The sun dipped low on the horizon.
Cal had a good view from the balcony.
The sky was so clear.
He could really appreciate the rich reds and purples.
Sometimes he forgot how smoggy it used to be.
“I’m sorry, Boy, but I’m going to miss your birthday party.”
“It’s cool, Dad. You’re doing a coup, I get it.”
“Not a coup.”
“Regime change?”
“I’m only going to offer exploited people and their loved ones the opportunity for better lives. If my plan works then I won’t even have to fight. Anything that happens with their governing system as a result isn’t directly my responsibility.”
“Still sounds like a coup, but whatever.” Alin shrugged.
Cal sighed.
“Man, the timing really sucked. It’s going to be the first birthday I’ve missed.”
“You’re just missing the party. So, it’s, like, no big deal. We’ll save you some food. No guarantees on the cake though.”
“There’s going to be, like, five cakes.”
“And they’re all going to be delicious. Chef Alex says he’s using his Level 40 Skill.”
“Oh… that’s new…”
“Yeah! Everyone’s super excited! Going to be a scramble for a slice.”
“Maybe five’s not enough…”
“Dad, I already tried asking for more, but you know how he is. Scarcity is half the point of the whole thing.”
“Damn it! There’s no way I’m going to be able to get back in time for cake.”
Alin patted him on the shoulder.
“Maybe next year.”
“Well,” Cal hugged his son. “Happy sweet 17th birthday in advance.”
“I can’t believe you made that banner. I asked around and ‘sweet’ is only for sixteen and girls.”
“Yeah, but it’s funnier this way.”
“And this will be the last time on account of me being an official adult next year.”
“Ain’t no rules about that.”
“And this will be the last time…”
“Your mom and I will talk about it later.”
Cal rose and took a moment to look at his son.
One never knew when this time might be the last time.
With that, he climbed into the atmosphere.
----------------------------------------
Washington, D.C., 2047
Captain Patriot sat alone in her small apartment.
She watched the video on her laptop for the tenth time since the USB stick had appeared on her kitchen table sometime during the four hours she had been asleep.
Her power wasn’t limited to strengthening her body or objects she held. It also strengthened her mind and soul, as she understood it. That meant unquantifiable things, like her instincts, could be strengthened as well.
“Ninety percent,” she sighed.
That’s what she judged for the video’s truth when viewed using her power.
She wanted it to be fake.
Deepfakes had been very good before the spires had appeared.
They hadn’t focused on that branch, but with magitech spells and Skills she had no doubt that high level people could blow away what the AI technology of the 2010’s had been capable of producing.
She wanted it to be the newest in information warfare.
To do exactly what it was doing by making her question her orders.
The video showed the scarecrow-like Eidolon of Sut in the middle of turning a young man into one of the hundreds of animal-powered soldiers.
The numbers had grown exponentially in recent months.
Enough that she couldn’t push the questions to the back of her mind.
Even though she was barely at the capital and not looped into the production process she had eyes and ears.
She hadn’t wanted to believe what the flying man had said about the procedure’s casualty rate.
Orders?
She was a soldier.
All she was supposed to do was follow them.
Yet, Nuremberg had made it clear that wasn’t a valid defense for turning a blind eye to atrocities.
And, despite the blindfold, she was anything but blind.
What she was watching on her laptop wouldn’t have been out of place in an old recording of what took place in the concentration camps.
Except, those were the bad guys.
This was her side.
She closed the video and placed the USB stick in her pocket. She had a meeting with her superior officer to get to.
“I have concerns about the new supersoldiers being assigned to my unit.”
The colonel frowned.
“There’s nothing in your reports. You’ve repeatedly stated that their performances have been above standard.”
“My concern is their age.”
“I don’t follow, captain.”
“All additions over the past two months have been minors.”
“Yeah. I don’t like really like it either, but congress passed the bill and the president signed it into law. Sacrifices for Rightful Destiny are necessary. No matter how much we may disagree with them. We’re soldiers, captain. We follow our orders.”
“Understood.”
She saw that there would be no further point in pushing the colonel. Her instincts told her the man was speaking his truth.
