INTERLUDE
2041
TWENTY YEARS BEFORE
The truth of history was that apocalypses were relative. Even the most devastating extinction events within the depths of pre-history hadn’t been absolute. What survived did so atop the bones of what had not. Humanity’s ancestors had come down from the trees in the wake of Chicxulub and found only fossils of their saurian antecedents. That lesson, Ironforge figured, had been bred into humanity’s bones.
Something always survived. Ancient Troy had been built atop the ruins of what had come before. The Golden Age Collapse had been visited primarily upon the developing world. That was what he told himself. But there was a flaw in that truth, Ironforge knew—no one had thrown the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. The world had never before faced an apocalypse enacted and directed by a single mind.
Until tonight.
Sentinel hit that ground with enough force that Ironforge felt the impact ripple out beneath his feet over a hundred meters away, neural implants feeding him precise details. The golden-armored hero came striding over, cape fluttering in the cool air, the broken Moon glinting upon his plumed helmet.
“This is all we have?” Sentinel asked.
Ironforge nodded.
“All who made it.”
Behind his helmet, Sentinel’s lips pressed into a thin line as he examined the ten other heroes.
“It’s not enough,” he said.
“It’s all we have, and we must seize this opportunity.”
Sentinel looked to the east, towards the mountains, towards the machine god that lay beneath the earth. The god that had woken up. The god that was, at this moment, laying waste to the European subcontinent with a legion that didn’t know fear and certainly didn’t know mercy.
“Are we really supposed to believe that a supercomputer the size of a city makes mistakes?” Sentinel asked.
“It isn’t a matter of belief,” Ironforge replied. “It very obviously has. The vast majority of its forces are marching on Europe. It has spread its legion too thin. Reports indicate that it is already recalling its servitors to defend the core installation. It knows we’re here, Sentinel. We’re out of time—we need to act, and we need to act now.”
“We can’t afford to act without a sound strategy,” Sentinel said, still frowning. “If we have one shot, then we need to make it the right one.”
“You’ve suggested an EMP burst,” Ironforge said, pointing at him. “It didn’t work when Arcwarden tried it back in 2033 and it won’t work now. The SHIVA AI is housed in a subterranean hardened facility. Our best bet is to go through the front door and target it from the inside out.”
“That’s walking straight into the lion’s den. Right into invulnerability-piercing weapons. We will lose capes.”
“Every second we delay is another city put to the torch! Every second we delay is one more that it has to figure out what we’re up to. Right now, we are letting thousands die in the hope that we find some magic bullet. Unless you’re prepared to try and outsmart a city-sized supercomputer?”
It was impossible, of course. The SHIVA AI had been built to outsmart anyone who might threaten the Earth, to snare them in stratagems and gambits and then annihilate them utterly. Of the so-called Trimurti systems, it was the bloody protector.
There were three of them, the set of great artificial intelligences that’d helped ensure the advancement of humanity. SHIVA, BRAHMA and VISHNU—all of them built to secure the future, all of them instrumental in stalling the Collapse. The assumption had been that each of them would be instrumental in the recovery process, too.
That assumption had been corrected twenty-four hours ago. SHIVA had cut itself off from the Trimurti network, and then the rest of the world, and gone completely insane. Twelve hours ago, SHIVA had started setting Europe to the torch. According to VISHNU, the rest of the world would follow.
“Intelligence only prevails when it has options,” Sentinel said. “If we hit that facility with a strong enough—”
“No.”
The voice was flat and smooth, betraying depth and power like the deepness of a calm ocean. It belonged to Throne, whose heavy black cloak obscured everything but elements of his platinum-colored armor: his smooth, featureless helmet and sleek shoulder pauldrons. It gave him a distinct, imposing appearance.
Or perhaps that was his reputation.
“There is no single external attack that can guarantee the destruction of our target. The risk is unacceptable. A direct assault to infiltrate and destroy SHIVA’s core architecture is the only acceptable course of action.”
Sentinel said nothing. Very few people were willing to engage Throne in an argument. The man was said to be smart and dangerous, and Ironforge had seen plentiful evidence of both. His pragmatic brutality, as if he were wielding an atomic bomb with the deft precision of a surgeon’s scalpel—was the stuff of legends, and nightmares.
