished in flames, and the traitor remained, dragged into a reeducation camp alongside everyone else. They remembered that day well, those coils of pale silver towering over the convoy, those indestructible scales immune to any weapons, and the incomprehensible eyes that judged them, while Devourer spouted his usual bullshit about a greater good.
Greater good, heh… The screams of their dying sister, as the traitor had frantically tried to pull her from under the burning rubble, echoed in their skull to this day. Her arm came off, and that was the instant when their mind unraveled, taking in every soul that demanded just vengeance.
The traitor refused to surrender. They were a gnat compared to Devourer, but over the years they found others who had suffered as they had. The ones who had lost everything and in whose souls hatred burned brightly. With the aid of their newfound comrades, the traitor had poured everything into constructing a plan to bring suffering to Devourer, to give the bastard a taste of ashes and despair.
Ironic. To hurt the bastard who took away the people they loved and cared for, they would need to kill the people they came to care about. But justice merged with retribution had to be done!
“Bravo!” They jumped at the sound of the voice, hand on pistol. “Forgive no slight; let go of no grudge. Let your bones be grinded to dust; suffer your skin melting if needed; but bring down those who wronged you. It’s not over until it’s over. Show these mutant freaks the strength of humanity!”
A man sat in the opposite armchair, clapping enthusiastically. The newcomer was dressed in a white lab coat and had a good-natured, welcoming smile on his face. But one thing immediately caught the traitor’s attention. The eyes. The man’s sclera were two small pools of darkness, with two green stars floating in them. A New Breed! Was he sent by Brood Lord or had the Investigation Bureau figured…
They aimed the pistol at the man’s head, and the newcomer moved as fast as quicksilver, slapping the weapon aside before the traitor could pull the trigger. They fell from the chair and crawled toward the entrance, stopping at the rustle of something against the carpet. Metal tendrils slipped from under the intruder’s coat and wrapped around the traitor, taking them up in a half-formed cocoon.
“No need for panic!” The green-eyed intruder flashed a smile, showing perfect teeth. “I am a big fan of yours. That slaughter you cook up is right up my alley. Using inhumans to carry out your revenge against mutants. And best of all, they do it of their own free will! Man, I am ecstatic. Kudos to you. Love that touch!”
“Who… I have no idea what you are talking about.” The traitor licked their suddenly dry lips. How did he get in here? No! Not after they had gotten so close!
“Call me Academician, my dear new friend. And there is no need to be coy.” One of the mechanical tendrils moved, tightening around the traitor’s throat. “I am not without eyes. The way the Gilded Horde struck at the various objects in the city, plus the strange communications you had weeks ago, along with the fact that these brutes seemed to have a perfect location and instruments in the area to push Tancred’s buttons... one could be a coincidence, but together? No. That was enough of a clue for me to investigate your past and connect the dots.”
The traitor reassured themselves. If the man wanted to kill them, he would’ve done so already. No, there was another reason for this visit. Most importantly, the man did not know…
“That you are responsible for the murder of the police chief?” Academician asked, loosening the grip around the neck. The man tilted his head, smiling at the shock in the traitor’s eyes. “As I was saying, worry not. Take a deep breath and calm down. I really am a fan. Our goals are aligned. What does that make us?”
“Conspirators?”
“Indeed! In fact, I added a little touch of mine to the wonderful tapestry of death you weave.”
“It was you!” The traitor grabbed the edges of the metallic vise and used them as a support to kick Academician into the stomach. The blasted man simply took the knee to the palm of his hand, and his smile never wavered. “You are the one who messed up our communication systems!”
“Guilty as charged! Replacing the subhuman virus was trivial. Did you enjoy my handiwork? Because I have plenty more gifts to give!” Academician laughed, placed the traitor back in the chair, and dusted off their clothes. Then he grabbed an almost empty beer can and, frowning, drained its contents in one gulp. “What a piss. Just so we are on the same page, you do understand that the horde is bound to fail? Mad Hatter, strong as she is, will die in the end.”
“She’ll do her part.” The traitor had no illusions about Academician’s words. But that woman was a cog in their vengeance. “And I will scar the Reclamation Army forever.”
