《I won't let it die》


 Starting At The End

    ¡°Hey, do you guys think that, at this point, there¡¯s a line we shouldn¡¯t cross?¡±


    All five people in the room looked up at me, though I was staring down at my cup. The thick scent of whisky is a cotton ball being pressed to my nose in short intervals. The lights are out in the building, making it hard to see their faces. We¡¯re all sitting on some piece of something, pulled aside to work as a seat because its original purpose is moot now. I had gotten lucky, finding a filing cabinet and dragging it to our little center of the room spot.


    We were all drinking some kind of alcohol, whatever we had left, and looking around, waiting for our time to come. My words were the only break in the silence for the past half hour.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know what line is left.¡± Jo?lle was the one to respond, her square frame glasses containing spiderweb cracks that made it difficult to see her eyes, and I could only imagine it was worse for her. She had the only consistent piece of furniture, a beat-up old wooden stool that had somehow survived decades even before the end of the world. Her long blond hair was roughly cut into an uneven and messy affair, I think a combat knife was what we used to do it when she said it was getting in her way too much. ¡°We crossed all of them, sprinted past all of them. Nothing worked.¡± She still had a little bit of a French lick to her words, in the way that she articulated the s sounds.


    I looked down into my glass once more. ¡°I just mean. There¡¯s only five of us left¡­That means that it¡¯s a five-way divide still. So¡­¡±


    The high commander nodded, taking a long sip from his glass of brandy. ¡°So we should choose one person, and kill the rest. That¡¯s what you mean right? All of that power, spread across all of the world, condensed into one person.¡±


    I winced, the suggestion sounding even worse coming from someone else than it already had in my head. ¡°We¡¯re all pretty strong at this point but¡­if we could make it just one person.¡±


    A snapping noise got all of us to look down at Elenor, her back up against one of the walls. She was normally a very pretty girl, her hair dyed a colorful pink and blue, and tied up into an intricate braid. All of the rough living had been tough on her though, even if she never complained, it showed in the way her body had changed. How her hands went from soft with painted nails to calloused and chipped. Her face went from artistically applied makeup to soot, dust, and dirt. The roots in her hair grown out long enough that the color seemed to be quite literally leaving her slowly. Her hands moved in quick gestures. It still took me a moment to figure out her signs, needing to mentally translate them back into words, instead of just being able to keep the signs in my head. ¡°What¡¯s the point? If one person won, there¡¯d be nothing left.¡±


    My shoulders shrugged, not really having a proper response. ¡°Just¡­Guess I don¡¯t like this. Sitting around and waiting for the end.¡±


    ¡°No need to go murdering each other. We can at least die together. That¡¯s something.¡± Kade spoke up, before sipping from his own glass of sake. It was a little funny, to see the wide-framed man, with large hands like chipped onyx engulfing the tiny traditional cup he liked to sip from. Like a great grizzly bear gently cradling a coffee mug in its paws. ¡°Not much else to do. We lost pretty much as soon as Adam died.¡±


    A small grumble went through the room, everyone shifting and muttering to themselves. I shook my head. ¡°Harriet. That was when we lost.¡±


    The large man hummed. ¡°She was a powerhouse for sure, but we were already knee-deep in this by then. She wouldn¡¯t have been able to pull us out if it was her here instead of one of us.¡±


    Mini, well, Min Lee who had the unfortunate fate of being born a very short lady with a name so close to mini, shook her head as she took a sip from a tallboy, nudging the cross neckless still somehow around her neck. . ¡°Na, I think it was when Svalinn fell. So much time and effort went into that base, god I spent years working on the tech for it. All gone in hours. Wiped out. Hundreds of millions of dollars, lives, all gone.¡±


    A commiserating nod swept through us, and each of us raised our glasses and sipped almost in synch. I exhaled, ¡°Man, when did money stop mattering?¡±


    ¡°About a year ago.¡± The high commander spoke out with something like nostalgia. He was a grizzled old man, with white hair and a bushy beard that had become overgrown after some time. An example of a person whose instant appearance caused you to make a presumption about who they were, chastise yourself for doing so, then almost instantly realize that he¡¯s exactly as he appears. ¡°We stopped sending you all checks around then. All Military personnel no longer received compensation, same for contractors. Didn¡¯t change much.¡±


    ¡°Well, when there''s only one job, you take payment in food I guess.¡± Mini snorted as she took another sip. ¡°Shame, I¡¯d be fucking rich as hell by now, all the high-tech shit I pushed to you guys.¡±


    ¡°Haha, no you would not be. Should¡¯ve read your contract more carefully.¡± The high commander smirked, the corners of his mouth turning up.


    ¡°Seriously?¡±


    ¡°Yup, all rights to any inventions made while under our contract go to us. Those all would be ours, and your compensation would be the wages you got paid during.¡±


    I let my hand drop to the weapon at my side. Mini¡¯s creation, and it was a beauty I had come to love with a passion. Perfectly tailored for me and my hands, my power. It was probably half of why I was still around. Maybe more. Even just feeling my palm slide against the grip, letting my fingers wrap around it in the way they knew on instinct how to grip it most comfortably, was something that temporarily sedated the crushing feeling of waiting for the end.


    If we weren¡¯t all about to die, I¡¯d have protested on her behalf. ¡°That¡¯s how they getcha.¡±


    The major nodded. ¡°I mean, you would¡¯ve been promoted to hell and back and gotten enough money to live comfortably after had we won, but¡­¡±


    ¡°But we lost, so none of it matters.¡± Jo?lle took a sip of her red wine, the crimson liquid swirling like blood as she sat up on a wooden crate. She winced slightly, before rubbing at her eyes. ¡°How is all the extra power treating you all? Because I feel like shit. Throbbing headache.¡±


    Mini shrugged. ¡°Feels like I¡¯m constantly touching a live wire, my fingers are aching all the time, but I can¡¯t do much about it.¡±


    High command nodded. ¡°I feel like I¡¯ve only just barely glimpsed what actual power looks like.¡±


    Vague as ever, out of everyone there, he was probably the only one whose power was still a complete mystery to me. ¡°I feel good. Like I have my fingers on a pulse, or a¡­running stream of water. I can force ripples or tug, redirect, something. I have an amount of control over the world around me. It¡¯s a little overwhelming, but not physically painful like you two.¡±


    Eyes turned to Kade, who just raised a hand, the fist visibly turning into a glittering quartz material. ¡°I feel solid, practically unbreakable. But, slower. I¡¯m¡­losing something. Don¡¯t know what.¡±


    Again, everyone turned now to Elenor, who signed her thoughts. ¡°I¡¯m almost complete. But, so much data is in my head, hard to think straight. I struggle thinking beyond coordinates.¡± She thunked her head back against the wall. ¡°Whoever''s last, I feel bad.¡±


    I looked at each of them, idly tapping my pistol''s grip.


    It took us a long time, but we as a society learned that the powers we had all acquired weren¡¯t from nothing. They were spread out from a finite source, and as fewer people were available to receive the power, the more concentrated it became¡ªmore dead men, more powerful ones alive.


    There were only 4 other people now. Billions of lives, condensed and split evenly among us. And with that, each subsequent death would mean an immense increase in power. It had been like that the past couple of months, as the little band of survivors grew lesser and lesser. Each death was a massive jump for all of us.


    All of us jolted as glass shattered, my pistol in my hand in an instant, Elenor right next to me with a combat knife in hand, Kade with his back against ours, fist made of a glittering jewel. The grand commander, not a combat specialist, had a semi-automatic pistol drawn. It was Jo?lle, her wine spilling out onto the floor as she clutched her head, shuddering with pain. She took a sharp inhale before barely stuttering out words. ¡°H-Half an hour.¡±


    The high commander holstered his weapon and rushed over, placing a hand on her shoulder. One of hers came up to his, gripping so tight we could all see her fingernails digging in, and pinpricks of blood starting to drip out. The old man didn¡¯t even react. ¡°How bad?¡±


    ¡°I-Intensity level. In¡­Intensity level...¡± She fell forwards, and the commander caught her with his other arm, going down to a knee, and lowering her to the floor.


    ¡°She¡¯s¡­I think she¡¯s¡­seizing up.¡±


    I moved over to look down at her. Her cracked glasses had fallen off of her face, her mouth wide open in a frozen expression of pain, and her arms were so tense they were shaking slightly. Tears of blood were starting to drip down her sallow cheeks. I looked at the commander silently, and he looked back at me.


    White knuckles wrapped around the grip of my pistol, and I lowered it down to press against her forehead. I looked away and felt the kickback in my arm. Everyone else was looking away except the commander.


    My eyes winced shut, and I let out a shuddering sigh, tears pinpricking at my eyes as well.


    She had an hour at best. All of us do. The least I could offer was a quick, painless death.


    The gun felt all too heavy in my hand, and I pulled it up to my shirt, wiping the blood off of it.¡±...Anyone else want it over quick?¡± In any other context, it would¡¯ve been something like a threat. Here it was a genuine offer.