After her dismissal she took a walk.
The hospital where the eidolon performed the procedures wasn’t far from the colonel’s office.
She scanned the building by habit, marking defenses and tracking patrolling guards.
Soldiers saluted as she passed them.
How many kids were being killed in there as she strolled by?
She knew the answer.
Nine out of ten.
That meant a staggering number of young people had already been sacrificed.
Was that the main reason for the push in conscription over the past six months?
That was the problem of being away for ninety percent of the time. She couldn’t see or listen to what was going on in the capital.
Disgust rose within her as she left the hospital behind and headed back to her apartment.
The long walk had done nothing to abate her growing anger.
She hadn’t sacrificed so that young people could be sacrificed in turn.
She did what she did for the exact opposite reason.
To build a better world for those that’d come after her.
To take the country back from the monsters and evil people.
To bring back order in the face of rampant chaos.
She saw through his concealment like she always did.
Lt. Death’s Dancer was a shimmering distortion in the air, sitting at her table.
He dropped his invisibility and shot to his feet in a stiff-backed salute.
“At ease, lieutenant.”
He shouldn’t have been here.
The man’s face was dusty and covered with the dark grime of his sweat and dead insects.
He had ran and he had done it fast.
“Captain, I—”
“Go wash your face first.”
He emerged from her bathroom in less than thirty seconds.
“Report.”
“Mission failure. Learned nothing important. Got captured.”
He explained the reasons for his haste and technically she was his immediate superior so he wasn’t in violation of the chain of command.
She showed him the video and remained silent as she waited for him to chew it over.
“I didn’t want to believe the guy.”
Ah, yes.
The same man from Florida. The one that continued to be a blank spot in their memories. They knew he existed. Remembered the events with the exception of faces, voices and any distinguishing features of the man and the others with him.
Their suspicions had always pointed to Rayna’s Rangers.
“He said that he sent this to me?”
“Not specifically. He said he sent you a message concerning… that.” The lieutenant’s face twisted as he gestured to the eidolon working something that looked to be blend of magic and science on a screaming young man.
She had seen the three possible outcomes.
Success. Death. Abomination.
The young man on the screen had been fortunate in that he had died.
“This has to stop.”
The lieutenant gave voice to the thought running through her head since she had awakened at midnight.
“You’ve been gone a long time. Nothing on that recording is illegal. Not even their ages. They passed a law.”
“If they see this then they can change it.” He shrugged.
“I’m almost certain that anyone with the power and influence to put a stop to this lacks the will to do so. They already know what’s being done.”
“Bring it up to command?”
“It has been made clear to me that the matter in regards to this is closed. Rightful Destiny must succeed. Therefore, we sacrifice.”
“Yeah, but we volunteered. These are just kids. They can’t volunteer even if they do volunteer.”
“Not according to the new law.”
“Then I volunteer. I’ll put a stop to it.”
“Negative, lieutenant. You will do no such thing.”
“We can’t just—”
“I agree, but there’ll be only one traitor here.”
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“But, captain, you’re needed. More than me.”
“I will always leap into the fire before I let those under my command do so.”
“Then I’m right behind you.”
“Negative. You are to return to your quarters.”
The lieutenant chewed the inside of his cheek for a long moment.
“Sorry, captain, but it’s got to be me. I sneak in. Take out the target and sneak out. If I get caught then I did it all on my own. You had nothing to do with it. You’re too important to risk.”
“This isn’t a discussion, lieutenant. I’m ordering you to return to quarters.”
“Captain, technically, my duty is to stop you.” He shrugged those boulder shoulders. “Well… try… so, I guess we’ve got us a standoff.”
“This isn’t the time for one of your jokes.”
“Dead serious, sir. I made up my mind the moment you said you’re going to try to stop this shit. I’m going regardless, so, maybe we should plan to do this together. Better chance that way.”
She considered knocking him out.
That wouldn’t be too difficult since he was standing relaxed.
The problem with that idea was that he’d recover quickly and she didn’t have the means to restrain him in her apartment.
She had never been one to dither when the outcomes were obvious.
