For the second time that day Ryker was running, panting hard even as his exoskeleton bore the brunt of his exertion. He’d left the main control room behind and left the people there to their work, he would only get in the way at this point. The rumble of the incoming Kaiju’s steps rippled through the underground tunnel as the familiar sound of Heavy Armor return fire boomed beyond the thick walls of the facility.
“Pick up!” Ryker growled as he tried hailing the man he was looking for on his communicator for the tenth time in as many minutes. “Pick up you bastard!”
Doctor Beck Wallenstein’s face smiled unconcerned from his contact profile picture as Ryker’s frustration threatened to boil over. The doctor had been on the front lines of anti Kaiju warfare from the beginning. He’d been one of the first men to compile and understand the makeup of the Kaiju’s unique genome and evolution processes. Making use of all that information to instruct the militaries of the world in creating tactics they could use against Kaiju for their out of date weaponry while pioneering the H.A.L.O. system that allowed human nervous systems to uplink and synchronize with piloted machines. His survival was critical if there would be any hope of countering any further Kaiju.
He was also the only living friend Ryker had left in the whole world.
Reaching the end of the corridor Ryker turned hard and almost slammed into someone coming the other way. Swearing profusely Ryker barely managed dance around the person, aggravating his right side even further as he regained his balance.
“Oh Ray! Thank goodness I found you!” An older soft spoken voice called out. His mild mannered tone clashing hard against the clamor of distant machine gun fire and the roar of Kaiju.
“Beck!” Ryker said in relief as he came forward to grab his friend by the shoulders. The relief he felt at finding his friend washing away almost instantly as concern took over. “Are you alright? Why haven’t you headed down to the bunker yet? Are you cr-”
Just in time Ryker managed to cut himself off before he could finish his sentence. Crazy. That was the word most people used to describe Beck if they looked at him. Well into his seventies Beck’s hair was a matted mess of white that would have rivalled Einstein’s. His thick spectacled glasses doing nothing to diminish the almost manic look in his eyes as they flitted about. He looked fragile, like he’d shatter to pieces at the slightest touch. It hurt Ryker to see his friend this way, especially since the portrait on his communicator looked so full of life and energy.
He’d given almost his entire life to combatting the threat of Kaiju in the world and the man had fallen apart because of it. The unimaginable pressure he put on his shoulders to create weapons capable of killing Kaiju as they tore across the land had just been too much. Ryker remembered all too well how Beck had kept a counter in his laboratory of the lives confirmed to have been taken by Kaiju. It had been a source of dire motivation for Beck and his assistants, but as the number climbed higher and higher the man had broken apart, piece by piece.
When Ryker had visited Beck’s lab to take him to the Subterran Ark Typhon before they embarked on their journey under the Earth’s surface he’d found the man crumpled in a corner trembling amidst a storm of fallen papers. Weeping uncontrollably as he tried to write through formula after formula for failed plasma weapons. Rambling incoherently about how he could still help if he just got it right. Without a word Ryker had ripped the power cord from the wall for the large display with the death counter. It had stopped at nine hundred ninety nine million.
It hadn’t been big enough to display death tolls over a billion.
“I came for you actually.” Beck said like there wasn’t an imminent threat of death via Kaiju. “Do you remember the experiment I told you about? How there’s never enough time?”
“Yes you did.” Ryker said impatiently. Despite not knowing what the man was talking about at all. “Now come on we need to get you to the-”
“Ray, I did it!” Beck proclaimed, beaming as he looked at his friend. “There’s finally enough time! I found out how to make more, to go back even…” Beck stopped as his face scrunched up in confusion. “Or was it forwards? It’s such a terribly confusing thing, time. Once you throw any kind of matter into the mix it throws off all the calculations. I wouldn’t recommend it.”
“Beck.” Ryker said. Trying to keep his tone smooth despite the danger. “We need to move, understand?”
“I… I’m sorry Ray.” Beck said seeming to be blinking back tears. “I know I must sound out of it at times but this is important. I need your help. It has to be you, you more than anyone else. Don’t you see?”
Ryker paused and kept his face neutral as he tried to determine how best to get his friend to safety. Running through things he could say or what he could do.
The hand Beck placed on his left shoulder was firm. Ryker looked at Beck surprised but found a fierce clarity in his friend’s eyes.
“Do you trust me Ray?” Beck said simply.
