8:05 A.M.
February 7
The Pentagon, Arlington, Virginia, United States of America, Earth
Thomas Zavon stood in front of the door to a large subterranean conference room in the guts of the Department of Defense’s iconic building, his dark gray eyes locked forward and a deep frown on his face. His gray-salted brown hair was immaculately slicked back and his uniform sparkled under the artificial lighting of the corridor he waited in. Under the Navy Captain’s left arm was tucked a set of manilla folders and the left hand clenched a portable thumb drive.
It had been a month since his nephew Gary had been disappeared from whatever had grabbed him, and Thomas was finally ready with his report. It had taken a month to get the information contained on the drive and in those folders, as the requests had been both subtle and global. It was a theory. It was an insane theory. It was one he now had the statistical data to back up.
The conference room door finally opened as a lower-ranking officer opened it up and held it open while coming to a stiff salute. Thomas noted idly that this was an Army officer but he paid it no mind as he returned the salute before entering the door. Inside was the large conference room, and the door he’d entered from led onto a small platform at one end of it. The place wasn’t really a conference room, more than it was a hybrid of one and a small movie theater’s screening room. Without taking a look at the ‘audience’ he confidently strode up to the small podium to one side of the screen on the wall he put his back to and stood at ease once he set his folders down. The drive stayed clenched in his hand.
“Captain Zavon, thank you for coming,” said a man a little older than Thomas from the semi-gloom out on the other side of the room. Thomas knew that voice to belong to Rear Admiral Deluth. Seeing as he’d spoken, he’d probably been selected to be the point man for this review. “We understand that your investigation into the disappearance of your nephew has had some results?”
“Yes, sir.” The Army officer that had let him in came forward when Thomas looked at him and he handed the folders to him. Understanding the assignment, the officer marched into the gloom and began handing the hard copies of Thomas’ findings to those present. Finally, Thomas inserted the drive he’d been clutching into a waiting slot and pushed a button on the tablet built into the podium to call up the information within. The screen flicked to life behind him and waited for his manipulations to proceed. “To begin, I have not located my nephew at this time. The search is ongoing.”
“He just had the first production version of the Virtual Network System installed into his brain, correct? Is there any possibility this is some super-elaborate hoax to cover his defection to an enemy country?”
“Absolutely no chance of that, sir. Gary received the VNS as scheduled and reported no significant problems upon its activation. The agents that were assigned to his surveillance detail reported he had no outward indicators of attempting to flee or evade notice. In fact he walked up to them and asked them for a ride to our home in Jacksonville, citing the fact that he had no reason to hide from them since he’d agreed to the procedure.” Thomas’ tone was evenly-keeled, but the insinuation his own blood would be a traitor clearly made him a little heated. Rear Admiral Deluth waved the creeping tone of anger down and Thomas relented with a sigh.
“At ease, Captain. I had to ask. Please continue.”
“Yes sir. On January Sixth at approximately ten-twenty-one A.M., the agents and Mr. Zavon arrived at our residence. Having arrived, Mr. Zavon then exited the surveillance van and attempted to make it up the walkway to our front door.” Thomas pushed a button on the display of the tablet, and the footage from the van’s cameras played behind him. The stumbling form of his nephew, the clear pain he was in, then vanishing into a folding point of reality as the agents could be heard shouting in alarm and racing to get out of the van to no avail. Thomas pointedly didn’t look at the video. He’d seen it enough for a dozen lifetimes. “Mr. Zavon was intercepted by an unknown phenomenon and vanished from all detection. The phenomenon seems to have collapsed in on itself, taking my nephew, part of a concrete walkway, and a bit of yard with it at a mathematically exact slicing in a spherical shape.”