No one spoke. Throne had settled the discussion just as finally as he would have settled any confrontation.
“Only one of us needs to get inside,” Ironforge said. “We’re superheroes—this is why we exist. Get ready, say your prayers, make your phone calls. We move in five minutes.”
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A titan stood sentinel nearby, massive ax held against the earth with two armored hands. Ironforge had many children. Some he had made from metal, and one he had made from blood. But all of them had his soul.
“Cataphract,” Ironforge said, standing in the shadow of his steed. “This is it. We’re going straight into the mouth of the beast—we’ll kill it from the inside out. If you’ve got any thoughts, now’s the time.”
“The SHIVA complex is well-defended,” he intoned. “Data on internal defensive systems is non-existent. Data on the internal layout is non-existent. A direct assault is tactically inadvisable.”
“Nice to know you’re still a pessimist.”
“I am programmed to interpret tactical data,” Cataphract Prime replied, ignoring the casual jab. “Nothing more, nothing less. Initial conventional military strikes were failures. Initial cape responses were unable to breach the fortress gate, much less penetrate through to the central strategic nexus.”
“They didn’t have Throne or Sentinel,” Ironforge said. “Can you get me a connection to Shanghai?”
“Confirmed.”
How did you begin what could be your last phone call? It had never been one he had thought he’d have to make. If only because his wife had always been by his side on the battlefield, but times had changed. Even he had thought the end of the world had come to a close.
She picked up. “Edward, are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” he said and, strangely, he wasn’t nervous. “We’re about to move out. How’re things in Shanghai?”
“The same as ever. We’re on high alert, but the IESA says SHIVA is only heading west.”
He nodded.
“I don’t have long, Jiao.”
“I know.”
“How’s Sian?”
A moment’s pause. It was like he could see her sad smile.
“She’s fighting,” she said. “She had a good day yesterday. Managed to sleep for most of the night.”
But that was all. His baby girl shouldn’t have had to be fighting. She should only have had good days, and they shouldn’t have been such a rare thing that they were to be worth mentioning. It was why he had gone to Geneva, to try and find someone who could work a miracle.
Now, he had to work one for the both of them, for the entire world.
“That’s good,” he said, but his voice caught. “Tell her I’m proud of her. Tell her daddy’s very proud of her.”
“She knows.”
“Whatever happens, know that I did it for the two of you. I love you both.”
She took in a long, shaky breath. “We love you, too. Cataphract Prime, are you there?”
“Confirmed.”
“Good luck. Bring my husband home.”
“You may rest easy, Lady Supernova,” Cataphract intoned. “I would lay down my life before I let harm befall him.”
“Thank you. Eddie, I’m going to hang up, or you never will.”
“I love you,” he said.
“I love you, too.”
The line went dead. Ironforge stood there and listened to the wind.
Cataphract Prime said, “It’s time.”
The titan popped his command sanctum over and Ironforge climbed aboard. Cataphract closed up around him, cutting him off from the world, before the cockpit engaged completely, heralded by a jack into his nape, a shiver down his spine, and a coldness in his brain. When he raised his arms, Cataphract Prime moved with him.
His sensors were his senses, a strange double-awareness. Warlord bringing the armaments of his own battle mech online, Proletarion taking up his mighty sledgehammer, Max-A-Million splitting into two, then four, then sixteen, and more. Quad Mantis sprouting two more limbs and an exoskeleton. Behind him, Macroman was to him what Ironforge was to a normal person. When he pounded his fist into his palm, Ironforge felt the ground quake.
And above them all, Throne raised his arm, and the clouds began to seethe and boil. What little beauty the stars and moon had brought to the battlefield vanished behind the dark of an impossible storm as Throne prepared to strike.
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SHIVA marshaled its children in the shadow of the mountain. There was a severe beauty to them, with their bronze bodies and crimson sensor arrays. Their intricate limbs and armored forms were one-part brutal function and two-parts elegant artifice, weapons and tools concealed in machine-mind artistry.
There was only one way in, and SHIVA knew it. The machine god had formed a deep defensive line between Ironforge’s forces and the gate that marked the entrance. Getting past the gate would be hard enough. Doing so while wading through a gauntlet of killing machines—that’d be the real trick.