    No one took me up on my offer, and I couldn¡¯t bring myself to look at her. ¡°You know. A couple of years ago. I would¡¯ve vomited killing anyone. Much less a friend.¡±


    Kade had pulled his hood down over his head even further, blocking his eyes as he sunk to the ground. ¡°...Yeah. Same.¡±


    I looked at the four remaining people, as I pulled a hand to my gun. I closed my eyes and focused on the feeling of my power.


    It was time. I control, in some amount, the flow of time. Every object and person has a timeline, and I can move them in their relative timelines, without interrupting the flow of others. So, I can reverse the firing of the bullet, retrieve it, and have the gun reloaded, all while the hole in Jo?lle¡¯s head remains. And I can do it in an instant.Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    Something like a wave hit me, a motion of nameless force or energy that pushed me enough that my whole body cants away from her body. I let out a grunt, and at the same time, everyone else does, the spread of power flowing to us once more as another human dies. My head turned before my eyes did, to force myself to see Jo?lle¡¯s dead body.


    Her skin was pale and sickly, her boy thin and malnourished. Blood made a line down her face, following the path of least resistance, moving down the bridge of her nose before falling off the side, down her cheek, and dripping off of her chin. The tension had left her body, her opened mouth slightly closed, and her eyes closed as if in sleep. A large visible hole in her forehead looked out at me like a third eye.


    My eyes stare into her three. I wasn¡¯t even thinking anything, just looking at her with my own eyes, probably sunken and hollow.


    It took several minutes before I could turn my gaze away to look at each of the people sitting around, just waiting for the end of life to come.


    ¡°Hey guys?¡± Each of them looked up at me. ¡°...I¡¯m sorry.¡± I walked up to Kade, who looked up at me with a subdued confusion. I raised my pistol and shot him in the head.


    The Commander pulled his weapon, and I pulled on my power to move my own body on my timeline, back to when I had my gun against Jo?lle¡¯s forehead, right next to him. He turns to try and fire, but I beat him to the movement and shoot him once in the chest, then in the head.


    Elenor¡¯s knife stuck down through my shoulder, and I let out a grunt, before touching it and reversing it¡¯s time to be back in her hands, and the hole in my shoulder gone. She grabbed it, familiar enough with my powers to predict that I was going to do that. I lifted my pistol, and she vanished.


    I moved myself on my timeline again, to when I was sitting on the file cabinet. I had to redraw my pistol from my holster as I saw her bloody knife swing through the air, where I was. It takes me too much time to draw, and she vanishes again.


    We¡¯re both trying to predict the other person''s movement now, but, that relies on the thought that we¡¯re both going to move. I held my pistol forward, and she appeared, digging her knife into the air where I was shooting Kade. I hit her in the shoulder, she vanished, and I ducked my head down as a knife swished through my hair, slicing off some of my blond curls.


    She disappeared again.


    I stayed solid, and she appeared in front of me, I stood up and the knife dug into my stomach. I grabbed her wrist, her eyes widening. She goes to teleport, but at this point, it¡¯s just three of us. Billions and billions of people had powers at the start. So much death, so much destruction. All of it powering just three of us. I can only imagine if she had time to figure things out, she would¡¯ve been able to use hers in an equally horrible way. But I got my hand on her first. I paused her in her timeline. I normally can¡¯t do that, can¡¯t affect other living things besides myself, can¡¯t pause things either, but, I could at that point.


    ¡°I really am sorry.¡±


    My pistol presses against her forehead, and I feel the kickback.


    I unpaused her, and she slumps to the ground. I pulled the knife out of my shoulder. It was a really damn good thing she didn¡¯t have her old high-tech one.


    Crackles of electricity surround Mini, arcs of it running up and down her arms, somewhat tethered to the tears running down her eyes as she looked up at me. ¡°You¡­It was you this whole time wasn¡¯t it?! A-Adam and the projects failing! That was you!¡±


    I don¡¯t know what she¡¯s talking about. But I was too tired to protest, and I already felt like the worst being to have ever existed. A deserved feeling for what I was doing. She moves to grab me, and a single shot rings out.


    Her body hits the floor next to Elenor.


    And thus, I am the last human alive.


    The only sounds are the crackles of electricity still sparkling around Mini¡¯s body, and the quiet trickling of blood. I braced myself as best as I could for the concentration of power. If I could do something with it, then I wouldn¡¯t have just killed my friends for nothing.


    It hits me all at once¡ªwaves and waves of ebbing energy, cramping their way into me, forcing themselves into my body. A pressurized stream of gas is sent into an enclosed space, pushing up against the walls of the object containing it. I¡¯m the glass beaker that shatters in this metaphor.


    I think I scream, It¡¯s hard to tell.


    The thing about the power that we all had been given, was that it didn¡¯t cost us our stamina, or our life energy, or chi, mana, anything fictional or easy to part with and regain. It edged away at your sanity. It gave you bouts of intense emotional highs and lows, and if you were really overdoing it, you¡¯d start to see things. They were like dreams in a way, impossible to explain and they faded the moment they were out of your sight. All you could remember was that it was horrible and that it scared you. That was the only cost for using the powers. If you could stomach it, you could use it as much as you like, as most of the remaining living humans had learned to do.


    Now, though I couldn¡¯t stop what I was doing. A runner suddenly on a treadmill moving faster than he ever had, and an endless abyss behind him. I had to use it, I had to keep myself in the present.


    Because, the past, and the future now, it was all unfurling around me for every single thing. I could see my own future, eaten and killed by monsters. I could see my past, down to my birth. I could see the same for each of the people I killed. But there was a difference between seeing and understanding, I only learned that now, as I saw and saw and saw and could not understand it, did not have the capability to do so. Imagine a hundred movies playing at a hundred thousand times regular speed, on a loop the ends and the beginning blurred together, if there ever were differences between the two.


    Me, Mini, Elenor, Kade, The commander, the file cabinet I was sitting on, the glass of wine.


    Then further, more depth, more sights. The ground, the dust, the particles of dirt under my fingers.


    I was slipping, the treadmill speeding up faster and faster. Again, I was probably screaming, but there was only so much stimulus my brain could take in, and I was already scraping my consciences to remember even flashes of color from the entire lives of my companions.


    It all went further back now, not constrained by my concept of beginning or end. The cabinet was built in what was China, the welding done by a robotic arm, the robotic arm created by an engineer, the engineer, Shou Rou who had been born with an inert tumor in his thigh no one had ever noticed and had no bearing on his life.


    It kept going, what started him, what caused his life, what caused the life of the woman who bore him. It did that for everything, everyone around me, all at once. Then it hit the beginning of all beginnings that only seemed like an intense flash of color, and it repeated before I could properly see anything, starting from the start now and moving back forward, past me and into the distance future for every object, for all of our decaying corpses. Just like before I hit an end of everything, just a white void, then it bounced back and reversed. Or, was it moving forwards to a new cycle?


    Time was starting to loop in my own head, the beginning and ends all mixing because they never stopped or slowed down. But, slowly, it became a pattern, it became a recognizable concept in this way. Beamed into my head or not, I could ignore a pattern, I could push my consciousness away from the individuals, and I could look outwards. Bigger, not smaller, larger scale.


    Physically, I do not doubt that I was kneeling over, or more likely in the fetal position, screaming and thrashing. But I genuinely had no perception of the physical form of my body anymore. My consciousness was utterly consumed with the loop, with the eternal lines that were really more of a circle.


    Then, that immaterial form, that consciousness separated from my body, was speared. Or maybe hooked is a better term, like a worm that got its body run through by a barbed fishing hook. I say hooked is better because it was then tugged away.


    Words to properly describe what I experienced are difficult. In some ways, I think to express them in any way other than various pitches, durations, and tones of intense screaming is to underplay what it was.


    So I shall include descriptions of what said screams would be like.


    At this point, it would be a sharp, surprised screech. The kind of noise a hog makes when it¡¯s been shot, or an instructor''s nails accidentally scrape against a chalkboard. I could feel my perception of space and time pulled agonizingly away from the place where I was physically, and drawn out, away.


    The pain subsides, so the yell becomes more of a mix of adrenaline and confusion. A rollercoaster ride in the dark that was supposed to be lit. I wasn¡¯t quite sure what or where away constituted, nor am I now, just that wherever my mind was pulled, it was no longer anywhere familiar.


    It was somewhere bigger, than me, than my world, than time. They were all things so small in comparison to this perhaps non-existent space. In terms of screams, this would be a moment where I catch my breath, huffing and puffing with a red face as I try to gather myself.


    It was a calming insanity. I was genuinely nothing at this moment, a speck of dust in the wind. But being a speck of dust means you don¡¯t have to worry about death or life or time, just being nothing.


    The instant of tranquility was forced out of me as I became aware of two things. Or maybe the same thing. Or maybe infinitely many things that fell under two different categories. Hard to tell, specks of dust aren¡¯t great at determining what a person is. I do think now this is the equivalent, but I must again emphasize, that a confused whimper could illustrate my comprehension and feelings on the situation much better than any description ever could. The two things had within them, every single concept in existence, many I didn¡¯t know nor could put into words. Everything except good and evil, of which these were assuredly not. Beyond such things.