Ryker wanted to shake the man’s hand from his shoulder and shake some sense into him in turn but found the light in his gaze too piercing to look away from. “Why do you ask?”
Beck’s lips trembled as the foundations of the tunnel shook with another rumble of the battle going on above. And Beck asked “If you could go back… back before this all started… would you do it?”
Ryker pushed down the urgency that compelled him to move and held Beck’s gaze. He could still feel it inside him. That hatred. Endlessly burning and gnashing its teeth. Desperate to make these monsters bleed and bleed and bleed.
“Without question.” Ryker said simply.
“Then we need to hurry.” Beck said nodding as he ran back towards his laboratory.
“What for?” Ryker shouted as he ran after his surprisingly agile friend.
“The conflux can only be maintained for a set amount of time!” Beck called back as he ran. “Quantum Physics is… hoo boy this is a long hallway. Anyway- Quantum Physics is such a bitch to work with! It kept me stuck for the longest time! Physical matter is incapable of making the jump. However! If you utilize an existing consciousness as the basis for the temporal entanglement it works! Linking two separate but fundamentally similar consciousnesses across the gap of space/time!”
“Explain it like I’m five!” Ryker shouted back. Unfortunately very aware that if he let Beck ramble on any further he’d lose the man completely to his science jargon. What was he saying anyway? He didn’t actually mean-
“Time travel my boy!”
Beck burst into the lab and immediately set about ordering his few remaining assistants, those that hadn’t already fled for the bunker, around the room to various blinking machines Ryker had no chance in hell of making any sense of. As if to remind them that they were all still in immediate danger another quake rumbled through the complex. Turning, Ryker could almost see the battle playing out beyond the laboratory’s walls. The lab was one of the buildings furthest from the Kaiju’s initial point of entry but that by no means guaranteed safety. It just meant they had a little more time than others.
Wanting to speed up this mad gambit Ryker strode up to Beck and immediately asked. “Alright. Fire it up and let’s do it!”
“Fire it up?” Beck said looking almost aghast in his newly donned safety goggles. “This isn’t some random combustion engine Ray. Have some respect for science. It’s going to take at least five minutes.”
“Five minutes?” Ryker said horrified. He’d come under the presumption that whatever scheme Beck had cooked up could be done immediately. Then, time travel or not, he could take the good Doctor and all his assistants down to the bunker.
“Those Kaiju aren’t going to wait five minutes for your little experiment Beck!”
“Well.” Beck said sounding slightly indignant as he picked up an auto needle syringe from a nearby table. “They’re going to have to. You can’t rush innovation Ray- ah hold still please.”
Without any warning whatsoever Beck placed the end of the auto needle against Ryker’s neck and pressed a button. Instantly injecting Ryker with whatever was inside that syringe.
“Ow! Fucking Christ Beck! What was that?” Ryker said rubbing the spot the needle had punctured him. “Did you just drug me?”
“Of course not.” Beck said. Somehow having the gall to sound offended. “That was a mixture of macro nutrients, anti coagulants, and a mild stimulant to keep your blood flow strong and healthy.”
“Well good.” Ryker said bewildered. “But really Beck we need to- Ow!”
Without any pause in between Beck placed the used up syringe on the nearby tray and immediately injected Ryker with another syringe. Stabbing it into the other side of Ryker’s neck, opposite where his hand was holding against the first injection site.
“Now I drugged you.” Beck said smiling. As if he’d somehow done Ryker a favor.
“What was that?” Ryker said staring baffled at his friend holding up both hands to each side of his neck.
“A fast acting muscle relaxant and mild tranquilizer. It’s completely harmless.” Beck said comfortingly. “Oh but please let me know if you are feeling any loss of feeling in your extremities. I will need time for an assistant to prepare the defibrillator before you experience cardiac arrest.”
“Beck you bast… bast… urd…” Ryker tried to say finding his words growing sluggish. He licked his lips in confusion as his arms fell from his neck to fall limp at his sides. “I taste coconut.” Ryker said out loud. His words coming out thick as he tried to keep from slurring. Sounding more and more concerned as the seconds ticked by. “Why do I taste coconut?”
“Oh good it’s working!” Beck said before calling two assistants over to grab Ryker by the shoulders and haul him onto a nearby gurney.