Most of the people here clearly hadn’t seen the video before as they requested several playbacks before allowing him to continue. “Upon returning home and conferring with the agents investigating the scene, I was shown this footage in the field. I immediately recognized the way he grasped his head as him receiving a headache that he’s had off and on for nearly his entire life. Usually he just pauses for a moment when it starts off but the sudden and visible onset of symptoms have led me to a hypothesis that he was somehow able to detect these invisible phenomena. This is further supported by the fact that upon further investigation of the van’s recording devices several monitoring devices experienced heavy interference that all pointed to where the event occurred.”
“And so this collection of evidence led you to request the records you did. At great political expense, I may add,” said Rear Admiral Deluth. Thomas nodded in appreciation, ignoring the politicking jab in favor of staying on topic.
“Yes sir. Thanks to the collating of data from missing persons cases around the world and various civilian and military sources tracking disruptions of the electromagnetic frequencies present at my nephew’s disappearance, I have come to the conclusion that this was far from an isolated incident. This map.” Thomas poked another button and a global map appeared on the screen. Quickly, dots began spreading all over the planet especially in urban centers which sometimes started to turn into solid red masses. Murmurs quickly rose at the data being displayed like this. “This map shows a graphic of worldwide missing person’s reports that coincide with the observed conditions of this phenomenon. The number is in the millions worldwide, ladies and gentlemen; and it’s growing. Admittedly we don’t have a one-to-one comparison for all of them so some of these may be false positives, but the staggering number of possibles? This is a clear problem.”
“God in Heaven,” he heard someone mutter as they quickly leafed through their folder’s contents.
“It gets worse, I’m afraid.” That drew attention back to his presentation. “This uptick in missing persons also seems to coincide with a rise in animal sightings and attacks. In London just last week, for example. A huge tiger from an unknown source was prowling down the streets outside Scotland Yard and killed seven people before it was brought down by local law enforcement. Reports of birds not native to regions have skyrocketed, and the trend for them and other animals continues worldwide. There are even reports of apparently mutated versions of animals being found; all of which are hyper-aggressive and take notable firepower to bring down.”
More images flash onto the screen; the unusually large tiger in question, creatures in places they aren’t anywhere near native to, and several images of animals that sported tentacle-like appendages, glowing body parts even in death, far too many teeth, or spikes where there was no need for them. The conference room was silent now as Thomas continued.
“I do not currently have an answer to how to stop or slow down this problem. All I can tell you is that it’s actually been slowly ramping up over what my available data says is at least two decades. This is probably the definition of a threat to national security, not to mention the ecological impact of new creatures and invasive species popping up globally.”
“This is a.. How.. How did we miss this?” Rear Admiral Deluth was pale at this point as he finished reading his own folder’s contents and sat back with a stunned look on his face.
“No one was looking for it, sir. Sadly missing persons cases are too common, and animals being places they aren’t supposed to happens frequently due to human mismanagement. What really caught my attention were the mutated creatures. That indicates some sort of shift in this problem, a dangerous one. Whatever took my nephew and those other people is growing in frequency and seemingly starting to become two-way.”
Thomas was about to speak further on details when a strident alarm shook the room and the outside halls. Every head jerked up at the sound. It was an alarm that they all had never hoped to hear aside from tests. The Pentagon’s intruder alert siren. It had been installed as a simple precaution but something about it sent a shiver up Thomas’ spine. He immediately turned to a locker on a nearby wall and pressed his ID badge against the scanner. A simple sharp beep and a green light let him yank the door open to reveal a small armory. Handguns and rifles greeted his gray sight and without hesitation he grabbed one of each, strapped the handgun’s holster to his uniform’s belt, and loaded the rifle with the practiced ease of a veteran of battlefields.
The officers in attendance also raided the locker and armed themselves. Thomas was the first at the door he had entered from. Nodding to the Army officer to open the door Thomas slid out quickly and swept the hallway to and fro. They were underground. The stairwell was down a long straightaway and standard procedure was to evacuate the higher-ranking people first. Everyone had weapons drawn and at the ready as Thomas led the swift movements towards the stairwell in question.