    I think it or they or all of them, tried to speak to me, but how do you speak to a speck of dust? The breath your words give off would send it spiraling and scattering in a way that almost makes you think it¡¯s a living thing, like a bug. Still, even as I was swirling around like a fish in a whirlpool, I had vague notions of things I could understand.


    Confusion, frustration, sportsmanship, reluctant acceptance, unelaborated desire.


    What, who, or why this was what I comprehended was not something I was able to remotely grasp at the given time. So something like an agonized moan of pain from someone who''s been screaming so long it hurts, but still wants to express their pain in some way audibly.


    Then, some of that screaming desire faded away, and some of the intensity waned, as I was returned in some small part to my tiny world, which I now understand was just as insignificant to the greater universe as I was. But, there''s an odd strength in being insignificant. A worker at a 9-5 who no one thinks will do anything or be anyone, is free to play games on his computer without any resistance.


    Whatever that one or two, or many things were, one or more of them was doing something for me, in some way. Again, the strength of the written word fails here. So instead imagine a confused shout that¡¯s slowly turning into something like a battle cry, a warbly and weird tone in the background.


    Time, another insignificant concept, came into my grasp. A flea holding the reigns of a cockroach, under the bemused eye of a human, propping the lesser one up with a toothpick.


    I took hold of it, and I turned, I twisted it in my fist, I used whatever strength my meager existence held, and I forced time backward.


    The universe heaved with the effort, stars and skies twisting and twirling in dances. Planets tangoed enjoying the reverse rhythm of their usual orbits. Stars engaged in solitary waltzes, bobbing and jumping in rewind. Comets meekly retreated from their movements.


    If it sounds like I was powerful here, I must emphasize, that It had almost nothing to do with me. Not even to say that I was being allowed to do this, but that I was simply watching as something else did what I wanted to do on some whim I couldn¡¯t understand. All while handing me a controller with no batteries and letting me enjoy the moment of thinking I was contributing.


    I, or rather it, or them, set the world back and reversed the time of existence. I stared into the abyss of a black hole, and it blinked at me.


    When I returned to a human body and a mortal existence, constrained by taxes and time and pain, I did so screaming and crying. I felt sheets covering me, soft tactile sensations balming the sensitive nerves.


    I hit my bedside lamp with a flailing arm, and it shattered to the ground, as I sat up, clutching my head.


    It was all gone, all faded. My chest was rising and falling in deep heaves, my eyes struggling to adapt to the fact that once more were they seeing and perceiving and understanding.


    The screaming is over now, and only a sweaty, gross, shaken man remains in front of you, wiping his forehead and panting in exhaustion. Because I was suddenly and without remorse, fully human once more. Not a speck of dust, not a flea, not so insignificant I may as well not exist, not witnessing the acts of something beyond a god. I no longer had a frame for reality outside of myself, my experiences, and the brief glimpse of the truth I had briefly held.


    But allow me to say, that looking at that shattered lamp, and slowly turning to see my phone resting on my nightside table, tapping its screen with a shaking hand. Seeing it turn on, and display a date almost 5 years past, was indescribable in a much, much kinder way.

 Reversion

    How does a person react to being put through a blender of wholly unique and awful experiences and coming out a mush of things on the other end? Blades of existential dread, physically weakening guilt, and memories of blood all stabbing and swirling and mincing me into a paste.


    I¡¯d like to know what the proper response would be. What a therapist with their neat little view of the world would explain, how it¡¯s simple, and I should¡¯ve just healthily released my pent-up emotions. They¡¯d probably tell me that getting shown reality in its truest form and understanding your insignificance on a cosmic scale was a perfectly normal experience that others have been through. That it¡¯s hard, and it will take time to heal from, but I was still beholden to act reasonably. Prescribe me some medication, and let me back into the real world outside of nicely decorated office spaces with ever-patient individuals.


    Personally?I curled into a little ball on my bed and deliriously sang possibly the very worst rendition of Jimmy Buffet¡¯s Margaritaville through tears, Misty eyes glued to my phone as it beamed the lyrics and music back out at me in a hushed whisper.


    In my defense, there was the odd logic that, I certainly didn¡¯t know the lyrics, and I¡¯ve never been close to musically inclined. So, if this was a death throw or a hallucination, I shouldn¡¯t be able to come up with functioning lyrics, even if I was just going crazy and hadn¡¯t actually been thrown back in time. Honestly though, how much of that reasoning is retrospective is up for debate. Mostly, I just wanted to listen to some music, ignore some of the immense weight on my back for a few minutes, and untether myself from eldritch oblivion.


    Jimmy Buffet was just the first thing my shaking finger hit.


    ¡°Serchin ¡®fer my, mhmhm-, shaker a salt.¡± Lost, the lyrics provided the gap in my logic. Lost shaker of salt. My voice was a toneless muttering that only matched the vaguest of progressions, really only copying the louder and quieter sounds, completely missing pitches or any musical finesse. More the mumblings of a schizophrenic who isn¡¯t quite sure if they¡¯re talking to someone real than an attempt at signing. ¡°Wast¡¯n away again in Margaritaville.¡±


    I probably listened to that one song about 20 to 30 times, until the opening jingle of upbeat flute music sounded like a heartbeat monitor, the only confirmation I had that I was still alive and still moving forward in time. That more Margarettavills had come and gone. It was weird, and I won¡¯t deny that, but I genuinely didn¡¯t know how to react and entered some bizarre default setting of mindless listening and humming.


    It took probably a few hours to finally calm myself down enough to function once more like a person. I grabbed my phone and left Margaritaville, the song incidentally now cursed by association with what I just went through.


    I narrowed my eyes as I looked at the date, trying desperately to figure out if the date was at all significant. Admittedly, I wasn¡¯t good with the dates that things happened, but I knew a few key things hadn¡¯t happened yet.


    Let''s discuss the end of the world, and how it happened.


    The exact date is a little bit loose in my head, and there¡¯s some academic debate over it if I remember correctly. But sometime in the year 2050, reality fractured, and the holes in the universe let something alien where it didn¡¯t belong. Earth took its very first major hit on the 7th of January.


    Most of New York was wiped off the map by a single creature that Emerged around Coney Island. Its limbs were the size of buildings, all eight of them. A gargantuan spider, whose individual fibrous hairs were like a million fused spears pointing angrily out at the world. It had eight red eyes that only seemed to convey hatred, they were sharp like rubies despite their round shapes, and they seemed to contain a kind of intelligence behind them.


    Missiles, tank shells, bombing runs, napalm, white phosphorous, tear gas. Nothing worked, and finally, man resulted to our final and most terrible weapon.


    The irony wasn¡¯t lost on people, as Manhaton became one of the only places in the world to be annihilated by a nuclear weapon. The terror wasn¡¯t lost either when the thing kept moving.


    So we hit it again, then a third time.


    The bombs landed within a mile of each other on Coney Island, where intelligence presumed that the creature was trying to create a nest.


    The actual fireball only consumed about 3000 feet per nuke, anyone within turned into a silhouette of ash, that got wiped out by the next dropped bomb. For three miles from each center, for a total range of about six miles, the blast damage destroyed buildings, toppled skyscrapers, and pulled streets out of the ground, sewer system open like the veins of a wrist cut open. Everyone within 5 miles of any of the three bombs had intense third-degree burns, often requiring one or more amputations to survive. They were considered lucky, the heat so intense and so quick the pain nerves in their body were seared off before a signal could be sent.


    An estimated 1 and a half million people were killed only an hour after the final impact.


    The thing was finally dead, but the cost had almost been worse than if we had let it wreak its havoc.


    The world needed a new solution, and an all-new arms race entered the world.


    Adam was the one to finish it.


    A similar creature emerged off the coast of Norway, from the arctic sea. This one was a snake, similarly massive, a creature that seemed like its own landmass, its body resting on the sea floor yet still poking up above the ocean as it moved towards the mainland. Its movements destroyed local ecosystems, its fangs leaked a poison that killed species of fish. The world dispaired.This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.


    Before it could fully emerge onto land, a single man did what had required three nukes in the past. The image of Adam, an average-looking man with bright blond hair and an unassuming frame, lifting his fist high into the air, a gargantuan creature dead in the water beneath him, its towering frame looking more like terrain in the background than a creature, much less on that he had killed. Its massive gaping maw ripped open and apart, black ichor-like blood turning the waves of the coast into an inky void, only penetrated by the vision of sheer light that was his proud form.


    It sent the world into a frenzy. In an intensity that had never been seen before, nor I do think it ever would be seen again, even if humanity moved forward. There was not a single person on earth who didn¡¯t know who he was, or what he could do.


    He was given more monickers and nicknames than anyone could ever properly categorize, given by different nations and peoples, but the one that stuck was Adam. Not his original name, I think that was somewhat lost, never fully revealed by anyone that knew for sure. But Adam stuck. The first man, the origin, the one who emerged from Eden.


    He was revered like a god, he probably was one to some people. He was one to me in a lot of ways. I discovered my power before he became known for his, but it was only after I saw him and what he could do, that I gained the motivation to reveal myself to the world as well.