“Sit down. Let’s come up with a plan.”
----------------------------------------
Kerkestis, the Eidolon of Sunor sat in meditation deep underground in what was once a makeshift chapel she had turned into the first temple to her God on this world.
She sought calm and focus amidst the turmoil in her thoughts.
Betrayal was a heavy thing even if it could lead to favorable paths.
They had all underestimated the world’s defenders.
That terrible man had provided proof of death for dozens of other eidolons.
Her team was the last one left intact.
As for the others?
Most were dead.
The survivors, a scant handful, had fled into hiding or to another world.
She remembered their most recent conversation in which she disavowed Sut’s Will to save her own skin.
It was the proper decision.
As Sunor stood above all other Gods, so did she over the other eidolons.
There would be repercussions if the truth made it’s way to Sut’s ears, but what was a skirmish between fellow Gods?
The natural state of existence.
They warred with each other almost as much as they did with other pantheons and powers.
In fact, Sut’s Will had been extending his feelers into the American political structure. No doubt, to plant seeds for the far future in which he would seek to usurp total control in the name of his God.
Naturally, as Sunor’s divine will, she couldn’t allow that.
Sure, it’d weaken their position against the native defenders, but better to be weak and able to gather strength than to be dead.
What were decades to her when she had walked across many worlds throughout the centuries?
Perhaps, she could take it a step further.
Feign submission to the Cruces.
Show them the benefits of worshiping the God above all others.
Sunor would be pleased to have such powerful worshippers.
To that end she had sent Adras’ Will to the wide expanse of plains in the center of the land to hunt what local natives had claimed was a giant worm monster that swam through stone and earth as easy as an eel through water.
As for Salla’s Will and Ekra’s Will, she had sent them to the cold, white north with a small army of American soldiers along with as many of Sut’s successful subjects as she could without drawing questioning eyes. There were tales from people fleeing south of spirits corrupting with eternal hunger. Perhaps flesheaters had escaped the purge? Perhaps it was another monstrous threat? In either case they needed to be dealt with before they grew stronger.
Many stones with a single throw.
Remove the eidolons from the capital to prevent them coming to the aid of Sut’s Will, which would also keep them safe from the Cruces.
Limit the number of superior soldiers that he could take from them.
Most importantly, conceal her involvement.
She took a deep breath and opened her eyes.
Her arcane clock ticked ever closer to the time of betrayal.
She pulled her communication crystal from its berth with a simple telekinesis spell.
Most of them didn’t know it, but the soldiers guarding the exterior of Sut’s Will’s facility belonged to her.
She pulled the scrying orb from its clawed pedestal into her palm.
The white captain had yet to learn to conceal her power from certain eyes.
It took no time at all to locate her walking through the city toward the hospital.
How had he worked out the exact timing?
The captain being a traitor would explain it, but she had used all of her power and ability to determine that the captain wasn’t the Cruces’ agent and had never been.
She chimed her direct agents within the hospital’s guards and dispensed her commands.
Surprise shift change, surprise drills and alarm tests would throw them into chaos allowing the captain the opportunity to slip inside.
----------------------------------------
It seemed that they had someone on the inside helping them out.
That was a good thing in the short-term, but bad in the long-term.
For the former it upped their chances for success, for the latter it meant that they had traitors… worse than them.
Lt. Death’s Dancer strolled into the hospital.
The guards and nurses didn’t see him because he was invisible.
It went deeper than just the visual.
They wouldn’t smell, hear or even feel him unless they were high-leveled with spells or Skills specialized for detection.
It didn’t help the guards that alarms were blaring, while guard shifts seemed to be changing off schedule.
Surprise tests from the sounds of the confused and frustrated conversations around him.
He was a big man, which made it difficult to squeeze through the suddenly crowded hallways.
The hospital didn’t look much different from the last time he had been there back before they had given it to the scarecrow-looking eidolon for the man-animal supersoldier hybridization program.
He had spent time in the rooms, either recuperating himself or sitting watch over a fellow soldier.
His gut clenched for a moment when he remembered that some of those vigils had ended with the sheet being pulled over a brother’s or sister’s face.