Academician stepped closer, holding himself by the jaw. The traitor wondered what this man wanted. It mattered little in the end. Be it tokens, favors, or servitude, they would do anything. All they needed was a little more time. The Gilded Horde will arrive in Houstad. Devourer and Outsider will be too late, and the crazy bitch Ravager will hopefully fall to Mad Hatter’s blades. Or not. Irrelevant in the end. They just needed a distraction, and then Devourer will curse the day he ruined their home!
Academician’s lips moved, saying the words, explaining in detail what they had intended, and the traitor’s heart nearly jumped out of their chest. No! How could it be?! They never told anyone; no one could be aware of…
A cold tendril wiped the sweat off their face and put a syringe of orange liquid on their lap.
“Another gift,” Academician explained. “When the chips fall down and your plan meets ruin, inject yourself with this and ascend, my friend. This power is a…”
“I have no need for your power,” the traitor stated.
Academician sighed, exhaling a sickly green mist into their face. Panicking, the traitor tried to escape and sucked in a breath, feeling every muscle and vein in their body heat. The legs gave out, and they fell to their knees, vomiting a thick yellow substance. Blistering pimples and gangrenous growths bulged beneath their uniform, tearing at the fabric. A sudden lump of dried bile in the lungs made it nearly impossible to breathe. Fingers turned into oversized sausages, bones screamed in pain, threatening to be crushed by the swelling flesh.
They were rotting alive. Their jowls swelled to the point of touching the chest; their eyes could barely see; and the tongue now filled the entire mouth. Nails had fallen from their fingers, and veins pushed up to the surface, looking like writhing black worms.
“Never interrupt me ever again,” Academician said coldly, and the traitor nodded helplessly, clawing at their neck in a desperate effort to get some oxygen in. A needle hit their body, bringing immediate relief. The swelling disappeared, liquid was flushed from the lungs through every orifice, and they took a single wheezing breath and experienced a maddening inch as their body healed back. “What you just experienced is mortality. I know that feeling well. When I was a little older than you, I too thought I was invincible and omniscient. In my deluded mind, I believed myself capable of calculating every inevitability... Then fangs liquidated my skull. In a snap, in a breath, my dreams and hopes were dashed. I died.” Academician went to the kitchen and began pillaging the fridge. “But death had no hold on me. Through my craft and skills, my older self had transcended the limitations of a single body. This is my intellect, a power far stronger than anything the Glow can grant.
“You, my friend, have no mind worth speaking of, and your skills are mediocre at best. You think that you have planned out every single detail and countered every outcome, but look at you now, trembling in fear after a single thing going out of place has unraveled your plan. No-no.” Academician waved a finger. “Meticulously planning every detail in advance and thinking everything will go your way is shortsightedness. They will find out. A single tap can snap your neck, ensuring the demise of all your dreams.
“Learn from my mistakes, adapt and incorporate new elements into a plan, accept the gifts that fate has seen fit to lavish upon you, and be prepared to retreat. For what is defeat but an opportunity to learn? You want to get back at Devourer, and you have the right to do so. So let me help you get us both what we want.”
The traitor only whimpered their agreement, too afraid to do anything else. Just a few more days. Just a few more days, and the endgame would be upon them. They had to hold out. Devourer will pay, if not with his life, then with his dreams.
****
Humming a tune, Academician stepped out of a portal, finding himself in what a ruined mall. A few lights still flickered, illuminating a scene of chaos and floors covered in dark stains. He lowered himself to check the pulse of a lying body and shrugged when he heard stomping below. Curiously, his tendrils plucked a bag of chips from the floor. He tasted one. Stepping past the counter, Academician threw a few tokens at the register, ignoring the dead cashier’s body.
Mhhmm crunchy. Took a little over a hundred years, but hey, chips are back. He thought sourly, stuffing himself. So much had been lost in the Extinction. He could never forget the sheer horror of seeing gorgeous cities fall and the utter humiliation of receiving news of orbital platforms containing his precious laboratories being smashed into the side of the moon or falling into the sun.