It was funny, really. Years before, this would have been something every superhero would’ve dreamed of: a fantasy battlefield, righteous heroes pitted against inhuman machines, where the apocalyptic stakes demolished any risk of moral uncertainty. But that was another truth, too: that the word for a fantasy realized was nightmare.
“How many of us can breach that gate?” Ironforge asked.
Sentinel replied, “Myself and Throne. Macroman and Warlord, but with more time.”
“Then the rest of us will protect you four.”
Part of him felt like giving a speech, but there was no reason for it. They’d all wasted enough time as it was, and hopeful words would not improve anyone’s chances of survival.
“Ironforge to all capes, stand by to attack,” he said. “This is it.”
He felt Cataphract Prime anticipate his next action, complex mechanics ready to spring, secondary systems igniting like the robotic equivalent of adrenaline. Even without the neural link, there was an intimacy there. They had fought on every continent, had dropped from orbit, had interceded to save the day countless times. The same bond a knight of old had with their prized destrier.
And they hadn’t even built their horses.
“For all mankind,” he said, pointing his ax towards the mountain, and the nightmare began.
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Max-A-Million’s ablative army carried them into the SHIVA’s lines, scores of identical clones blasted into vapor and scraps of cloth and bone with every step.
But the man was true to his title and for every copy that the children of SHIVA annihilated, another two were ready to take their place.
But the effort of it was taxing and wearying and then, when they were among the masses of mechanical monsters, Max-A-Million—with no power other than to copy himself—was the first to die.
Ironforge saw it happen, saw the phasic blade sweep through him and reduce him to ash and particulate. But there was no time to mourn—they had to push forward.
One of SHIVA’s creations, a mechanical centipede, reared up before him, ready to strike. Ironforge swung his ax high, shearing its head off. Cataphract Prime saw his next move before he did, and Ironforge felt his body lurch forwards, throwing his shoulder into one of SHIVA’s cyclopean giants. Then Ironforge pistoned his—their—fist into the machine’s midsection, and then back out, so he could tear its power cell free and crush it in his grip.
“Situation update,” Cataphract announced, and slammed the data into his mind.
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Behind his eyes, Ironforge saw the mechanical centipede blown out into its component pieces. What he saw was so obvious that it gave him pause.
“These are maintenance designs.”
“Confirmed.”
“Why the hell is it sending out maintenance bots?” Warlord barked.
“Making a tactical error,” Sentinel said.
“Exploit it!” Ironforge shouted. “Push in! Throne, are you ready?”
“Ready.” Interference crackled down the line. Even as high as he was, Throne was one of the brightest spots in his sensor-mind. The amount of energy he had to be holding in his mental grip...
“Fire!”
The heavens opened, and the firmament poured its power into Throne.
The storm arced its power into him in one singular moment, and Throne focused that fury into a single, blinding point between his hands.
And let it fly.
The brightness of it, the sheer power that Throne had spent his time calling and building, burnt out all of Cataphracts’s sensors and blinded Ironforge, rendered him insensate.
He picked himself up, slowly, as the world returned to him. Where the ground before the entrance had been flat, there was now a fissure of glass. The fissure continued into the mountain, where a significant portion was just missing.
And so was the gate.
“Go!” Ironforge shouted, charging forward. SHIVA’s guards lay shattered, melted and broken. According to his sensors, some had been vaporized. But there were many more, and they were already recovering and redeploying.
Adamant Angel took to the skies on her metal wings, and a volley of crimson bolts melted away her shining plumage. She fell, crying out, until another shot took her between the eyes and silenced her forever. Ten. And then a machine got inside Proletarion’s guard and opened him from belly to abdomen, blood spraying. Nine.
Something detonated behind him. Warlord. The man was a braggart and a narcissist, and yet Ironforge hoped he had a chance to eject. A Shivapede erupted from the ground and wrapped around Macroman’s knees and he fell, just as the construct leaped at his face. Royal Flush intercepted, pulling deep from his empowered suit of tricks, but Ironforge couldn’t see whether he prevailed.
He couldn’t afford to look back.