Reaching it without incident they began slowly clearing the way forward, sweeping every corner and expecting the world to come crashing down on them as they ascended from the basement to a higher one, then finally to the ground floor of the Pentagon. A creeping sense of dread tickled the back of Thomas’ neck as the alarms continued to blare. When they got into the main corridor on the ground floor, a field of carnage awaited them.
Bodies of Department of Defense staff were strewn here and there; all sporting parallel gashes or giant puncture wounds or a collection of smaller ones. They looked suspiciously like bite marks to the Captain’s sweeping gaze. His grip on the rifle creaked as he scanned more thoroughly the area around them. Unfortunately, the way out was either a heady jog back the other way or the closer one in the wake of the bloodbath. Without breaking sight on the bloody path, he spoke quietly. “Forward or back?” They all knew the building’s layout so he didn’t have to elaborate on the question.
“Forward. Back is too far.” Someone he didn’t recognize had given an order, causing Thomas to grit his teeth and carefully pick his footing across the blood-sprayed floor towards the closer exit of the building. As they followed the trail he finally heard the staccato sounds of gunfire coming from ahead. In response was a pair of roars that shook the hallway and sent a spike of fear through Thomas’ heart. He grit his teeth even harder and came to a corner in the hallway that encircled the Pentagon’s first floor for transit. Peeking past the corner almost beggared belief.
He saw two lion-shaped creatures in staggered formation stalking forward under a lackluster spray of bullets from the security forces that had scrambled to the sound of screams. The lions were strange, though; quarter-unfurled giant bat-like wings twitched and flapped from their backs as a giant glistening black scorpion stinger weaved through the air behind them in the way a stalking big cat would do. The stingers had to be at least eight inches of solid chitin, and in their wake was a burbling pattern weaving into the linoleum from a sickly translucent green slime dripping from just below the armored stinger’s point.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
He decided to look back at the ranking people behind him and muttered. “Two tangos ahead. Big-ass lions with wings and scorpion stingers. We can get a flank on them, maybe bring them down. I’d have to call out to the guys ahead to watch crossfire.”
“Manticores,” the Army officer muttered after a moment. Everyone gave him a look. “Manticore; monster from myths and video games. Lion body, wings, scorpion tail. Reputedly tough bastards to bring down. The flank might be good if we can like get a bullet up their asshole or something. ..What? I play Dungeons and Dragons. This is right in the Monster Manual!” Another look, but Thomas finally nodded. It was as good a name as any. His gray gaze slid to the ranking officers, who all nodded back and hefted their guns.
“Alright then. When I call out we swing wide, set a firing line, and empty into their backs. For the love of God don’t miss.” Nods at the plan, then Thomas leaned back around the corner and shouted as people began to move. “Friendlies! Hit the deck!” With what warning that was, Thomas swung around the corner as everyone got moved and lined up. At an unspoken signal they all opened fire at once.
The rear beast half-turned, presenting its flank to the fusillade of lead coming downrange. It roared defiantly as the turn faltered and it stumbled, but it tried to charge towards the firing line. The shots focused on the skull and front of the chest, turning it into a bloody ruin as the beast finally gave out and slid dead on the floor about six feet ahead of them.
The front one had turned at the sound of its partner dying and the people in front took advantage to empty their weapons into the chest of the creature as it gave them a beautiful flank shot. It stumbled as well, a pitiful half-cough sound escaping it before it hit the ground as well. The beast’s chest was slowly and laboriously still moving, which prompted one of the soldiers ahead of it to slam a fresh magazine into his weapon and come closer to end its misery. In a last effort of sheer hatred, the forward beast twisted as it lay on the ground, ramming the scorpion stinger into the lower ribcage of the soldier eliciting a horrifying scream before the beast gave up the ghost and collapsed dead.
Thomas Zavon could only look on in horror at the carnage before him. A couple of minutes and these things had just torn through at least two dozen people. It had taken multiple people with firearms to bring the things down, and even then one had managed a final blow. The one who’d been stung was on the ground convulsing heavily as the captain could hear his gurgling from here. His buddies tried to save him but the damage was clearly too great as with a final spasm the soldier stiffened up into a rapid onset of rigor mortis and the others slumped in defeat as they checked for vitals to no avail.