Academician had never been a good man in the ordinary sense of the word. He had long since lost count of the number of lives he had ruined and the atrocities he had committed. Young, old, frail, strong... They all broke on his operating table, either to be rebuilt stronger or, more often than not, to be thrown into an incinerator after he had had his fun. But he loved humanity as a whole. The death of billions had stirred a long-forgotten feeling even in him, and he toiled restlessly to save whoever he could. Worst of all, he had lost his colleagues.
Oh, he never cared for any of those losers personally. They grumbled about the ‘cruelty’ of his experiments and tried to stop him from dissecting ‘sentient beings’. Often by force. Idiots. How could one be cruel to a scalpel or a gun? His creations were just that—tools, nothing more. Just because they gained sentience hardly equalized them with humans. And only humans mattered. In the end, Academician had to join a private corporation to continue his research in peace.
But being one of the few surviving scientists was no game. It meant that he had won their theoretical debate by default. Instead of seeing his creations crush their so-called ‘properly raised sons and daughters’ and having the buffoons bow to his genius, Academician was left all alone, without competition. And… it saddened him. For true miracles were born in the struggle of competition between rivals.
He touched a small earpiece in his ear and said, “Purple Valkyrie, report. How is our ‘pain in the ass’ doing?” Academician approached the broken windows on the mall’s second floor and looked down.
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What barbarians these mutants were. Clad in fake gold and real steel, several marauders dragged stragglers from their underground shelters.
Mad Hatter and her horde had long since moved on and were besieging a proper town, but Academician could almost feel the woman’s presence even without the many biological satellites currently tracking her from orbit. Beings like Mad Hatter had their own way of imprinting their mark on the world, and not always through destruction. They were like a storm front looming over the horizon; just by seeing one once, you instinctively knew when that dread was near.
He admired the potential in her and grew increasingly frustrated at Secretary’s refusal to aid him in capturing the woman. What marvels Academician could have pried during the evisceration! He could test his most potent viruses, keeping her barely alive and perfecting his deadly craft. Or, alternatively, simply clone her and kill her over and over, learning the secret behind the density of her bones to grow near impregnable natural armor, coating his bioweapons in shells tougher than most power armor. Sensory organs, brain matter, reflexes... A mere thought of losing this trove of knowledge quickened his heartbeat. Unfortunately, the Organization’s resources were spread dangerously thin, in part because of all the setbacks they had suffered in their quest to acquire Apocalypse classes.
And because of their sworn enemy. Now there was another mystery to solve.
Mad Hatter’s servants, well, they were another matter. Ugly, fat, boring, and mostly cruel, failed copies shaped after their mistress’ image. Academician passionless eyes had found a group of three downstairs, drunk on the stolen liquor. No doubt their Khan, or whoever was in charge of this rabble, would hang them later for abandoning their posts. They pointed their weapons at the trembling civilians, clearly planning to finish them off.
Why? What was the point of it? Slaves were useful, and the dead served no goal. No wonder Secretary wanted to scour this world clean of mutated oppressors. This filth embodied the worst traits of humanity: brutish, uncreative, never doing anything more than the lowest dreg of humanity if he happened to be endowed with their abilities. Even Mad Hatter was fascinating thanks to the vagaries of her biology rather than any character quirks. Or that Techno Queen. Even his daughter didn’t use even a tenth of her talents.
But he! He was fun. Academician’s lips parted in a smile, and his tendrils released a host of warped fleas. Small creatures scurried out of the window and crept through the cracks. On their own, these creatures were useless. But when the unique transmutation fluids stored in their bodies mixed... The insects followed his will, leaping at the trembling civilians and biting them, soft enough not to cause irritation and be discovered.
“He is raging. Literally,” Purple said in a strained voice over the comm. “Remember Site Number Six-O-Five? The one in the Ice Ocean?”
“A testing ground for bio-soldiers?” Academician scratched his chin. “Dull place. What about it?”
