Adam looked at Fenris and Adjra then teleported to his home away from home, the new Bunker he’d created. His nanites had created an underground bunker 25 miles northwest of the magma chamber and 5 miles beneath the surface. First, the nanites created a graphene pyramid with a base of 5280 feet, 1 mile. It was also 1 mile from the center point of the base to the tip of the top pyramid which gave the pyramid a volume of 49,066,000,000 feet—more than enough room for a small base that could see to his family’s needs.
He'd placed the pyramid away from any fault lines and ensured that the underside was braced on giant springs, much like Norad near Colorado Springs. Otherwise, it was just like any other base he’d created in the past. A much smaller scale, but the same. The bunker was completely self-sufficient with nanite technology to do all the heavy lifting like providing breathable air, drinkable water, and food. He’d also moved the semi-sentient A.I. core into the pyramid which remained connected to Athen’s version of the internet through a very small wormhole that allowed it to connect to Athen’s version of the internet his nanites had spliced into.
Athens housed the largest population on the planet and also had the most diverse population so staying connected to the world through Athens made sense. This new home away from home would be a perfect refuge from anyone on the surface as well as any underground creatures. There were no tunnels within a thousand feet of the pyramid. Also, the springs made it highly unlikely that anything happening inside would be noticed by creatures and monsters that relied on sensing vibrations, not that it would matter. The nanites were also set up as a defense against anything that tried to attack the pyramid. While nanites couldn’t normally infiltrate living creatures if the SYSTEM didn’t allow it, they could unmake unwanted guests if they proved troublesome.
Adam looked around the control center, then went down to the bottom level where 13 pods that could hold a human-sized body were laid out in a single room. He could have taken the elevator, but this pyramid came equipped with gravity shafts right beside the elevator. One for ascending and one for descending. He stepped into the descending shaft and dropped to the bottom level which automatically slowed him as he came to the bottom of the shaft.
Adam stepped out and made his way over one of the human-sized pods. Once he made sure each was fully functional and powered up he had the nanites start creating Adaline’s body. As he suspected the nanites were being thwarted by something which could only mean that the SYSTEM was interfering. Adam looked up at the ceiling and smiled.
“Okay SYSTEM, it’s time for those twelve favors. I could use my chaos to create these bodies. Still, I have a feeling that if I do I’m going to change their inherent nature so for the twelve favors you owe me I simply need you to stop SYSTEM interference within my bunker so I can recreate my family and friends' bodies using normal nanites. That’s all I need. Whether or not I can bring them back, that will be on me,” Adam said to the SYSTEM.
A moment later a notification popped into his vision
SYSTEM NOTICE: Understood, SYSTEM interference to biological entities by nanotechnologies rescinded for 24 hours within Adamantadine’s Bunker.
He’d been right after all. He’d always thought the SYSTEM was preventing nanites from affecting humans. It hadn’t made sense that magic would in some way thwart technology unless it was a direct effect like being overcharged from a lightning bolt for instance. Adam wondered, could there be a place in the Multiverse where nanotechnology and magic worked seamlessly? If he could get there, damn he could have a lot of fun. Then again, maybe not. Someone else might have already done so. Adam did have his work around with his ability Molded Chaos which allowed him to use the chaos within himself as if it were nanites but it would be so much easier if he could just create an A.I. and let it run things.
That was something to think about down the road. Enough daydreaming, he needed to get back to work. Right now, he was going to try to bring Adaline back. The first thing Adam did was have the nanites recreate her body exactly as it had been. There were aspects that the nanites couldn’t mimic. Adam used Molded Chaos to tweak the overall physical structure here and there, but he didn’t inject chaos into her body, which he was really worried would alter her in some unintended fashion. The differences were subatomic, and Adam believed intrinsically magical. Adaline was a dragon after all.
Once her dark elf body was made Adam isolated her memories within himself and downloaded them into her neural structure. With the nanites in place, this was a simple task and happened almost immediately. This next part was going to be the tricky part. He had to create her soul core and then transfer her animae into a structure he’d created for it. This was the most dangerous part. If he lost focus for even a moment her animae could fly off if the resonance of the new body didn’t draw it back.