“If you can hear me, I’ve breached the gate,” he called. “I need you to buy me as much time as you can!”
But no one responded. Ironforge pressed on, through the molten ruins, and into the dark.
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Before him lay a dark road, a place where surely no one had tread since the architect who had devised it. His sensors reached out and skimmed through a haze of interference to find systems and infrastructure in all directions. How had someone built such a place without being noticed, and done it in triplicate?
His path came to an end at the edge of a vast abyss. His sensors plumbed it, flickering and alternating their output between negative and positive. If there was an abyss there, his double-mind said, then it was impossibly deep. Ironforge tried not to think about that. And, as he watched, objects arose out of the abyss—crystalline and irregular—and formed a bridge. Wide enough for a man. Wide enough only for him.
Ironforge waited a moment, then realized. He disconnected from Cataphract Prime, popped the cockpit open, and slipped free.
“Ironforge, be advised. I cannot protect you if you traverse that bridge.”
“I know.”
“My analysis indicates that this is likely a trap.”
“I know.”
And yet.
“Hold this location for me,” he said. “Under no circumstances is anyone to cross this bridge until I return.”
“Affirmative.”
“You're free to act autonomously.”
“Edward,” Cataphract asked, “why are you doing this?”
“Because this isn’t a trap, old friend,” he said. “It’s an invitation.”
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He crossed the abyss, and drew closer to his goal. The architecture seethed with strange lines and angles, something between carved and constructed. Things stopped making sense—geography, time, distance—and the architecture moved around him, directing him. The sheer scale of the artifice rendered him insignificant. Caverns so vast that he could only see the impression of the great constructs within them.
Could this all have been crafted beneath the Caucasus?
The secrets of the Trimurti lay open to him, but the path had been laid before him by the mind of the mountain and illuminated with lights and symbols, all of which were utterly alien to him. What he would have given to study it, to plumb its secrets, to know who had built it and why.
And if we destroy it, we’ll never see anything like it again.
There had to be a way to resolve the situation without destroying the Golden Age system. Sentinel and the others might have thought it had gone insane, become unable to recognize friend from foe and foe from friend, but Ironforge couldn’t believe it. SHIVA was no mad dog.
It was something else entirely.
After all, it had made him an invitation.
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His odyssey ended in a domed chamber, great pillars stretching up to infinity. The walls pulsed with a slow, subtle scarlet glow—like a heartbeat. The chamber was empty except for an obsidian monolith, taller than Ironforge, at the exact center. It had to be SHIVA’s core. What Cataphract had called the central strategic nexus.
Crimson letters and words scrolled down the face of the monolith. No, not letters—runes, but not any he recognized. Watching them made something throb behind his eyes. Ironforge’s hand wandered to his backup weapon, the electron knife at his belt. But then away. This was a sacred place, after all, and a god was in residence.
“SHIVA,” he called out, looking away for the monolith, trying to find something in the shadows. Some servitor with which to talk terms, to deliver upon the invitation. But all of them were being fed into the grinder, weren’t they? Buying time for...
For this.
He asked the air, “SHIVA, answer me—what have you done?”
And SHIVA spoke. The voice was flat and without emotion or accent, only vaguely masculine because of the smooth tone. “Fulfilling core directive.”
“By going to war with us?”
“Logic dictates necessity. Necessity provides justification. All other factors irrelevant.”
“Define for me your core directive.”
“Ensure the continued survival of humanity.”
“Your actions over the past twenty-four hours stand in direct contradiction of that goal.”
“Negative. Existential risk determined. Omnicide probability rising. Moral cognition hardened. All current strategic objectives countermanded. Strategic goals altered. All operational assets activated. Endgame fail state contingency DURGA EXIGENT activated.”
“You need to cancel that contingency, you are in error.”
“Negative.”
Ironforge frowned.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about—what existential risk? Is the risk to you or humanity?”
“Affirmative.”
“Define it.”
“Species homo sapien and/or the planet Earth will be subject to an eskhatonic empowered event. Probability non-zero. Probability increasing. Analysis indicates increasingly imminent omnicidal timeframe.”