In one way the rooms served the same purpose, except this time those recuperating were successful subjects.
The lucky ten percent.
It was telling that most of the rooms he passed were empty.
Their plan was simple.
He was to find an empty room, out of the way from others.
The guards and nurse were just doing their jobs.
He didn’t want the explosive to cause collateral damage.
Five minutes later, when the explosion blew out the window and rattled the floor, he was already in the tunnels underneath the hospital.
Their existence was news to him.
That guy had to have had people on the inside to be able to provide such detailed directions.
Things got weirder in the tunnels.
Grotesque eyes embedded in the walls scanned the tall, wide corridors as he walked by.
The pupils dilated as the eyes swerved frantically back and forth, sweeping what should’ve been empty space to them.
He didn’t hear any alarms or see flashing lights so he took that to mean he was still undetected so he continued to where the eidolon did the procedures.
Outside the hospital the explosion sent a small puff of bright yellow-orange into the dark night.
Captain Patriot barked orders as she strode past the guards and into the building.
She didn’t enjoy the fame of everyone knowing her on sight, but at times like these it had its advantages.
The guards obeyed.
None thought to question as they sprang into action, heading up.
She went the other way.
Down to the basement and the door leading to the tunnels that she hadn’t known existed until Cruces had placed directions on the USB stick in addition to the damning video.
The basement door was guarded by two soldiers.
“Terrorist attack. I’ll secure the eidolon. Protect this door we may need to come back this way.”
They saluted and opened the door for her.
Too easy.
There was no hesitation in them when she and they should’ve known that she wasn’t in their chain of command.
Cruces had said they would have a pretty clear shot straight to the eidolon.
She mentally marked the faces of the two soldiers for later investigation.
The heavy steel door clanged shut with the air of finality.
There was no turning back.
She only needed the lieutenant’s signal to proceed.
“Hurry up and wait,” she said under her breath.
Lt. Death’s Dancer couldn’t wait.
The eyes embedded in the walls grew more frantic the farther he went.
There was no way the eidolon didn’t know something was up by now.
He debated sending the signal, but held off.
The second one of those eyes spotted the captain the game was up.
There would only be one shot at a surprise backstab and he didn’t want to screw it up before he even got to the eidolon.
The tunnels would’ve been a sprawling maze without directions.
Short branches from the one safe path all ended in trapped dead ends.
At the end of it all sat an impressive underground chamber that was about half the size of the hospital. It was huge.
It looked like a mix between a lab, the aforementioned hospital and a zoo.
The smell was worse than the sum of its parts.
Parts of the construction appeared organic, grown rather than built, just like those gross eyes. It reminded him of pictures of old slums from the 20th century. The layout was of a haphazard and ramshackle nature even though the materials used in the construction were clearly of superior quality.
To the left were caged animals. Thousands of them. From floor to ceiling, perhaps fifty feet at the highest point. It was a maze of cages, on both the horizontal and vertical planes.
The other end of the chamber was where the failures were kept according to the intel.
The center was where he’d find his target.
He took a moment to assess, consulting the memorized map in his head.
The distinct sound of footsteps reached his superior ears.
The tread was light, but the gap between each step suggested a height beyond the upper limits of human possibility.
Options flashed across his thoughts.
Climb and drop on the eidolon?
The cavern wall?
One of the small buildings?
The tangled forest of scaffolds running through all of it?
He stopped and held his breath.
He remembered the eyes in the tunnels and the pulsing arteries, imperceptible to the baseline human eye, running through the organic growths.
Those had sure looked like spider webs.
Perhaps, the game was up.
“If you are who I believe you to be then you are trespassing.”
The Eidolon of Sut’s voice was sonorous with a musical quality that made his chest feel like he was standing in front of a thumping bass speaker.
It didn’t fit the creepy, scarecrow-like appearance.
“Reveal and explain yourself.”
The footsteps stopped before Death’s Dancer got a visual.
The voice was no help since it was coming from multiple directions.
It wasn’t speakers, at least nothing like he knew, because he couldn’t detect any of the elements that denoted artificiality.