    His existence seemed to usher in the era of superpowered people and their abilities, or more accurately, everyone''s superpowers. It seemed achingly slow yet happened all at once at the same time.


    Every single person had a power.


    Now, the powers were spread out over all of humanity, and like I said, it came from a finite source and was divided. But if what I¡¯ve said about Adam hasn¡¯t already made this clear, the power spread was not even. The vast majority of people were somewhat useless, with powers that were more like unique traits. Making perfect coffee no matter how poor the ingredients are, being able to clean liquids up through a rag twice as fast, and being able to eat plastic. Things like that. Then, people like me could manipulate time.


    It was plainly unfair.


    Society didn¡¯t really have time to catch up with how fast things were changing. It was bizarre in a sad way, to see how many people spent the days before their impending doom working office jobs and posting things on social media. I don¡¯t even know what I think they should¡¯ve done just that it was strange, how no one really seemed to be able to conceptualize that the end was just years away.


    Now though, I was back in time, back before Adam died, back before the chosen few of humanity, those seemingly decided by divine means to be the ones to bring humanity to salivation had all fallen. Now, it was my turn to be that savior.


    The thought had me throwing up in my bathroom toilet.


    Though, admittedly, that might¡¯ve been the vertigo, dehydration, emotional exhaustion, and extra lunacy I brought onto myself from so much time spent in Margaritaville. I had gone from killing all of my closest friends to humanity''s only chance at survival.


    A bit of time spent throwing up and crying was probably for the best, and I challenge anyone who says otherwise.


    I pulled my pale and shaking body up and staggered still clothed into my shower, throwing the nozzle on high. Calming torrents of water hit me instantly, even the initial cold was a deeply refreshing and calming feeling. I caught my breath, hunched over and leaning on one of the shower''s boxed walls, panting and wheezing.


    The deep tension in my body, like a gnarled root system had pierced into my body and twisted itself up, slowly untangled and relaxed. I started to become aware of my power once again, it was resting in the back of my mind, and it too had a knot tangled up inside of it, my ability twisted into itself.


    Water was streaming down my hair, onto my cheek, and down my face, a little bit getting into my still-open mouth as I continued my calming breaths. I focused on the knot and tried to relax and unwind it, not quite sure what it was.


    I slipped.


    Not my body, which remained hunched against the cool tile walls of my shower. No, it was my mind that slipped out and away, past my body and into the timeline of the world once more. My own timeline more specifically.


    Every person and thing has one, as far as I know. The way time works for me is something like a sweater. Every individual thing is a thread, and it all weaves together into one thing. Displacing or moving around one thread isn¡¯t going to mess things up, which is why I was able to use my power normally.


    Reversing all of time as I had done, likewise wasn¡¯t too bad, since I just moved the sweater itself.


    This was more like finding a thread and tracing it with my finger, seeing where it led, where it came from.


    And so of course, since I was following my thread, there could only really be one place that I found myself.


    New York City, minutes after the third bomb dropped.


    I saw a young teenager with my face, desperately clawing at a pile of rebar and concrete. Like a great mace¡¯s head, the spiked exterior and vaguely round pile I was trying to upheave. I saw my 15-year-old self sobbing and screaming, his clothes torn up and dust caking him and everything around him. His face wasn¡¯t even able to be pale under the layer of thick gray dust.


    I don¡¯t think it¡¯s hard to guess who was under that rubble, who I was trying so hard to claw out, my fingernails getting clawed into thin stubs, my fingers bleeding as I grabbed and gripped rebar with my bare hands, trying to upheave hundred-pound chunks of debris.


    Streams of people passed by, more like a liquid than a collection of individuals, all taking the path of least resistance away, upstream, past the blast and the monster from hell. I don¡¯t think any of them even looked at me.


    My power went off for the first time, and I stumbled forward as the piece I was holding vanished, temporarily up in the air where it had been, once a chunk of a building''s support column. I could see the way my younger self didn¡¯t even take any time to register how bizarre or strange that was and just started doing it, almost rebuilding a section of the collapsed skyscraper as my power triggered over and over and over again.


    It wasn¡¯t too much that covered my mom and dad, I could see that now that I was older, looking at it over again. At the time it seemed like it could¡¯ve been Everest itself, that I had pawed away at and used my powers to force off of them.


    The shockwave had sent a truck closer to the Manhattan area flying at absurd speeds, and that truck had clipped the edge of the 432 Park Ave building, and some of its top corner came off, and hit the street under it. We had been trying to get out of the city, away from the bombs and the monster. We hadn¡¯t moved quickly enough.


    Turning my head away was a deep temptation, but I think in some way that keeping my gaze fixed on the 15-year-old was important, as he finally found the two, their bodies mangled and destroyed.


    He leaned down and tried to hug the pulverized forms, he tried to save them with his power but, he couldn¡¯t. His strength was still shared by so many people, reversing the end of a timeline was impossible.


    I tightened that conscious knot in my powers, and I got pulled out of the past, back to the present, or the past of the future, or, whenever now was.


    Sorry, I¡¯m not an expert in physics or time, and when now was became very difficult to understand as time went on.


    But I was back in my shower, which I turned off, and in a few minutes, in a change of clothes.


    It wasn¡¯t a knot in my mind, or a tension I had from what I had done. It was a very complex weave I had to hold onto to keep everything from tearing apart. A favor from the whatever that had messed with me in the unknown realm greater than reality.


    If time is a sweater, imagine that I accidentally tore a hole in it while trying to move it. The more I became aware, the more I recognized exactly what was happening and what I was doing. I was using five threads, alongside my own, to stitch the hole.


    Five people, back in the past with me, that I had to keep alive to tether the world in its past state.


    Damn.

 Appraisal

    By the time I finally managed to get my shit together and figure out where and what I was to be doing on this specific day, I was insanely late.


    My phone was getting blown up by Elenor, the woman repeatedly asking where I was.


    She and I were partners at this point, the two of us specializing in a few different things that the government had us work on at different intervals. Today, we were grading powers.


    I showed up very clearly disheveled and exhausted. The administrator who ran the place glared at me pretty hard, and Elenor seemed just as confused.


    Her hands moved pretty much as soon as she saw me. ¡°Have you been partying without me?¡±


    I groaned, realizing that being hungover probably made more sense than anything else. I lifted my hand in a fist and motioned my wrist down. Yes, in her language.


    Ellenor was mute if you hadn¡¯t picked up on that. I learned sign language for about a year once she was my partner. ¡°Lame, invite me next time.¡±


    I lifted my hand and pinched my fingers. No.


    She rolled her eyes. ¡°You can just speak.¡±


    I used the most universal sign language gesture that almost everyone understood involving my middle finger. She just huffed and moved on, getting the information on who and what we would be doing for the day from the administrator.


    Now, I like to think of myself as a generally intelligent person, and I think most of the time I¡¯m more than capable of putting things together. Five other people were tethers keeping time from ripping, there were five people at the end of the world. I can add two to two and get four.


    She instantly made me doubt that conclusion though. The way that I, or rather the things from the other existence reversed time, I effectively wrapped it in on itself, turning things more like a circle than a straight line. I need a relative present to be able to move things backward against, a timeline makes the most sense. If everything has a timeline, then I can disrupt just one and move it back. I effectively did the opposite, I froze 6 timelines, and moved everything else in reality backward, if I didn¡¯t have those tethers, I¡¯d have no way to hold myself steady and hit the right time and place. If that¡¯s too complicated, just think Ororoborous. I¡¯m feeding the snake eating its tail. All of which to say, the five logically should also remember everything.


    Including myself putting a bullet in their foreheads.


    Still, where I was a total wreck who could barely walk straight right now, Elenor seemed totally normal, just as I remembered her. She looked confused at how fucked up I was, and a little concerned. Not traits I would associate with someone I technically killed about 3 hours ago.


    All things considered, I didn¡¯t know enough about what actually happened to time to conclude if the five from the end of the world were the same five I pulled back. It could¡¯ve been anyone.


    Equally possible, however, was that every other member of the five thought they were the only ones in the past and were now acting accordingly.


    We got ushered into a small room that had a large window in it, the other side containing a padded room that I¡¯d imagine they keep crazy people in. The door was opened and an anxious-looking teenager walked inside. Granted, a teenager that was visibly very strong looking, wide-shouldered, and tall with clear definitions on his arms.


    He looked at the window and visibly tried to steel himself. ¡°My name is Axel I¡¯m 18, and my power has to do with fire.¡± He stuck his hand out, and a flame puffed out before turning to smoke.


    I think I actually remembered this. He was a younger guy who talked about his-


    ¡°I¡¯m a D1 Wide Receiver. Um, I¡¯d like to opt out of military service if possible.¡±


    About his goals. I pressed a button and leaned into a small microphone. ¡°Opting out will be possible if your abilities are ranked C or lower. Testing has not concluded yet.¡± I looked down at my little notebook for ranking people that had been set up next to the microphone. I took my finger off the button and muttered to myself as I skimmed through it. ¡°If dealing with the ability to emit something¡­Whatever.¡± I pressed the button to speak. ¡°Please emit as hot a flame as you possibly can.¡± He cupped his hands together and let out a deep breath, a very small flame pushing up out of his hands, about the size of a match, though the flames were burning blue.