“Hurry please!” Beck said to his assistants as they moved an unmoving Ryker to a complicated machine. It looked like the old MRI machines you’d find in hospitals, only if it had been dismantled, and halfheartedly put together again by someone with an affinity for power coils and blinky dials.
There was one thing that Ryker did recognize among all the detritus though. A H.A.L.O. connector that you could find on any number of Gen Three Heavy Armors and other piloted devices. The ring around the cord at the end serving as both connecting port for the matching jack in the base of Ryker’s skull and protector designed to operate as a failsafe should there be any overloads in the system that could damage the user’s mind.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Ryker was torn between fear for his own safety from Beck’s hobbled together machine and the very real threat of the Kaiju battle outside spilling over onto the laboratory grounds. Thought they were in an underground section of the labs at least, that provided Ryker at least some small modicum of comfort.
As he was hooked into the machine’s H.A.L.O. connector port a string of data and undecipherable formulas scrolled past as Ryker tried to talk some sense into Beck before the experiment could go any further.
“Beck.” Ryker said deliberately pronouncing his name so his voice didn’t slur. “Listen to me. I don’t know what you think this machine is but it can’t-”
“It can Ray.” Beck said coming close to Ryker his voice absent of all emotion. To the point of sounding hollow. “It used to be different. This machine. It was supposed to come up with a solution for us. I’ve cannibalized all the remaining Artificial Intelligence Processors to make this machine, sorry I didn’t tell you that.” Beck said with a small smile. As if the news of the man destroying all their remaining A.I. processors, vitally important resources that were supposed to last Typhon for generations to come, were just a small mistake.
“We die Ray.” Beck said numbly, his voice fluttering on the edge of sanity. “All of us… I’ve run the simulations. Over three hundred million iterations. Even in the best of them we only make it a couple decades. There is no more hope for us I’m afraid. For anyone.”
Ryker stared wide eyed at his friend as he absorbed that information. There had been three Artificial Intelligence Processors given to each Ark as they made their plunge into the Earth. They were all incredibly powerful, top of the line quantum processors. A single one would have been more than enough to automate the entire infrastructure of a major city. In addition to all those other functions, they were constantly analyzing terabytes of data and running their own simulations on how that data could be utilized to benefit the city’s inhabitants.
The idea that Beck could have gathered all three of them. Typhon’s entire supply that was supposed to jump start humanity’s civilization beneath the surface and utilize them to run a survival analysis was actually within the realm of possibility.
That all that processing power couldn’t imagine a future where humanity survived was…
“You’re certain?” Ryker said softly. Beck barked a laugh that sounded on the edge of a sob.
“I wish I wasn’t.” He said in a whisper. Leaning in close to Ryker. His skin going pale as a ghost.
“I made this with the A.I.’s help.” He said as he pointed at the machine he was working on. “It should be able to replicate the effects of a quantum tunnel and project your consciousness through an inverted mobius strip to overlay your existing thought processes onto your younger self’s synapses.”
“Why haven't you come to us with this before Beck? You know I would have backed you.”
A rumble rocked the lab again as small tools and trays clattered to the floor. Judging from the strength of the quakes alone the battle above must have been getting closer.
“It's a one way trip Ray. There won't be any coming back. If it succeeds then all this-” Beck gestured to everything around him. “This will cease. This entire God forsaken timeline will have never existed. All the suffering, all the lives lost? They’ll be nothing but a bad dream.”
“What’s the catch?” Ryker asked knowingly. After decades of working together Ryker knew exactly how Beck presented his experiments. Always with the good news first and the bad news swept under the rug so no one would find it.
“The energy involved in creating the quantum tunnel and are as I’m sure you’re aware in the excess of several gigajoules. With that kind of power there is a non zero chance of an occurrence that could be-”
“English Beck for the love of God. You already drugged me and you know I’m up for it.” Ryker said even though his doubts about the experiment were voicing themselves rather loudly in his head at the moment.
“It’s going to kill you.” Beck said after a moment of hesitation. Sounding just as fragile as when Ryker had found him crumpled in a corner of his lab. “In order to fully map your neurons and their unique connections the system is going to override your H.A.L.O.’s failsafes and run a current through your brain. I would have found a way to send myself back Ray, but I… I can’t do it.” Beck said pleadingly in a way that made Ryker’s chest tighten.
“I’m too broken Ray. There’s something inside me that broke all those years ago and it’s something I don’t know how to fix.” Beck said waveringly.