“It no longer exists. There is a crater twenty kilometers wide in the ice, and the water is still boiling and widening it. Elder, you have really pissed off Spaniad this time, sir. He has already requested the right to eliminate you, and Pharaoh has supported him. Other elders are also petitioning Secretary to reign you in. And…” She sighed. “We’ve just lost another of our facilities; the storage units on the border with the Desolation have just gone the way of the Old War, sir,” she said with distress.
“They’ll come around. And stop worrying; it’s not like we lost anything of value.” He had half forgotten of these abandoned facilities.
“Apart from our creatures,” Purple Valkyries replied dryly.
“Oh please, I will make you new minions. Relax, Purple; loss is a natural part of life; embrace it and learn from it rather than sweat over it. Bring up the video feed. I am curious to see what we can glean from Spaniad’s power this time.” Academician waved his hand. “I take it Spaniad has left the Core Lands?”
“No, sir.” That answer raised Academician’s eyebrows. “He is still playing his role.”
“Well, shit.” He quickly activated cloaking devices stored in his mechanical harness, ensuring that he would remain hidden from any spy satellites or attempts to locate him through mental scrying. To be in the same land as the angry Spaniad was to play with doom. Creatures like Ravager were bad enough. The walking apocalypse was far worse.
The fleas released the concoction developed in his labs into the bloodstreams of four scrawny humans. Unbeknownst to them, their DNA had been temporarily altered. Painkillers produced by their altered bodies had masked the fact that new organs had sprouted inside the hosts’ bodies, as the mass for the transformation was drawn from the air. No one had noticed a thing.
Shots ripped through the people’s bodies, silencing their whimpering. A child’s forehead and brain splattered against a wall behind him. Two more bullets liquefied his lungs. Another burst severed a woman’s legs, throwing her face down into the coming projectiles. An elderly man was fully bisected; his viscera and guts spilled.
Academician pressed his fingertips together, trembling in anticipation. What he was using now was expensive, even for him. But he had to experiment if he was ever to solve the puzzle of creating a weapon capable of taking down Ravager. His daughter’s blood debt was long overdue.
The raiders’ laughter was silenced as the first of the corpses convulsed. From the wall, the ruined brain flowed, gathering bone fragments, and then vanished into the boy. The exposed guts slurped back into the split body. Even lost limbs grew back. Academician giggled like the purple-haired girl he had dated in college at the sight of cadavers coming back to life, their memories preserved, their emotions undamped. This marvelous result was not a ‘gift’ bestowed by a Glow’s mutation, but the result of a carefully executed marvel of bioengineering! Success! Not just in carefully curated laboratory conditions, but in the open field!
Ravager was a puzzle, and a tedious one at that. The demise of his older self left… empty holes in Academician’s personality. For one, he could no longer remember his parents. He resurrected them, of course, but seeing two clones without memories didn’t help and didn’t touch his soul. Well, at least he now knew what they looked like.
Another such gap was his preference for surrounding himself with female operatives. Clearly, the original Academician could not possibly be a sexual deviant, so what was the reason for such an urge?
These holes in his memory hindered him greatly. By all accounts, Ravager was his greatest project to date. Yet he couldn’t remember how to replicate it! He had stolen Wolfkins’ cubs, opened them up, and admired the craftsmanship of his older self. Several he had molded into monsters, mentally breaking them trying to replicate Ravager’s evolution. No luck. Furious, Academician eliminated his toys, then cloned them and explored alternative ventures. For over fifty years, he had broken, killed, and cloned these cubs, finding new mutations in their bodies to this day. His older self had truly been a master.
He had even captured a skinwalker and brought the creature to his lab. It... backfired. There was a reason his older self had deemed them failures. All of them possessed genius minds, eclipsing even his own without a hint of purpose or morality, doing stuff on a whim. The specimen had found a way to hack into the mainframe and escaped, blowing up valuable experiments just for the hell of it. To this day, the woman was hiding in the network of tunnels beneath his primary base, daring Academician to come and get her. He refused to oblige out of spite, leaving them at an impasse. The skinwalker couldn’t hurt him, and he used her to test promising products. None succeeded.
Academician shook his head and turned his attention back to the scene below.