Adam dropped his focus into his Mindspace and then expanded his mind to include Adaline’s body. Carefully he entered his Soul Core while maintaining contact with her body and looked for a corresponding location within her neural structure. When his mind reached into Adaline’s he found the location of where her Soul Core should be without issue. At the center of her mind was a void that hadn’t been filled. Adam moved his focus to his Animae Core and stretched the node containing Adeline’s Animae toward the emptiness he felt in Adaline’s mind. Intellectually he knew all the memories that made Adeline a person were present but the spark was missing and the body wasn’t working yet. Right now it was just a lump of different cells that didn’t do anything.
Adam held Adaline’s Animae within the center of the void in her mind. Nothing happened. There was a body, the mind had all of her memories that he had from the last time he’d copied them, and he had her Animae. What was missing? Then it came to him, the spark. The spark was missing. With a thought he had the nanites activate the body's heart and lungs. As soon as the blood started flowing and energy was applied to her mind the Animae darted from the node Adam had assigned it to and took its place at the center of Adaline’s mind. Adam watched as energy from the animae sent out tendrils of life-based energy that wrapped themselves around every aspect of Adaline’s mind and body and soaked in before disappearing. It wasn’t a slow process, it happened in an instant.
Before anything else could happen, Adam sent a command for the nanites to keep Adaline unconscious as he checked the node where her animae had been. As he suspected another animae had already filled the node and his Animae core was stable again. Adam focused on Adaline's Animae Core and created four node points in a triangular pattern with Adaline’s Animae at the center. From that shape, he expanded it into a cube and from there into an icosahedron with Adaline’s Animae at the center. Since he’d already figured out how to do this when altering his Animae Core it didn’t take long at all. 15 minutes later, Adaline’s Animae Core was nestled at the center of her Soul Core. Adaline’s Animae Core was now 21 orders of magnitude more complex than it had been before. Adam watched as memories from her mind started to fill the structure he’d created. Adam was sure the next time someone tried to rip her soul apart it wasn’t going to work, which was all that he could hope for.
As Adam watched her Animae Core he noticed that tendrils were reaching toward her Soul Core where abilities should be but the abilities were not forming for some reason. That was probably part of the formation process to link the body to the mind. It might form on its own during gestation and since she wasn’t gestated they hadn’t formed naturally. Adam reached out with his chaos and set some of it to a neutral state where the abilities should be. As he expected the tendrils made contact and the chaos shifted into the ability nodes she’d had before.
Adam watched as the ability nodes formed and Adaline’s body came alive beneath him. Until that moment he hadn’t realized that there had been anything off about her but now that he reviewed his memories he realized that her body had lacked the vitality it had just reacquired. Adam did one more check to make sure everything looked good then had his nanites put her in a robe that matched her dragon coloring as he withdrew the nanites from her body and released her from unconsciousness.
Adaline took a deep breath and then opened her eyes. She looked around until her eyes focused on Adam’s. She licked her lips, looked around again, and swallowed. Adaline moved into a sitting position and swung her legs to the side as she looked at Adam carefully before she said, “This doesn’t feel like the place my memories remember. We were in orbit and you’d stopped by. Now we’re,” she paused for a moment before she continued,” Now it feels like we’re underground somewhere. What happened?”
Adam leaned in for a hug which Adaline returned. As he did so he used Molded Chaos to Scan Adaline
Scan Successful: Adaline, Level 0 Umbral Dragon
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It looked like her level had reset to zero. Now for the question he really wanted to know the answer to, “Adaline, what are your attributes?”
“Let me check,” Adaline said as her eyes glazed over then she continued, “All my primary attributes are 89,289,587. Wait, I’m level zero, why am I level zero?”
“We’ll get to that in a second, what are your Hit Points?”
Adaline dived back into her status screen and pulled up the information, “In my current form I have 26,786,877 hit points. In my dragon form, different tab, it says I’ll have 401,803,155 hit points. Hey, there’s a new category, Damage Threshold, it says that’s at 89,290. What does that mean?”
“Damage Threshold is how much damage you need to take before your body is affected. What kind of hit point regeneration do you have?” Adam asked.
“622 hit points a second in the shadows or darkness, 156 hit points a second in lighted areas. 311 hit points a second everywhere else in my dark elf form. If I’m in dragon form it's 9,303 hit points a second in the shadows or darkness. If I’m in lighted areas I regenerate 2,326 hit points a second. Everywhere else I regenerate 4,651 hit points a second.” Adaline said.