A bigger quake rocked the lab that almost sent Beck to the floor if he hadn’t grabbed onto the machine Ryker was attached to. If he hadn’t been lying down Ryker doubted he’d have been able to stay standing either, exoskeleton or no. The all too familiar roar of gunfire seemed to grow closer as the plodding steps of Kaiju and Heavy Armors fought on.
There was a part of Ryker that wanted to deny everything. That Beck was wrong about their chances and this machine was nothing more than the desperate attempt of a broken man to convince himself he could fix the mistakes of the past. Ryker was an important figure here, they’d need his help to… to…
For the first time in years the weight of everything seemed to fall on Ryker’s shoulder’s as he pondered that thought.
What could he do now? He couldn’t fight the Kaiju anymore. With his fried nervous system and spinal cord he’d never be able to step into any kind of Mech ever again. Even the basic and almost pitifully rudimentary Heavy Armors were beyond him now. He couldn’t even rely on his failing body to pilot one in manual mode.
And if he couldn’t fight Kaiju what good was he? What could he possibly do for humanity from a desk? Write another memo on how they’d failed to meet projections? How to curb unrest and raise the colony’s morale? And be forced to do all that without coffee?
If there was even the smallest possibility that this machine could work, that it could send him back with all his knowledge of future events and decades of honed skills… If that were actually possible…
Ryker grinned. The same feral smile he had worn when he’d been in the cockpit of a Mech. His Mech. When he had the monsters that sought to destroy humanity bleeding and trapped in a corner as he strode forward. Making the same promise to them he’d made to every Kaiju he’d ever fought since he’d lost his Mother and Father.
Since he lost his unborn sister.
“Beck I’m ready!” Ryker called to his friend as Beck got to his feet. “Light it up!”
Watching Beck’s face it was as if hearing Ryker’s words lit a fresh spark in his eyes as he climbed to his feet amid the quaking lab and began pushing buttons and calling out commands to his shaken support staff. One by one, parts of the machine Ryker was connected to began to hum to life. In his mind’s eye, connected to the machine as he was through his H.A.L.O. jack, he could see processes start and begin powering up as the system went through its activation stages.
[Preliminary Control Diagnostics… Complete.]
[Temporal Containment Shield… 100% Durability.]
[Charging Quantum Coils… Output at 39.27%… Insufficient power for sustained Quantum Tunneling reaction]
[Rerouting power from auxiliary generators G1, G5, and G13… Complete.]
The lights illuminating the room flickered and dimmed as the machine in the center of the room became the brightest source of light. Above, Ryker could see that two half moon metal prongs moved from their recessed positions in the machine to face each other. Static churning along their ends as they began to rotate. The barest flicker of light glowing at the center of their reaction.
[Quantum Coils stabilizing at 99.79% Output]
[Acceptable Ignition Parameters met. Beginning Quantum Tunnel formation.]
The whir of the prongs rose in volume, the pitch going higher and higher until Ryker could no longer hear the reaction itself with his ears. He could only feel it vibrate through his skin and bones as the experiment took place above him. He could even feel the beginnings of a strange almost unnoticed tugging sensation coming from the brightening center of the static.
“It’s stabilizing!” Beck shouted over the machine. Showing nothing but pure focus as he scrolled through screens of data. “Probability of Entangled Consciousness override has increased to fifty, no! Sixty three percent and climbing!” The smile that warmed Beck’s face was equal parts familiar and missed. This is what the man had been made for. Pushing the boundaries of known science to its limits to achieve the impossible. Ryker almost smiled seeing his friend finally shedding the melancholy of his many years of punishing failures. The once in a millennium genius reveling in his work with his lab coat billowing and hair waving wildly. His expression the purest kind of joy you could only hope to experience for yourself one day. It was only for a moment but that was how Ryker would have preferred to remember Beck Wallenstein. In these final moments of his greatest triumph.
And not the disaster that would immediately follow.
With a deafening lurch a large portion of the lab’s upper and side walls disappeared as a titan fell through the building. Slamming into it’s final resting place less than thirty feet away from the ongoing reaction the Heavy Armor slumped and tried to rise. Internal motors whirring as it tried to force itself to rise. In an instant, even as preoccupied as he was with the reaction currently forming above him Ryker took in the state of the Heavy Armor. The deep gouges in its frame as reinforced carbonite buckled under the attacks of the Drill Maw. The dripping of acid as it visibly ate through to the Heavy Armor’s interior. With a deafening roar now that there were no walls separating the lab from the battle outside. The Drill Maw approached casting aside the remains of the Heavy Armor’s main rifle as it approached.