Magic then or superpowers or divine god powers?
Hell, could’ve been all of them or a mix.
When shit got weird classifications didn’t really matter… did they?
“My patience is as eternal as Sut’s existence. Is yours?”
Yeah, the eidolon wasn’t moving no more.
Time to shake up the box to see who’d blink first.
He crushed the glass sphere he had palmed the entire time.
Smarter people then him had come up with it.
Quantum entanglement through a magic spell.
Twin spheres.
What happened to one happened to the other.
Distance didn’t matter.
Physical barriers didn’t matter.
Magical barriers didn’t matter.
Nothing they’d tried so far could stop the instantaneous action.
The glass sphere in Captain Patriot’s hand suddenly broke as if crushed by an invisible hand.
She sprinted down the corridor, the map in her memory burned with urgency.
Security doors slid shut.
She passed three before the fourth one beat her for a moment.
The iron tore like paper as she plowed into it with her shoulder.
A shimmer in front of her.
Her lieutenant was standing in place for some reason.
She leapt over him, crashing through scaffolding.
Nipple-like apertures in the center of bulbous growths randomly strewn about in the environment opened and squirted high-powered jets of liquid.
Most missed due to her speed.
A few splashes melted her clothing and skin before she could counter them by flaring the white light within.
“Acidic!” she shouted for her lieutenant’s benefit.
Magic or science, all energy stood out in her vision like pulsing lights.
The strongest source was separated from her by a twisted tangle of walls, scaffolding and enclosed structures ranging from the size of backyard shed to a house.
There were several maze like paths through to the center of the cavern, but those were lined with pulsing lights.
Defenses and traps.
So, she took a direct approach.
The walls and gates might as well have been made out of thin cardboard for how little they slowed her.
The Eidolon of Sut was the brightest light surrounded by many bright lights.
“What—”
She didn’t give him a moment, continuing her charge.
A great explosion rocked the cavern, shaking everything within and causing debris to fall like rain.
When the cloud and her head cleared she was several hundred feet back the way she had come.
The eidolon’s voice rang out, coming for everywhere and nowhere.
“Captain Patriot. What is the meaning of this treachery?”
She wasn’t interested in conversation.
Her arm blurred as she hurled a grenade through the gaping corridor she had made coming and going.
The blast and shrapnel bounced harmlessly off a glowing magic shield.
She could trace its energy to the large, lumpy growth on the floor.
There were several of these growths arrayed in a large circle around the eidolon.
She emptied her bag of holding.
Frags and incendiaries.
Dozens of grenades out as fast as she could hurl them.
The last thing to strike the shield was a hand-sized chunk of C-4.
It swallowed the eidolon’s position in fire.
Caged animals screamed.
The cavern shook like an earthquake had hit.
Structures near the epicenter vanished, while those further out were blown away or collapsed by the blastwaves.
Captain Patriot had to crouch down and dig fingers into the hard floor to hold her position. She peered through the cloud of smoke and debris. It was a lot darker.
“Shields are down!”
She drew her pistol and emptied the magazine at the eidolon.
“Metal projectiles are as ineffective on this world as all the others,” he said.
Sure that would’ve mattered if she was actually trying to hurt him.
“Do you do this of your own accord? Or do you serve a master? Shall I venture with a hypothesis? Not your military for they are pleased with my work. An individual political leader or a cadre that discovered the true costs of my work seems more likely. Or is it Sunor’s Will? Has she grown threatened? You’re a rigid sort, forever dancing on the strings of those with authority over you. You’d fit perfectly in Sunor’s service. Or is your treason that in truth? An outside entity? What you don’t understand is that I’ve lived centuries. This isn’t the first time supposed allies have turned their blades on me. Why, I’ve held the blade myself on several occasions. Truly, I find it comforting that nothing changes across the myriad worlds and its many human species. From the advanced, like mine, to the primitive, like yours.”
The voice was sonorous and musical, but she could hear the truth of the eidolon’s nature hidden beneath.
Captain Patriot saw the shimmer falling on the eidolon.
Finally.