Adam nodded, “Not too shabby. As to your question, we are within a different system, your levels were reset again. You lost all character, class, skill, and ability levels. Your attributes should have been reset as well, except that I created you exactly as you had been in the previous system so your physical body is the body you remember.”
“I died?” Adaline asked.
“Not only did you die, but your soul was also ripped apart. It’s taken me a little bit to work out how to bring you back. On which subject, how do you feel?” Adam asked.
“My soul was ripped apart. I thought that was impossible. I thought souls lasted forever?” Adaline asked.
“It would seem that there is a point where the glue that holds your memories to your soul decides it’s had enough. It also looks like it’s possible for that decision to be artificially imposed on others from specific assholes that exist within the multiverse.”
Adam went on to explain everything that happened and everything that he’d discovered about souls. How Animae were within a Soul Core, or the spark that held everything together, and how in normal people there wasn’t much holding a soul together except intent. He also explained how he’d increased the complexity of their Animae Cores which had also increased the complexity of their Soul Cores.
When Adam was done explaining, Adaline nodded as she said, “I had felt that there had been a change somehow. I can’t explain it but I feel like I’m more in this moment than I have ever been in any moment before. It’s weird.”
“I don’t know why making your Soul Core more complex would do that. My intention was simply to make it harder for someone to rip your soul apart. I’m sure you can still be killed but if whatever is killing you doesn’t know how to manipulate animae, which isn’t actually that hard, then they shouldn’t be able to rip your memories from the spark that is you.”
“So where are we?”
“We are on a world called Gemma. The technology here is comparable to…oh damn I forgot,” Adam said, as he looked thoughtful for a moment. Adam smiled mischievously and then opened a gate to the dimension where Aeris had tried to kill him and stepped through as he held his hand out for Adaline to take, “Come on through, we need to make sure you can still switch to your Umbral Dragon Form and I also have something to show you.”
Adaline reached through and took Adam’s hand as she stepped through and the portal closed behind her. Once it closed they both looked around. Adam was holding her aloft while they floated high in the air. Adam had allowed the portal to open coterminous to the same point on the plane he had been on which had allowed them to step into the plane of air in a different area where there were more islands and clouds floating all around them. There was even a globe of water flowing off in the distance which must be an oasis of some sort.
Adaline, concentrated for a moment as the shadows coalesced around her and shifted into her Umbra dragon form which dropped away from Adam and then flew up and around to come to a stop and began to hover near him.
Adaline smiled at Adam as she spoke in her draconic voice, “What did you have to show me?”
Adam allowed the chaotic mists to cover his body and shifted into his Adamantium Dragon Form with the tip of his nose only inches from Adaline’s as he stared into her eyes and sent telepathically, I might have undergone a few change
Adaline was so shocked that she stopped hovering and started to drop. Adam Molded Chaos to create a magical platform of force directly beneath both of them so that they both landed after only dropping five feet.
Adaline was jarred by the landing which forced her awake, “Are you a dragon now? No. Wait. Are you a silver, no, an adamantium dragon now?” Adaline asked in surprise.
Adam leaned forward and rubbed his neck against Adaline’s as he whispered. I was reborn from an Adamantium dragon's egg. My chaotic nature allows me to swap back to human but my true form is now that of an Adamantium Dragon,” Adam said.
“How is this possible?” Adaline whispered.
“I just told you, or did you mean something else,” Adam asked.
“I meant, how is it possible that the only thing wrong with our relationship was that we weren’t the same species and now we are?” Adaline clarified.
“Truthfully, I could have polymorphed myself into a dragon any time you wanted me to, you just never mentioned it before,” Adam said thoughtfully.
“I thought,” Adaline started and then stopped, took a deep breath, and restarted, “I thought Pandora was a blessing because we should have not been able to create a child together. When she came along it was a miracle. Having been a god for a bit, even if it was only in a digital world, allowed me to understand just now how rare miracles are.”
“Yes, Pandora was a miracle and someday we will find her again.”
“Yes, I know. I trust that we will both continue to look for her. My point is now that you are a dragon, we could have more children if we wanted. What would a cross between an adamantium dragon with a chaotic nature and an Umbral Dragon create?”
“Brothers and sisters for Pandora, that’s what we would create,” Adam said with a grin. But that’s moot, please join me, we need to get back,” Adam said as he polymorphed to human form on the floor of force.