“No!” Beck roared. Fingers flying across the screens in front of him as he shouted over the deafening noise. “The reaction’s destabilizing!”
“Beck! Get out of here!” Ryker shouted. Fear for his friend’s life almost giving him the strength to rise from his drug induced state.
“Almost there!” Beck promised. Despite the imminent threat plodding its way towards the lab his concentration never wavered. Ryker didn’t know who the pilot of the Heavy Armor was. It could have been anyone, the identifying markers along the sides had all been burned away by acid and bio-missile blasts. Whoever they were, they had good instincts.
As the Kaiju charged. The right hand forearm housing the Heavy Armor’s Pulse Blade unfurled itself and ignited. Instantly increasing the surrounding temperature as the reactive plasma raced along the blade. With the other hand the Heavy Armor planted its fist directly into the Kaiju’s mouth. Sacrificing the appendage for the chance to get close enough to the Kaiju for a killing strike. The Pulse Blade, easily twenty five feet long, looked more like a combat knife in the Heavy Armor’s hands than a giant plasma weapon.
The Pulse Blade drove deep into the Kaiju’s neck as the Heavy Armor wrenched it back an forth. Trying to dig through the Drill Maw’s protective scales and ablative tissues as he tried to sever the brain stem. With a cry of pain the Kaiju tore the Pulse Blade from its neck as blood rained down on the lab like a red waterfall.
Kaiju blood was inherently toxic, to humans just as much as the environment. Decades of sustained battles against Kaiju often resulted in large swaths of the continents and oceans being rendered uninhabitable as their blood seeped into natural ecosystems. Causing changes and mutations at a rate that boggled the mind. It was that very blood that had almost killed Ryker in the aftermath of a particularly viscous battle and forever ruined the right side of his body.
But the blood’s toxicity was the last thing Ryker feared at the moment. As he reached a weakened hand towards his friend the blood splashed over him completely as it ran through the lab. And to Ryker’s horror saw first hand as his friend’s skin burned as the blood, already at a blistering temperature heated as it was by the Kaiju’s internal Bio-reactor rose even further in contact with the Heavy Armor’s pulse blade.
Not even Ryker was spared as the blood arrived at the machine he was connected to and splashed onto it. His position on the gurney saving him as a multitude of smaller droplets scalded his bare skin, but he didn’t care. He only had eyes for his friend.
Beck was dying before Ryker’s very eyes. Struggling to stay on his feet even as the Kaiju’s blood burned through his skin and muscle tissue, revealing the terrible white of bone as Beck stumbled forward to the machine. With fingers dripping flesh Beck raised a trembling hand towards a massive switch on the machine. Unable to pull it down with his ruined arm he leaned onto it with all his weight. Finally slamming the switch down as he fell onto Ryker’s gurney. Text whizzing before Ryker’s eyes as he stared his dying friend in the eyes.
[Emergency Activation: Immediate Override of Temporal restrictions established.]
[Boring Quantum Tunnel now]
[Prepping Synaptic Flash Burn in three seconds]
“Save us Ray.” Beck whispered. His voice sounding unnervingly normal as it came through boiled skin and lips. Beck started into Ryker with eyes like fire, his eyes being the only thing untainted by the Kaiju’s blood. They blazed with purpose even as the light animating them faded away with each passing second.
“Save us all.”
[Two…One…Initiating Synaptic-
Ryker couldn’t even read the text as fire tore through his mind. In the space of a heartbeat Ryker’s entire being seemed to burn as the fire ate through him. Seeming to pull on him somehow as his conscious mind was pulled away from his convulsing body and into the machine. Sent directly upwards into the Quantum Tunnel.
The blood that had fallen on the machine, especially the portion undergoing the reaction had settled and swirled around the tunnel like it was trying to punch its way through. The condensed packet of consciousness and memories that was Raymond Ryker. Mixed with the blood of his greatest enemy as his mind entered the Quantum Tunnel and was flung back in time. Back to before the world was lost to man.
Back to the right time, but… soon to find himself in the wrong body.