    I noted it down and spoke again. ¡°Thank you. Now emit as much flame as you can in one burst.¡± He glanced around at the padded material, and I spoke again before he could question it. ¡°The room is specially treated, you¡¯d need to be S rank or higher to break through it, and if that happens then you¡¯ll have bigger issues than an on-fire room.¡± Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.


    He nodded, and stuck his hands out, fire coming out in a flamethrower. It was visibly cooler, but a wave of heat still hit us. I clicked my tongue. He was the worst possible thing. Between C and B. Most people were C¡¯s, a few were F¡¯s, fewer were B¡¯s even fewer were A¡¯s, and a quantity of people in the single digits were S. The rankings were largely arbitrary and decided here and now. In general terms though, F was useless in combat, C was worse than a gun, B was better or equivalent to firearms, A was something like a missile or tank, and S was humanity''s replacement for nuclear weapons.


    My finger came off the microphone button, and I looked at both of the people in the room. ¡°Raw power is straddling the line between B and C what are we thinking?¡±


    The administrator whose name I think I should know let out a sigh. ¡°We need more B ranks. The higher-ups think you two are too lenient as is.¡±


    Eleanor shook her head and then signed. ¡°No. He¡¯s got a dream. Fire isn¡¯t very useful.¡±


    I think in the past I agreed with her, or hell, I probably was the one to say that he should¡¯ve been ranked C and left to do his own thing.


    But I didn¡¯t realize all of us only had 5 years left to live.


    I wonder how Axle died? Untrained, unprepared for his coming death. I wonder if more people would¡¯ve lasted longer if he had been a trained fighter like us.


    ¡°I think he¡¯s a B.¡±


    Eleanor shot me a surprised look, and even the administrator tilted her head slightly to the side and fixed her glasses. ¡°Oh! Well, in that case-¡±


    Eleanor waved her hands before signing rapidly. The administrator looked to me instead, normally I would¡¯ve translated, but I was too tired to bother right now. ¡°No, fire isn¡¯t nearly as good as a gun.¡±


    ¡°Depends on the circumstance and what the root of his power is. It could be something stronger.¡±


    ¡°Could be isn¡¯t a good enough reason to sign his life into mandatory military service.¡±


    ¡°Alright, what''s a weak root that would allow someone to control fire?¡±


    She frowned thinking for a few seconds, while the administrator stood confused. Finally, her hands moved, and she pantomimed flicking a lighter. In all honesty, the gesture could¡¯ve been a lot of things, but I had gotten very very good at playing charades with her over time.


    ¡°He shot it out in a fireball.¡±


    ¡°It could be a lighter.


    ¡°I don¡¯t think lighters are even a valid root. It would be something like heat or temperature.¡±


    Roots were the source of people''s powers, the base of base forms of them. Mine was time for instance, and Elenor¡¯s was space. It was part of what''s called the checklist, or the pieces of information you need to know about someone''s power before it¡¯s weakened.


    I¡¯ll use myself as an example.


    What''s the root of the person''s power? For me it¡¯s time.


    How do they manipulate the root? I can move objects back to their individual timelines without affecting the main one.


    And finally, where do they control the power from? For me, it¡¯s my fingertips. I need my fingers to be on something to move it.


    If you figure all of these things out about someone else''s power, then it gets significantly weaker each other individual who knows increases the reduction. Why? No one really knows, ironically. I¡¯m guessing it has something to do with the origin of our powers, which I think has something to do with the things I saw at the end of the world, but the more I think about those things the worse I feel.


    I looked back at the kid behind the window, who was looking anxiously in our direction, but turned away when he saw that I was looking. What''s the old saying? Planning to fail is failure to plan. If I was making a decision now based on what would happen if I failed, what was even the point of doing the things I had done to get here?


    I took a long moment just to look at him, and to think about what the hell I was really doing here. In the past. ¡°...Na, you¡¯re right. What he¡¯s shown isn¡¯t close to enough to qualify him for B.¡±


    The administrator let out a sigh, as it seemed like I lost the argument. ¡°He very clearly is holding back. He¡¯s plainly stated that he doesn¡¯t want to be drafted.¡±¡°You¡¯re accusing him of lying during a power eval, that¡¯s a felony offense with a possible jail time of fifteen years.¡±She just pushed her glasses up on her nose. ¡°Every single person who doesn¡¯t want to serve does it.¡±


    It was my turn to sigh. ¡°Unless you can prove that, I''m initiating a vote, in favor of C rank eval, say or sign affirmative. Affirmative.¡±


    Elenor lifted her fist up and then motioned it down, yes. Before then holding her hand up in a C shape, while sticking her tongue out at the administrator like a child. Not the best look for us, but whatever.


    The administrator closed her eyes, pinching the bridge of her nose, little bits of ash starting to flake off of her shoulders from some kind of power effect. ¡°You show up here hungover and act like this?¡±


    ¡°Yeah. Those in favor sign or speak in negative.¡±


    ¡°Negative.¡±


    ¡°Overruled by majority.¡± I turned away from the fuming woman, pressing the button to speak and leaning towards the mic. ¡°Axle, official power eval has concluded, your official rank is C, you can opt out of military service without punishment, speak to a recruiter that''s been working with you, or turn in the necessary paperwork to this office within a hundred days. We can end eval now or you can get a numerical grade as well.¡±


    The boy let out a big and relieved sigh, eyes closed as he did so, hand on his chest. He shook his head. ¡°No, I think I¡¯m good. I¡¯d pretty much just be a 3 anyway right?¡±


    ¡°Officially, I can¡¯t say. Unofficially? Yeah pretty much.¡±


    The numerical code was an indication of the level of control you had over the world around you in relation to your power. It went from 1 to 7, each step up another degree of control. 1 means you can only affect yourself. 2 means yourself and the clothes you¡¯re wearing. 3 means yourself and things within a specific distance. 4 means yourself and anything you can see. 5 means all prior and things you can''t see within a distance. 6 means all prior and things you can¡¯t see without any distance limit, but containing some other limiter. 7 means all things, no limit.


    Either being high is typically enough to make you significantly strong. Elenor is only a C herself but is a C5. I¡¯d be something like a B3, but a S7 at the peak of reversing the entire world.


    The administrator sideyed me. ¡°Unprofessional.¡±


    ¡°Yup. Do we have anything else to do today?¡±¡°Yes, we have three more evals to get through, then you¡¯ll speak to your KIAll.¡±


    I stretched my back out, groaning. ¡°Alright, send the next one on in then, let''s get this done.¡±


    Elenor glanced at the administrator, before signing to me. ¡°Thanks for having my back.¡±


    I signed back in return to keep her out of the conversation. ¡°No problem. It¡¯s our job to ensure he won¡¯t have to fight after all.¡±


    ¡°Corny.¡±


    I flipped her off again.


    This was nice, I missed these days.

 The First Mission

    The rest of the day went by easily, most people clear F''s or C¡¯s, and no one qualified for mandatory military service. It seemed to annoy the Administrator quite a bit, but honestly, the worst any of us would get would be a more unsubtle nudge toward being less lenient in our grading.


    We had to go see Joelle next, but we had a bit of extra time to kill since travel would be instant.


    The two of us walked out of the square building we had been cooped up in, I was shielding my eyes from the light as I saw the sweeping city out in front of me. I caught a moment of surreality when my adrenaline finally faded, and I had a second to think about everything. To see a destroyed world sitting perfectly fine in front of my eyes.


    I managed to get out of hell. It took me doing something horrible, but I did it. I won.


    My head only cleared when Elenor hit me in the side, smirking as she walked in front of me to sign. ¡°Daydreaming?¡±


    ¡°A little. Hey, weird question, can I give you a hug?¡±


    She quirked her head to the side and raised an eyebrow. There were interesting moments when talking in sign language, where you didn¡¯t actually need to use the new dictionary of words because the gestures used were ones you already knew. In this case, she pointed to me, then lifted her thumbs up with a questioning look. ¡°You Ok?¡±


    It was enough to almost convince me to just tell her absolutely everything then and there. But I kept myself from saying anything just yet. I need to gain my bearings more, I can¡¯t deny that telling someone and getting a sort of team together who I trust implicitly would be the ideal way to make progress, but I need to make those decisions rationally, not on sheer impulse and emotions. ¡°Yeah¡­Yeah, I¡¯m¡­I¡¯m great.¡±


    She moved in, and I wrapped my arms around her back. I let out a deep sigh against her, eyes closed for a moment as I let myself relax against her. It was grounding in a lot of ways, to feel someone''s arms wrapped around me, to know that she didn¡¯t hate me with a passion. ¡°Thanks.¡±


    We parted and she just gave me a pat on the back, nodding at me. She made a gesture that was a little bit nonsense to anyone but the two of us. She pointed to her forehead then up, her sign for Joelle.


    ¡°Yeah, we should see her now.¡± I slipped my hands into my pockets, realizing I was way out of uniform with the clothes I had thrown on during my manic episode. Grey sweatpants and a collared shirt.