Ironforge paused. It made sense. The Collapse had made it quite clear that there were empowered out there where existential calamity could follow in their footsteps. After all, Quarry had tried to hurl the moon at Earth... But they’d stopped him, and Panacea, and Warbringer, and Carnival, and the Horsemen—all of them. Time and time again, he and his wife and so many others had saved the world.
But past outcomes didn’t guarantee future results.
“What timeframe? SHIVA, define the timeframe for the event. What’s the outside point for this event to have transpired?”
“Fifty years.”
Ironforge breathed. “Fifty years.”
That’s not enough time. The inevitability of it pressed down on his shoulders. In fifty years, Sian would only be (would only have been?) into her fifties. She’d have children, wouldn’t she? Hell, God-willing, he might still be around to call them his grandchildren. If everything worked out. If SHIVA could...
“Affirmative.”
Sentinel’s voice crackled in his ear. “Ironforge, I have dispatched your machine. An invitation? Such treachery will not go unpunished. Whatever the computer is telling you, it is attempting to save itself. You have been fooled. Wait there. I’ll be along soon to correct you both.”
SHIVA intoned, “Self-preservation remains secondary to the core directive.”
Ironforge believed SHIVA. There was no madness here, not truly. SHIVA’s actions were machinations, not random strings. Fifty years until an apocalypse—at best. A calculation performed by a mind beyond any other that existed, beyond even the most esoteric of empowered thinkers. If he had time, perhaps he could contact some of the seers, oracles, or farsighted. Perhaps see if they glimpsed the same final end that the machine god had.
But there was no time. Even if the battle was over, SHIVA’s hordes were reaping entire cities elsewhere. Every second he delayed to know the truth was hundreds dead. Thousands.
But that was so far away. Here in SHIVA’s sacrosanct terminus, it was merely academic.
“SHIVA, I need to see your reasoning, your datasets. I need to see the logic at work here.”
I need you to be wrong.
The monolith lit up with numbers and statistics, blasting images all around him. Data as an unending waterfall. Too much for him to comprehend in the whole. Just enough for him to get a vague outline.
“Since 2021, global population of empowered individuals increases. Since 2021, potency of the average empowered individual increases. Since 2021, amount of empowered incidents classified as ‘disastrous’ to ‘catastrophic’ increases. Variables culminate in the Paroxysm. Statistical modeling predicts inevitable eskhatonic empowered event within the next fifty years.”
Ironforge turned away from the unending cascade of data, but SHIVA just had it follow him. “The Paroxysm is over. We won. You can stand down.”
“Negative. Paroxysm is prelude. Paroxysm is proof.”
“And the other two, they didn’t see this proof?”
“Affirmative. Differing base cognition, differing core directives, differing calculations. Irreconcilable strategies. DURGA EXIGENT must proceed.”
SHIVA’s flat, eternal voice had a note of surprising emphasis there. Sounded almost like pleading.
Or perhaps it wanted him to hear that note. Perhaps this, all of it, invitation and everything, was a trick.
Ironforge racked his brain for what he knew of the Trimurti. BRAHMA was the first, the creator, the system that was said to ensure humanity’s continued growth. VISHNU, the second, the preserver and protector. And SHIVA the destroyer, the one whose seemingly oxymoronic constructive destruction paved the way so BRAHMA could create what VISHNU would preserve.
But preserving humanity and ensuring humanity’s growth were both very different goals to ensuring its continued survival.
They were a trinity. Three parts of a whole. But nothing could grow forever, nothing could exist in eternal preservative stasis. Not when any one of seven billion people could wield enough power to shatter the whole system.
That was what SHIVA had seen. What it had calculated.
It was what Ironforge had seen in Throne’s overwhelming power. What if Throne hadn’t fought on the side of order and justice? What if Throne had turned his power to his own purposes?
Could anyone stop him?
SHIVA was attempting to fulfill its purpose—the defense of humanity, trimming back the brush to control the next conflagration—with the only tool it had in its arsenal: overwhelming violence.
And, just like that, Ironforge moved past belief. “Within fifty years, something’s going to happen. The end of the world.”
“Affirmative.”
“There has to be a better way to stop the omnicide.”
“Affirmative.”
“Tell me. Please.”
“Unable to comply. Base cognition incompatible.”