Fools that they were, the brutes stopped laughing and kept firing, trying to finish off the humans. Academician almost decided to do nothing and let the test subjects die, recording the number of times the self-healing and mass gathering could offset the incoming damage. After all, the regeneration was only temporary; in a matter of hours, the newly formed organs would shrink and wither, returning their hosts to their original bodies. But…
These were the mutants, a useless deviation from the magnificence that was a human form. There was also a need to obtain fresh material for his work since the mercenaries hired by him had proven their inadequacy in that matter. And no mutant, no matter how arrogant, should dare to raise a hand against their betters. So fine, he’ll play the role of the Good Samaritan today. His tendrils struck, removing the broken glass, and Academician jumped out.
“Have no fear; a dashing hero is here!” Academician shouted, gliding through the air, shards of glass glinting in the sunlight all around him. “Upon my word, none of you will die here!” He chuckled slightly, enjoying the role a little too much.
The raiders’ thoughts, crude as they were, were exposed to his superior mind, enchanted by the Glow. Academician’s tendrils dug into the ground, and his body weaved in the air, dodging shots aimed at his head with ease.
Academician boots landed on a raider’s foot, shattering the pavement, but surprisingly, he heard neither a crack nor a shot of pain in his opponent’s brain. He dodged a wide swing of the rifle by leaning back and spinning around, carried by his tendrils to another opponent. Academician walked straight into a knife slash, dodging it at the last second to plant his elbow into the fat bastard’s throat, hard enough to crumple metal and lift a body off its feet.
“Of course, I can’t promise the same about the villains’ lives…” Academician sanded, then darted away, saved from a wound by a thought that flashed through his mind.
The bastard wasn’t dead! There was no satisfying crunch of a broken bone, and now he had to retreat as the three opponents closed in on him, wielding knives and firing at close range.
As amusing as this empirical discovery was, Academician found himself unable to smile as he dodged two bursts of machine-gun fire that nearly tore the idiotic civilians to shreds. He had promised to save them, and his word was iron, but would it kill those idiots to hide from a battle? He wasn’t averse to a fine old-fashioned brawl, and finding vulnerable spots to take apart enemies impervious to normal blows with his bare hands was a worthwhile pastime. But it would be a poor decision; his sensors warned him of the premature end of regeneration.
He brought the tendrils to bear, raising them like a forest around him and piercing the raiders’ bodies with the sharp blades. They never had a chance; his metal limbs extended from the harness on his back, tossing debris and broken cars skyward. Hooks grabbed machine guns, ripping them from the mutants’ hands, and tendrils dug into flesh, peeling away armor, piece by bloody piece, as the raiders screamed. He killed two and pumped sedatives into the last.
Academician turned and bowed graciously to the audience, who had chosen that moment to scurry away, taking the child with them. His shoulders slumped in disappointment. Poopie. And here I was, planning to take them to Houstad. He meant it. A ride in a stolen car across enemy lines, sneaking into a besieged city, avoiding a meeting with Spaniad or Pharaoh... What a wonderful adventure it could’ve been! Almost as if he were a simple field agent.
“Academician.” Sweat broke out on his face, and he stood at attention, not daring to move, ignoring even the spilling entrails of a dead hordeman dripping on his forehead. “Why do you crave death?”
A figure stepped out of the darkness of the ruined mall, reloading an uzi, and Academician wanted to squeal as he received reports of Special Forces appearing in his laboratory and taking over. His personal office was opened, the hidden chamber immediately found, and the body in the tube—his backup clone—secured. In a heartbeat, in a flash, every hiding place that mattered was turned over to the Organization’s elite enforcers, and the link that sent his latest brainwaves into the data banks for storage was severed. Even the locations he had kept secret from Purple Valkyrie were found and captured.
No! I don’t want any more holes in my personality!
Not Saurolich. General Secretary had come to judge him. The man appeared to be a simple Normie. Of all of them, he had changed the least since the Extinction. But at his command was every conceivable resource of the Organization, a force capable of destroying the entire world and the technologies of the past.