    She was going to yell at me about that. Well, bigger things are at stake here. ¡°Take us away.¡±


    She placed a hand on my shoulder and the two of us teleported


    Teleportation was incredibly disorienting. How the hell Elenor did it as fast and often as she did was crazy to me. I did something similar, but mine had easy cushions for most of the sharp edges. The way your eyes have to adapt to an entirely new stimulus that changes in a literal instant, the movement instantaneous and faster than light by that definition. As far as I understood it, we didn¡¯t move there, so much as just appear. It was also a little like getting off of a plane with rapid atmospheric adjustment.


    I shook my head, opening my eyes, which I had closed in preparation for the rapid change in scenery. We were right outside an office, deep inside Svalinn, the world''s largest and most secure military base focusing on powered individuals. It had the most advanced tech in the world, some of it powered by the supernatural abilities we all had. Some of it was just made by the smartest person alive.


    The whole place felt alive in some way, electricity thrumming like blood, wires veins, and us the little white cells bobbing around. This was where we lived, where we trained, where we gained intelligence and we mourned the dead.


    I opened the door to Jollen¡¯s office and found it empty. I closed the door, glancing at Elenor, who shrugged.


    We both got a text about the same time, checking our phones and seeing a message from her. ¡°Not in my office today, there are reports of Yokai-level monsters around the border of the king''s shell. Check it out, exterminate what you run into, and ignore what isn¡¯t relevant. I¡¯ll message you the location of the reports being sent in, go ahead and ¡±


    I glanced at Elenor who sighed, then signed. Yokai, for us, was her flicking her hand forward like she was swatting a fly. Then, ¡°Boring.¡±


    In response, I lifted my hand up and crooked my pointer finger. ¡°Need,¡± I spoke out as well. ¡°Necessary evil.¡±


    ¡°We¡¯re better than this.¡±


    I huffed. ¡°Even if we were, which I¡¯m not so sure about, what else would we be doing? We get paid to work, not to look pretty until a problem arises. This is about stopping something before it can develop.¡± It was an ideology I¡¯d have to take for myself.


    ¡°They just do this because I can teleport.¡±


    ¡°Yeah?¡± I started walking off, towards the armory. I needed my baby girl back in my hands. ¡°You weren¡¯t drafted, you knew what you were signing up for, hell I¡¯m shocked they let you do anything except move people around.¡±


    She ran to get in front of me, turning around to keep signing. Forcing me to nudge her out of the way of people now and again, hands resting gently on her shoulders to maneuver her around. She didn¡¯t even react, just letting me do so as she signed. ¡°That''s boring. I need some action, you know?¡±


    ¡°Shut your hands, and we¡¯ll get to the action.¡±


    It was her turn to flip me off, as I stopped the both of us in front of the armory doors.


    Steel and several feet thick and wide, more like a bank vault than a door stood in front of us, the two hydraulically powered door edges that pressed against each other when closed painted in yellow and black like a yellowjacket advertising its own stinger. The paint is chipped and peeling from overuse and a lack of time or care to apply new ones. Everyone already knew not to stand in it while it was closing, that, or they weren¡¯t aware enough to be someone worth keeping in the military force.


    I fished around for my keycard, not quite sure where it was. ¡°Uh, Ellanor could you?¡± Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.


    She moved in front of me and swiped hers, before looking at me from the side, a small smile on her face and her eyebrow softly upturned, laughing at me silently.


    The massive doors opened slowly, and with a light hiss, parting for the two of us and slamming shut quickly behind us. We made our way to a joint locker, Powered Unit 3 written on the top, and etched out with scratchy knife marks. Graffitied overtop of it, like every other locker, was a different name. ¡°Mutes.¡±


    She fetched a small case, a regular-looking combat knife pressed inside of it against black foam. I let out a fond sigh, as I saw my girl looking up at me, its barrel like a single eye as it sat on a little stand keeping it propped up.


    It was a weird little thing as far as weapons went, single-barreled and only chambering one single large bullet, with no feeding mechanism. Like I said, it was made for me. Something like a revolver with one large enclosed area where the rotating chamber should be. The bullet was a single .50, and the force of the bullet should theoretically dislocate my shoulder and break the entire thing each time I use it. It does actually dislocate my shoulder each time, I just fix it instantly. The thing would be useless in anyone else''s hands, but in mine, it¡¯s almost the entire reason I¡¯m strong at all in a fight.


    The thing is a bitch to use and hurts like hell, but I got used to it. All I have to do is fire it and reverse my and it¡¯s time instantly to the moment before I fired. Once I got the movement down to muscle memory, my pain receptors barely even really had time to register that I was hurt. They still did, I wasn¡¯t that fast, but, it didn¡¯t last long.


    I felt calm almost instantly as I held onto it, exhaling deeply. I admit that thanks to my time spent at the end of the world with it on my hip, I may have formed an unhealthy attachment to this thing.


    I grab the small cowboy-style holster that came with it, leather hooked to keep the gun down and out of anyone else''s grip, not that they could use it, but if they broke it past the point I could fix it I¡¯d probably cry.


    ¡°Ready?¡±


    Elenor threw her knife into a similar sheath on her hip and nodded, before gesturing towards our body armor and vests. ¡°Really? When was the last time we actually brought these? They¡¯re sorta pointless.¡±


    ¡°We¡¯ll be in public. Keep appearances.¡±


    I let out a low groan, before glancing down at my sweatpants. ¡°Fine.¡±


    We switched into our gear properly, all decked out in black vests and tactical gear. ¡°Right, how far are you feeling capable of?¡±


    Since the population of the world was still as large as it was, her ability to teleport was severely limited in comparison to what it was at the end of times. Right now, if my memory was correct, it was a distance of about a couple hundred miles. We¡¯d need to make a few trips to get where we need to be.


    She placed a hand on my shoulder, and we made the first jump, suddenly and without explanation an immense distance away. I opened my eyes to see the open and destroyed highway, a few scarce wrecked cars lining the sides of the roads.


    I placed my hands in my pockets, fished my phone out, used the compass app to point me south, and started walking. Elenor fell into step behind me. Making a few odd facial expressions as she dealt with the side effects of using her powers. They were things that couldn¡¯t be pinned down, and that any individual seemed to utterly fail to relate to with another person. Unique to us, in a way that only the person experiencing it could comprehend.


    We were somewhere in what used to be Alabama, or Georgia maybe. I only had my teenage years to experience a nation that had states in it, and I hadn¡¯t taken to memorizing them with as much zeal as my old teachers would¡¯ve liked. The age of a hundred thousand little fractured powers and peoples all clashing and intermingling is somewhat shattered now.


    The shards remain, of course, the prayers, the hundreds of different gods and beliefs all co-mingle, now out of necessity more than tolerance. The value of land has been shifted, and only areas that have no coasts are valuable and defendable. The closer you got to the sea, the closer you got to death.


    However, a dangerous setting has never in the history of humanity, inspired anything but determination to adapt. People still live in the ruins of cities long abandoned by the remaining federal governmental power here. Civilizations of their own in some ways, adapting their own isolated pieces of language and culture. It wasn¡¯t like they had a particular amount of power or even established and organized groups outside of ones too minor to be considered players in a global game.


    Mostly, the relationship they had to the still connected parts of civilization that exist in our continent, was just this. Reporting weird shit and having some people with updated tech and information on abilities come check it out.


    In all honestly, we don¡¯t hear from them often, most of the time they just deal with their own issues.


    I was wrecking my head trying to remember if I had done this particular thing before, but honestly, this sort of thing was most of what Elenor and I did. Thanks to her powers, we could be there and back within a day or two, making us the quickest form of spreading information so long as the internet gave out the way it does once in the territory of the sea.


    Elenor reached out to grab my shoulder, and I closed my eyes, as we jumped once more to another place.


    This time, we could see the King in the distance, his shell the only distant mountain in the flat area of what was once Georgia. A creature so big it shouldn¡¯t exist should be unable to hold its own weight upon its eerily massive body. The tips of it¡¯s spiked shell poking up into the sky just above the horizon line, all the buildings that would¡¯ve stood in the way of its might kneeling to it, their heads digging into the ground as a shattered base remains looking upwards.


    We were now in the domain of the king.


    An alligator snapping turtle the size of a mountain range, that had eaten most of Florida, and was now resting in a hibernation-like slumber. Though whispers were spoken of its long death, of how it couldn¡¯t possibly have eaten enough to not starve, and how it hadn¡¯t moved in years.


    Still though, looking at that thing in the distance, seeing its body splayed against the horizon, coming more and more into view as we get closer and closer. It seems impossible that such a thing is dead, that it died on its own.


    The current plan is to keep watching it, and react if it ever moves.


    I, and the other five knew that it was already dead by this point. But that paranoia wasn¡¯t unfounded.


    It¡¯s a little funny. It doesn¡¯t matter if that thing is dead, only that it might not be. And so long as it only might be dead, it isn¡¯t worth checking and risking waking it up.


    Schrodinger''s gigantic turtle.