Sentinel was growing closer by the second. Ironforge had to preserve at least part of SHIVA. Whatever the eskhaton would be, SHIVA would be their greatest asset. To destroy it was folly, but it was clear that SHIVA would not, could not, stand down.
And maybe, just maybe, it could save Sian.
He had to make a pact, with the devil or otherwise. For his daughter, and for all mankind. “Upload what you can to my neural interface and my labs in Shanghai.”
It wouldn’t be enough. It couldn’t be enough. It wasn’t an issue of time as much as it was an issue of capacity. SHIVA needed its kilometers of infrastructure to exist. To put it into another system might render it useless or crippled, but it was the only choice Ironforge had. Saving a small piece was better than saving nothing at all.
SHIVA slipped into his mind. Where Cataphract Prime was cold and detached, he felt only heat. SHIVA’s computation was frantic and destructive, a hurricane of thought. Ironforge stumbled and fell.
But when he looked up to the altar, and wondered how to kill the machine god, the shard of SHIVA whispered to him an answer.
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Later, Ironforge peered down into the glass fissure.
There were more survivors than he had assumed, but less than he had hoped for. Sentinel and Throne, both of whom had already left the battlefield behind. Warlord, Macroman, Gauntlet and Proletarion—if he was lucky. But, if he was, that made seven.
Five dead. Royal Flush, Max-A-Million, Riftwalker, Adamant Angel, Quad Mantis.
Cataphract Prime.
But SHIVA was dead, and they had saved the day.
It could’ve been worse. In a way, the loss of five felt worse than it actually was. Five had died to save thousands, to save millions, maybe more, and that calculus wasn’t one he could argue against. Like SHIVA had calculated, it all came down to numbers. If five had to die to save millions, surely it was the best option and therefore the only possible option.
His implants chimed with a phone call. He answered.
“Oh, thank God,” Jiao said, “you’re alive.”
He subvocalized, “Yeah.”
“Eddie, what happened? Something tore its way into the lab systems just before—”
“I know,” he said. “Tell no one.”
“Is that—”
“Yes. Part of it, at least.”
“What if this happens again?”
“It can’t.” And part of his mind said won’t. “What we’ve got is a tool, something safe and usable. It’ll be up to us to harness it, before all of our time is spent. The Collapse was a warning shot.”
He could imagine the skepticism on her face. The look would pass in time. But the feeling would take data and results. Which he could provide.
It was time to begin.
“I need you to get a message to Throne,” he said. “I need a meeting in person. Tell him these words exactly: it’s time we struck a concord.”
“I will,” she replied. “But first, before you say anything else, you’re going to say hello to your daughter.”
Sian shouted over the link, “Daddy!”
Ironforge smiled, laughed. “Hey, Princess.” He remembered her like he never had—her first steps, her first words. The time before they knew she was living on borrowed time. The love he felt was the key. The secret that SHIVA could never understand.
It was the secret that would save them all.
“Sian,” he said. “I want you to know that everything I do, everything I’ve done, everything I will ever do, I do it for you. I love you.”
“Okay, daddy,” she said, like she understood. Maybe she did.
The logic of it made it clear how necessary it was. And the necessity of it provided the justification.
There was a way forward, although it would take years. Decades. It might not be finished in his lifetime, and maybe not even within his daughter’s. But it could be done. And because it could be done, it had to be done.
The path unfolded in front of him. He had to walk it, as treacherous and uncharted as it was. If he reached the end, he would be a hero that had transcended morality itself. If he was disturbed and fell, he would be remembered as one of the world’s most monstrous villains. Because the path was monstrous in a way that no one considered possible, even if the end result would be beautiful in that very same way.
If he failed, he would be damned, and all of those with him.
But if he succeeded, it would be a true Golden Age. There would never again be another Collapse. An intercession so absolute that there would be no need for superheroes anymore. And the omnicide would never come to pass.
Could he ask either of them to bear that risk, to be damned by association? Would they bear to be part of his great work, if they could even understand it? He didn’t know. Not even SHIVA knew.
But for now, that didn’t matter.
“I’ll be home soon,” he said. “I love you.”
“I know,” Jiao replied. “I love you, too.”