He leaned against the wall and regarded the carcasses in the hall as the hysterics started around him. This was painfully clear now. It was a problem. Something was coming, and he had no clue how to stop it. If his nephew had gone to a world filled with these monsters? He took that grim thought and shoved it deep as he stood back upright properly and began barking orders. Gary was stronger than this. He’d be the one to survive shit like this. Thomas had seen to it.
He just hoped there was something for Gary to come back to if he found a way.
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8:21 A.M.
February 7
Frostmonth 9
Saint Shepherd Church, Limeroom, Veotera
Gary jerked his head up from the pillow, wide-eyed and panting. He stopped himself from crying out immediately as he quickly stuffed his pillow against his face and finally gave a muffled scream. It took a couple of minutes to slow his body and mind down to process the dream he’d just had.
*His uncle. The halls of what he could only assume was the Pentagon on Earth. Danger; danger! Helpless to stop the man as claws and fangs and barbed tails came for him.* Gray eyes squeezed shut as he felt tears at the sheer terror enveloping him at the thought of his only living family being gone just like that.
He felt his status screen flare to life and glared at it over the edge of the pillow he was hyperventilating into. The look turned to venomous hatred as he saw 「Perception」, 「Danger Sense」, and 「Rift Maker」 pulsing in time with each other as if mocking him before they mercifully faded back into simply existing. The System was mocking him. With an angry swipe he dismissed the green panel and sat there working through it in his mind. He was starting to get dizzy from the rapid shallow breaths he could manage, so with a force of will he didn’t want to admit he desperately needed the teenager slowed his breathing into something that finally let him pull his face out of the pillow and gulp down air that drove away the dizziness in his head.
His head thumped back into the mattress of his bed as he clutched the pillow tightly against his chest and stared blankly at the ceiling. It wasn’t real. There were a hundred explanations for what that dream had been. Alternate realities. An alcohol-induced nightmare. The System sending a warning shot across his bow. He didn’t like any of them. The door to his room rattled for a moment before Remmy finally got the knob turned and came into the room in a burst of concerned energy.
“Gary! Are you alright?!” The old priest looked over the situation before alighting on Gary’s still-panting form.
“I.. I think so. Fuck alcohol, am I right?” A weak attempt at levity, causing Remmy to frown and make his way a step into the room. He seemed far more concerned at the fact Gary was trying to deflect than anything.
“That was not alcohol, boy.” Gary felt his face twist into a grimace as he finally sat back up, still hugging the pillow.
“It was a nightmare, Remmy. I haven’t had dreams for a long time, and out of the blue this vision of.. Of Death coming for my uncle back home. I.. I think it was a manticore?” Gary shuddered at the vivid recollection, but he kept that fact from showing. “I don’t know if it was just my Skills going haywire, or just a nightmare… Or a warning from the System itself.”
The man stepped in further and put a hand on Gary's shoulder, comforting him as best he could. The panting was down merely to heavy breathing at this point and with a wave of the hand Gary brought up his display for his Mana Reserves.
Mana Reserves: Prodigy (41%) {59% of total reserves locked. 1% unlocked in: 1:39:00}
“Hn. I could practice with 「Rift Maker」 four times, or I can just wait for my full Reserves to be unlocked before I try.”
Remmy patted the shoulder and frowned in a fatherly manner towards the teenager. “There’s no need to push yourself. It was a dream, nothing more. If you rush this, you’re going to make a mistake.” Gary thought about it but finally shook his head as he flung his covers off. Remmy obediently stepped back as Gary rose to his feet and moved towards his clothes.
“I’ll use it three times to get a feel for how it works, save myself a strategic reserve. My regeneration’s quick enough it should give me a solid option just in case.” Seeing he wasn’t going to win this argument, Remmy patted Gary on the arm and exited the room. It wasn’t long before Gary came out into the church’s main room, armed with a piece of firewood, his knives, and a piece of stone he’d found outside the other day and liked the shape of.