    Elenor was getting a little woozy, so we took a quick break in the remains of a small town, more like a rest stop of the side of a highway. Fast food places with their brands and iconography dirtied and faded. Golden arches resting in pieces on the side of a building with a caved-in roof.


    Elenor sat on the side of the road, while I went and poked my head in, exploring the dilapidated building. There wasn¡¯t much to find, and I knew that, but it was still entertaining to take a look behind the back of the place. Moving around the debris and broken building and looking at what pieces had been nailed down and weren¡¯t scavenged.


    Old buildings like this always seemed to have ghosts, spirits, and impressions of people long past now. Graffiti that could be decades of years old in the bathroom, the way that loose pieces of paper with neat documentation on them had been left there, faded, wet, and almost a part of the floor with how long the two had spent pressed against each other.


    I left the back area, taking a seat in one of the remaining booths, looking out of the window that only had a shard or two of jagged glass, letting me see the overgrown parking lot empty of cars and full of grass and weeds.


    A deep breath came through me, as I closed my eyes. So long as we were headed this way, I may as well make a trip to kill the Monarch as well.

 Placing Trust

    The king and the Monarch were two separate entities, though I get how confusing that is. The king is the Alligator snapping turtle, the thing that¡¯s now where Florida should be, and the Monarch isn¡¯t known about by anyone except me and the other five returners right now.


    I glanced in the direction outside of the ruined building where Elenor was. If I did this on my own, it¡¯d be very hard to break away from her and get where I needed to. If I asked her for help, I¡¯d have to tell her everything.


    I ran a hand through my hair, thinking.


    Elenor was someone who was with me from the beginning to the end. I¡¯ve known her for more of my life than I haven¡¯t. We were friends in the academy, assigned to be in a single unit, where we worked together until the world ended. She knew me better than anyone else in the world.


    But how well did I know her?


    The thought filled me with a feeling of unease and disgust towards myself. She didn¡¯t talk about herself much, and in the world we lived in, are living in, to ask about someone else is mostly to touch old wounds. There are very few people alive who didn¡¯t lose most of what they had before. Those that are mostly are kids, children only just born into this world, not knowing any other.


    Still, I¡¯ve worked with her for so long, and done so much with her. I¡¯ve trusted her to have my back, to keep my life in her hands a hundred times. Why shouldn¡¯t I trust her now?


    And hell, even if she was putting on the best performance of her life to convince me she didn¡¯t remember the past when she did, explaining myself to her was the better choice.


    With another deep breath, I stood up from the ruins of a world long gone and made my way out.


    She was sat up on a curb that outlined what was once the pavement around a parking lot, but had mostly been consumed by the natural world, save a few bits of concrete that stuck out.


    I sat down next to her, and she nodded at me. I nodded back. I wrapped my hands together, looking down at the plants and natural life below my boots. ¡°Hey, so, I have a bit of a, uh, big thing to discuss with you.¡±


    She looked at me, expression neutral. Giving me space to talk.


    I felt air push out of my mouth, decompressing my body. ¡°Don¡¯t¡­Tell me yours, but my power has to do with-¡±


    She slapped a hand over my mouth, her eyes wide and panicked. I stuck my tongue out and she yanked her hand back with disgust, causing me to snort. ¡°I know what I¡¯m doing. I trust you.¡± I nodded and said it again to myself this time. ¡°I trust you.¡± I looked back at her. ¡°Time. I control and manipulate time. On a very small scale¡­normally.¡±


    A sharp, piercing pain caught me in my chest, and I grit my teeth, letting a sharp exhale out from between them.


    Information about your power being spread makes you weaker. It hurts too. But, letting her know was the least I could do for her. I owed her a lot, both for what I had to do to get here and for what she had done to help me before that. This much was deserved, even if it felt like a heart attack.


    I rolled my shoulders to distract my mind from the sharp pain like a ballpoint pen was jammed through my back and stuck in my body. ¡°The world¡­So we uh.¡± I paused, thinking about how to say this. ¡°Alright, I¡¯m going to sound crazy, so let''s just get it over with, and you can ask any questions you¡¯d like. The world ended, and you and I were one of the last five people. I um, kinda killed you, sorry about that, but I was hoping that having, right shit, um, so the powers we have are spread out across everyone, and the more people that die the stronger the surviving people''s powers get. So, when it was just you, me, and three others, I made myself the last person alive.¡± I winced at my own phrasing, making it sound so insignificant. ¡°Through killing them. B-But I was right! I managed to use what I had gained to reverse things, to pull the world back to about, 5 hours ago.¡±


    She was staring at me with wide eyes, glancing from side to side as if trying to look for a hidden camera. She raised a shaky hand to get me to stop speaking, and I shut up instantly, failing to meet her eyes. I sorta had to look at her to understand what she was signing, but I kept my gaze averted. Her hands wavered in the air as she tried to figure out what to ask. Finally, after a moment, she made a flurry of movement I was only able to keep up with thanks to working with her for so long. ¡°Why tell me?¡±


    ¡°Well, for one I thought you probably deserved to know. I also figured you¡¯d figure out I¡¯m a little different eventually. I mean, I did a lot of bad things to survive, I¡¯m¡­probably not quite the same person I was back¡­well, now. The second thing, is that I need your help. I can only change so much by myself, and there isn¡¯t anyone else I trust as much as I trust you.¡± I closed my eyes for a moment, before gathering my courage and looking right at her, meeting her green eyes dead on. ¡°I¡¯d love to do this alone, but I¡¯m not stupid enough to think I can handle things without you.¡± Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.


    She put a hand on my shoulder, before nodding. She withdrew her hand to speak. ¡°That¡¯s insane. But I trust you too. Let me know what you need, and I¡¯ll be right there with you.¡±


    A relieved breath poked through my lips before I could even think about it. ¡°Thanks. Alright, we need to make a pit stop after we deal with whatever Yoaki are at the shell.¡±


    ¡°What are we going to do?¡±


    ¡°If I¡¯m right about timing, we¡¯re going to destroy one of humanity''s greatest threats before it has a chance to mature.¡±


    ¡°If you¡¯re wrong?¡±


    ¡°We¡¯ll die probably.¡±


    She huffed. ¡°Sounds about right.¡± She stood up, stretching out her back, before gesturing for me to follow her with a finger.


    I stood up, and she placed a hand on my shoulder, starting the journey once more.


    But, when the contact with her was made, the relief from her listening to me and not instantly hating me caused me to relax somewhat. The grip on that knot in my head slipped once more as well.


    I slipped again, my consciousness leaving and heading somewhere else for the second time.


    I was in an audience. The spotlights of a small auditorium pointed down on a very young Elenor. The girl couldn¡¯t have been more than 13 or 15. About the same age as me when the world ended.


    Her hair wasn¡¯t dyed, leaving it a long black which draped down like a black backdrop behind her, making each feature of her face stand out even more. She looked out across the audience, taking a deep breath.


    She spoke.


    The first time I had ever heard it, her voice. This was before the end of times, before whatever had stolen that away from her. Her green eyes shone, and her ever-closed mouth opened, words like a bird''s first flight leaving her lips in a loud, heard voice. It was stressed out across the stage, commanding in a way that had people sitting up in their seats next to me. It was immediately apparent that she was greater than the other children on the stage with her, from the first syllable of her voice, the way that those children as well looked up to her, looked with ambition or desire, to match what she was.


    ¡°All the world is a stage.


    All the men and women are merely players;


    They have their exits and their entrances,¡±


    I wanted to look around, to understand where I was and what was happening, but I was inextricably locked onto her, to her words, to the way she was commanding the entirety of the small stage she was on. She moved in slow motions, her voice carrying her actions.


    ¡°And one man in his time plays many parts,¡±


    She was interrupted, as a fire alarm triggered, and people all looked around in confusion. The intercom came on, a voice speaking out. ¡°All members of the performance, an unforeseen event is currently occurring, please evacuate. The school used to be a nuclear shelter when it was made, so we request those of you who can follow the teachers to the safety rooms. I repeat an emergency is occurring, please evacuate.¡±


    The lights flooded on, a piercing ringing noise coming in and out through the intercom as the alarm kept ringing. People moved in herds, flooding out of the building panicked, checking their phones and desperately trying to figure out what was going on, and why such a thing had happened.


    The stage was cleared out, except for one person.


    Alone, and getting more alone as more people flooded out, her opened eyes looked across the throngs of people as she continued her speech. I¡¯m not sure she ever stopped, as she had moved in her speech at some point.


    I could still hear her loud and commanding voice pressed out into the air, above the shrieking alarm. A seagull coasting high above the winds of a hurricane.


    ¡°Last scene of all,


    That ends this strange eventful history,


    Is second childishness and mere oblivion,


    Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything¡±


    She stopped, opening her eyes as she saw that the auditorium had been completely cleared out, herself forgotten in the chaos. She looked around calmly, seemingly debating what to do, before vanishing in an instant, her power taking her somewhere unknown. Her calm never pierced, her mask never shattered, and herself the character she had been playing until she had no more actors to continue alongside.