“Why?” Adaline asked right after shadows enveloped her and she stepped out in her dark elf form.
“I made a deal with the local SYSTEM so I could bring the twelve of you back. We need to get back to the bunker, what I’m calling our retreat, so I can get everyone else.”
“Wait, everyone was killed?” Adaline said
Adam opened a Portal Gate back to the unground base, in the location where they’d appeared in this dimension, picked up Adaline, and flew up to and through the portal as he said, “Yep, when they killed you, they killed everyone else with you on Terra.”
“Terra, why don’t I have a memory of Terra?” Adaline asked as Adam set her down on her feet and closed the portal behind them.
“You all ended up at Terra shortly after I backed up all of your memories. We can go into all of that later. Suffice it to say, I don’t have those memories. They were lost when your soul was sundered. For all of you, it will be as if we were just together and now we’re here. I have about 23 hours to get the other eleven of you back and then I need to go meet with my mother and see what the dragons on this planet are going to do.”
“Wait, you’ve met your mother?” Adaline asked.
“Yep, I’ll explain it all after I get the rest of us back, against the clock sweetheart,” Adam said.
“Okay, Okay. Does this place have a room with a shower and such?” Adaline asked.
“Yep. Take the elevator in the center of this room up to the top floor. That’s our room. It’s set up with the same technologies we had back in the Place of Power and it’s all run by nanites.”
“Thor!” Adaline called out happily.
“Sorry, no Thor, but the A.I. is listening and can provide you with whatever you need,” Adam said.
“You’ll let me know why we don’t have Thor later, right?” Adaline asked.
“I will, now off with you, I have people to bring back from the dead.”
“Said no one ever,” Adaline said finishing Adam’s sentence with a smile.
“They both laughed as Adaline walked over to the elevator, waved, and then headed upstairs.
For the next five and a half hours Adam worked and was able to bring everyone back. He started with his mother and father. Next were Amanda Sifford and then Abi. Finally, of his friends, he brought back Desirae and Clarence. Unlike Adaline, he didn’t wake any of them up once he used chaos to recreate their abilities. He had the nanites within them keep them all unconscious.
The last five he brought back were Pandora's friends. Adam started with Callum. Next was Asling and then Robert. He finished up with Cedrik and then Pythias. Like Adaline, Adam had to supply something extra with his chaos as there was something about Pythias that his normal nanites couldn’t replicate. He double-checked everything on each of them. The last thing he did was look into everyone’s Soul Cores and make sure the 21-point Animae Cores were stable in each of them. When he was done, he went upstairs to check on Adaline. Adam found her lounging on the couch in the living room he’d created for them watching “It’s a Wonderful Life”
“Going for the tear-jerker I see?” Adam asked playfully.
Adaline paused the movie and looked up, “This is my third movie, after taking a shower. That took a little longer than I expected it to?” she said questioningly
“Yeah, time seems to get away from me when I’m working with a Soul Core. Anyway, they're all asleep downstairs. I have kept them in a comma because I figured it would be good for you to be down there when they woke up. Also, I wanted you to be able to answer their questions.
“How can I answer their questions?, Adaline asked. “I don’t even know what really happened.
“A problem I’m about to remedy,” Adam said as a neural interface materialized in his hand. Adam put a headset on his head and handed the other to Adaline as he showed her how to wear it. Once they both had the headsets on, Adam initiated a specific download of only the information she might need since the last time they’d seen each other.
“Adaline’s intelligence was high enough that the little bit of information he flooded into her mind was no issue. He made sure she had everything she needed to run the bunker as well as use the portal devices to get to Athens. When the transfer was done the headpieces dissolved and Adaline smiled, “You have been busy,” she said.
“I have. I’m going to leave waking the others up and getting them acclimated to this new reality to you. I need to get back to my new mom and make sure she and the red dragon, Fenris have come to a mutual understanding. Then I have to get…
“Adam!” Adaline said cutting in, “That was all in the information packet you just gave me. Now kiss me and get to work.
Adam shrugged sheepishly and moved over for a kiss that lasted a bit longer than just a moment. When they drew apart he opened a portal as he held Adaline’s gaze, “I Love You,” Adam said as he stepped through the portal into the meeting room where Adjra and Fenris waited.