The priest watched in admitted fascination as Gary chose a couple of spots for seeming targets before taking a place in front of the altar armed with the knives in their sheaths plus the firewood, and the stone on the floor at the end of the pews. Gary stood in place and surveyed the scene he had set up for himself. This would have to be quick each time, but it should be a good test for him to get a feel for the new Active Skill.
With a thought, he triggered 「Rift Maker」. He could feel something in his head quickly whirl through calculations as he manifested a shimmering cloud of Cherenkov Blue about arm’s length in front of him, with the other coming into being in the rafters above where the stone was on the floor. Gary reached out with the firewood and threw it upwards into the cloud. His gaze immediately shifted to the one up in the rafters and as the wood passed from his hands into the cloud there was a tiniest sensation of Gary aiming the exit point to go upwards and forward a little bit.
The firewood vanished from sight, materialized at an angle from the rafters, and moved in a gentle arc with the same strength he’d gently tossed it up at before it came tumbling out of the air and landed in a skitter away from the rock’s position closer to the door. He could hear Remmy jump a little at the loud clatter and make a tiny noise as he realized what had made the racket. Gary watched the wood skid to a halt, then smiled broadly as he made several conclusions. One, his own portals - and yes he was using portals in his head because rifts were Plunder in his eyes now - didn’t give him the headache he’d been expecting to flare up. Second, thus far it had worked as advertised as he’d been able to mentally aim the exit point on the other portal. Third, it had maintained the momentum he’d given the piece of wood.
He looked back at Remmy, the smile still very clear on his face before turning back to his experimentation. Next up was retrieving objects with his portals. Focusing his aim as he drew the simple dagger, he manifested a cloud right at the wood’s position on the floor. Again as advertised he couldn’t manifest it partway into the floor but it would work just fine. He stuck the blade of the dagger through the cloud at an angle that would work for him and felt it sink itself into a crack in the dry wood. He pulled the dagger back and the wood went with it, manifesting out of the cloud as a whole thing before it winked out of existence. This was a big success.
The third and final test involved him using the wood to move around the stone on the ground for a few seconds then deliberately leaving it in the path of a collapsing cloud. The stone moved flawlessly with zero lag time between his end and the other end, but when the cloud fell into itself the wood was forcefully pushed into his grip and slid out of the cloud on his end. The wood was unharmed but had clearly been forced out of the way against his will. He’d opted against trying it with living flesh for now, since the Skill clearly stated living tissue wasn’t on the menu yet. Yet.
These short actions left him with eleven percent of his Reserves intact, and Gary was pleased to note that number tick up to twelve even as he stared at the truncated display. So this didn’t affect his recharge speed. Pleased with his experimentation he turned fully towards Remmy who had been silently watching the short experiments with a studious expression. Gary’s smile was grand as he leaned onto the altar and looked to the priest.
“I think we can call that testing a resounding success.”
“God in Heaven. You really did learn how to use rifts, didn’t you?” Gary nodded and Remmy took a moment before he frowned at the stone on the floor in the distance. “This isn’t going to cause my church to have a dozen dungeons in it, is it?”
Gary shook his head. “Nah. The openings collapse after five seconds. I’m gonna need to Plunder more of them to improve the duration and start moving living flesh through them. It’s a glorious start, though. This gives me so many options in battle just from what I have now.” Remmy gave him a curious look, clearly not understanding the implications. Gary shrugged and waved the hand still holding the firewood for emphasis. “Armor has weak points for example. The joints, places where the protection has gaps, visor slits for people to see out of?” Remmy caught the implications and grimaced. “Yeah. It costs ten percent per attempt, but being able to strike someone at literally any angle is gonna help immensely. Plus I can probably use it defensively and make them hit themselves or a comrade with a swing they intended for me at full force. I’m gonna need to invest in so many throwing knives…”