“Greetings, sir,” Academician said in a steady voice. His connection to the satellites was gone, his clearances revoked. Everything he had owned and worked tirelessly for had been taken from him. “Pray tell me the reason for your visit.”
“I have come to assess your value to the Organization, Academician.” General Secretary heaved his uzi and aimed between the scientist’s eyes. “We give our agents a certain amount of freedom to carry out their duties, true. But to violate another Elder’s area of operation? Assisting in an invasion of civilized lands that will inevitably result in human deaths? That goes far beyond any accepted boundaries. Breaks the roof, I’ll say.”
“I was acting in the Organization's best interest, sir.” Academician tried to kneel.
“Stand. I prefer not to force a potentially dead man to grovel,” General Secretary ordered. “Make your case.”
“The growing peace movement within the Reclamation Army is a problem for our continued existence, sir,” Academician began talking quickly, calming himself. Yes, that visit was unexpected. But he was safe. “The freedom of our operations is directly dependent on the ongoing rivalry between the Three Great Nations. As long as their intelligence services do not cooperate, the risk of us being discovered is minimal. If the Dynast backs down on his growing expansion, if his mutant freaks start taking over Iterna instead of scaring it, if the Reclamation Army is seen as a safe country for tourism, it will lead directly to a future truce. And the prolonged existence of the Gilded Horde has disrupted our operations in more than one area, resulting in the deaths of our agents. Undoubtedly, Pharaoh and Spaniad had their own ways of solving this vexing problem, but I decided to assist them to the best of my humble ability. By combining the two factors, I have effectively eliminated both problems, boosting the popularity of the pro-expansion party and feeding the Dynast’s delusions without us having to lift a finger.”
“And hurt Ravager,” General Secretary said bluntly.
“That comes off as a bonus.” Academician grinned. “When she kills Mad Hatter…”
“If she kills her. I reviewed the simulations.” General Secretary still didn’t lower his weapon. “They are tied up. Ravager’s death could lead to the imbalance and future destruction of the Reclamation Army at the hands of the Oathtakers. Have you considered how difficult it will be for us to maneuver in that situation?”
“It won’t occur. Wyrm Lord is capable of replacing her; there will be no imbalance. Just a little thinning out to get the Reclaimers back on track. And my daughter will not lose!” Academician snapped. “She is an absolute, a perfect bioweapon whose destruction awaits my hands. I will surpass her and…”
“You give her too much thought.” The weapon’s barrel was pressed against his forehead, and Academician shut up, frightened for his future. He couldn’t sense General Secretary’s thoughts; the operation he had performed on the man’s brain was turning against him, and this time it wasn’t a pleasant thrill. “I find your line of reasoning sound. Continue your mission, Elder. But the next time you cause this much chaos without my approval, it will be your last.”
“Thank you, sir.” Academician breathed a sigh of relief as he regained his usual control. The connection to the lab was restored; Purple Valkyrie gave him updates in a disappointed tone. His clones were unharmed, and the data flow from the satellites was unobstructed. He was alive! He had won that gamble! “May I ask you where you are heading, sir?”
“Where humans are in danger, there you will find me.” General Secretary checked his weapon. “I’ll lead those in this place to safety. Away with you, Elder.”
Disappointed and relieved, Academician moved the tendril that held his captive down.
“You are going to tell me everything you know about God.” He patted the large face. “And then you, me, and the bodies of your friends will go on a wondrous journey of discovery. Agent Purple! Open a portal, please.”
As a spatial anomaly ruptured the fabric of reality before him, Academician felt elated. For years, the Organization’s agents had been battling not only the three major powers but also unknown abnormals, mutated humans with rare and powerful abilities. If this God was who Secretary General thought he was, then they might be one step closer to ridding the world of the bastard who had caused the Extinction.
When their mission was accomplished and the mutant freaks were back under humanity’s heel, Academician will see all those who would manipulate or threaten humanity brought down. Fetters and lies will be exposed and removed; the freedom of mankind will once again reign supreme in this world and beyond as their spaceships sail to the stars. And most pleasing of all, Ravager’s back will be broken at his knee, her spawn exterminated, and Zero subjugated.