    I tightened that knot in my mind and was pulled out of the auditorium only moments after her, hand on the ground as I was taking deep breaths. My eyes adjusted to the dirt as a hand was still on my shoulder.


    My eyes shot up to look at Elenor, taking in all the differences in her from that youth I had seen. She tilted her head, making an ¡®ok¡¯ gesture with a curious look.


    I nodded, standing back up fully. ¡°Yeah, lost focus. That¡¯s¡­probably going to happen again.¡± Slipping through time was a bad habit. I had to constantly keep that knot tied, and keep pulling the ends together to make it tighter. Any looseness would cause that to happen again.

 Small Towns

    There was admittedly a peacefulness in the ruins of an old world. Walking through the humid heat and rubbing the sweat off your brow, finding some shade in the shadow of a collapsed building, resting awkwardly on its side. Hearing remnants of glass crunch under your boots as you walked over it, and seeing paths of concrete halfway through a losing war with weeds, roots, grass, and water.


    The buildings looked like ancient and dead beasts, much in the same way that the King in the distance seemed. They had once been living, breathing. They had hundreds of little cells, the people, walking around and doing things in their shelter. And now they laid dead, the blood of glass and office supplies already drawn out till empty, insides now hallow.


    But like a dead beast, beings beneath it could use such death to keep their own lives continuing. In this case, it was the people who remained after the great move away from the coasts. The inward retreat as people took to calling it. Whether out of stubbornness, misguided logic, or a simply inability to do so, these people remained.


    The specific group of people who had asked for us were a group of farmers and small game hunters who made their living in one-half of one of those broken cities. They had few people and an excess of space, and honestly? It seemed pretty nice living here.


    One of the people who seemed to be something of a leader had an entire bank to himself, just because no one needed it and he was free to claim whatever building he liked.


    Elenor and I did our best to look the part of resolute soldiers, keeping our backs straight and our shoulders squared. People all looked at us with the mingling feelings given to an unwelcome aid. The looks of soured pride, or apprehension. The men who would step to be between their kids and us, the women who would stare at the vests both of us were wearing with wide eyes. The kids who, despite their parents words, couldn¡¯t help but find us pretty darn cool.


    We made our way to the only real inevitably in one of these places, the only certainty that we could always rely on being present. A church.


    It had been shattered and killed as well, but unlike the other buildings left to rot and decay, this one had been bandaged, wrapped in planks and sheets of wood, bleeding staunched as nothing inside was moved besides to put the pews and lecterns in their proper places.


    Only shards of stained glass windows remained, sheets of paper taped over them and the drawings completed by amateur hands, the imagery was still there though, shards of glass being just a part of the whole.


    I didn¡¯t quite understand the religious folks that remained in the world. Their book of prophecies didn¡¯t exactly cover what had come to pass in the world, but they still read it, listened to it, and still worshiped it.


    Still, if there was something I couldn¡¯t diminish, it was that the government may have forgotten these people, but their religious brothers hadn¡¯t. Messengers and travelers with crosses under their shirts and holy books in hand were the most interaction to the outside world most civilizations had. Less men and more gusts of cold wind, calming balms that soothed you for the period where it¡¯s there, then leaves once more. They brought news, what supplies they could carry that a place needed, and information about the world they were disconnected from. In a lot of ways, it took the form it had in the feudal world, a moral authority that was one of the few threads keeping people from full tribalism.


    So, rather than directly interact with the people here, the government mainly kept threads open to the church and relied on that network that had spread to get and give information.


    Larger societies will have dedicated preachers and pastors, acting as moral authorities on smaller scales, as well as I¡¯m sure, mitigating conflict in a way profitable for the church. Like I said, feudal. This civilization was one such case, the preacher in the building sitting on one of the pews, hands clasped and eyes closed. Elenor glanced at me, and I gestured to one of the nearby benches.


    The two of us sat down while we waited for him to finish his prayers, only vaguely able to hear him muttering under his breath, prayers to a god I didn¡¯t think was still around, if he ever was. I looked at one of the patchwork Christs, his face one half beautiful glass, the other half a shakily drawn imitation.


    Still, how much the reaction was pure theatrics was hard to estimate, but you couldn¡¯t help but feel a presence in a place like this. Maybe it was the time and energy that had been put into keeping the building a resolute island of the past, compared to the rest of the scavenged and picked clean corpses littering the city. Maybe it was the way the light shone in through those special windows. Maybe it was just because you knew what kind of place it was, one for worship, and the devotion of the believers made you question the strength of your own convictions.


    I drew my eyes back to the preacher, who finished his prayers and stood up, glancing at us and nodding. He was a larger man, one who gave the impression of some kind of sturdy tree. His arms thick trunks, and his shoulders broad and wide. These larger outset civilizations generally had enough to spare on letting a religious leader just be a religious leader, but the calloused hands he had made it obvious he was very involved in the building and construction of a place like this. ¡°Brother ¡®an sister, how can I help ya?¡±


    These places always held a few people somewhat strange accents. Some mix of random selection leaving only a few people who spoke certain ways alive in some places, and people being cooped up with little access to the outside world for decades at a time. His sounded some strange mix of southern and Irish, maybe Scottish. I didn¡¯t quite know the difference.


    ¡°That¡¯s our question. We heard something about Yokai around the Kings Shell. You guys are the closest, figured if that info came from anyone, it¡¯d have come from you.¡±


    ¡°Aye. You¡¯re correct.¡± He leaned his back against the side of one of the pews. ¡°Butterflies. The size of drones or eagles. That alone ¡®oudn¡¯t be an issue. Ammo¡®s scarce but it certainly ain¡¯t absent, it wouldn¡¯t be impossible for us to deal with it. But they¡¯re¡­¡±


    ¡°Powered, right?¡±


    He nodded. ¡°Seems like winds.¡± He paused for a long moment. ¡°The single flap ¡®o a butterflies wings,¡±


    ¡°Can cause a hurricane?¡±


    He sighed. ¡°Aye though thankfully not quite that ¡®ough. The buildings are sturdy but, the powers ¡®o them devils ain''t natural. They hit scaffoldin and people, leav¡¯n hurt folk. An then ¡®ere gone.¡±


    I nodded and glanced at Elenor, who returned the gaze. ¡°We can handle it. Though, I should tell you, we specialize in the Inverse combatants.¡± He blinked, my meaning clearly not conveyed, so I sighed. ¡°The, witches and devils of human form. With powers but different from everyone else''s.¡± Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    ¡°Ah, I catch yer meanin''. We ain¡¯t got any a those though, and ev¡¯n if we did we ain¡¯t need you for it. We men of god can handle those kinds.¡± He glanced to Eleanor behind me. ¡°Not ¡®ta mention, such work ain¡¯t the kind ¡®o thing that wives ¡®n daughters should engage in.¡±


    She and I both let the words wash over us, not reacting. ¡°Just letting you know preacher.¡± I stood, rolling my shoulders. ¡°Which way to the butterflies?¡±


    He paused continuing to stare at Eleanor, who stared right back. ¡°You speak Miss?¡±


    Eleanor glanced to me, and I spoke in her place. ¡°She¡¯s a quiet person. Now, our job?¡±


    He tore a suspicious eye away, and began his walk outwards.


    We followed him out of the church, the light of the world seeming a little too bright now. He pointed us towards the inner depths of the city, a long stretch of road guiding us forward. ¡°Straight. Dunno where they¡¯re cooped up, but that¡¯s where ¡®ay come from. Ah, one more thing. We¡¯ve gotta bit ¡®o a weird fella who wanted to go with ya.¡±


    I raised an eyebrow. ¡°He useful?¡±


    ¡°He¡¯s a good man, knows the area well.¡± He nodded his head back towards the church. ¡°Was the one who finished the windas. Pious man, just too curious for his own good. ¡®Won speak on his blessing, but if you wan the compn¡¯y, he¡¯s holed up ¡®n one a the ¡®ol towers. Was a paper distribution company I think.¡±


    ¡°He an artist?¡±


    ¡°Na, he just draws more than anyone else. Fancies himself a researcher. Ain¡¯t much researching to be done in this place. More ¡®o a scavenger than anythin, but he gives his due, don¡¯t complain, and prays when he can. Ain¡¯t much more you can ask ¡®o a man.¡±


    Useful in a fight. But if he wanted to come, this first part was easy, and depending on his power, he might be useful for the hard bits. If he was totally useless, then I¡¯d just drop him off after we took care of the Yokai. ¡°Aight,¡± I shook my head. ¡°Alright. We¡¯ll take him along, just don¡¯t get too upset with us if he gets hurt. Our priority is the demons. Monsters. What''s his name?¡±


    ¡°Course, god¡¯s watching over him, he¡¯ll be aight. Ask ¡®fer Springer. He¡¯ll answer.¡± The preacher extended his hand, and I reached out and clasped it. His grip was almost painfully tight. ¡°You¡¯ve got some good folks here, don¡¯t fuck up, government dog. ¡°An sister,¡± He looked to Eleanor again. ¡°Yer welcome ¡®ere any time. Life like this ain¡¯t what god made you for.¡±


    Ah, was wondering where the hostility was. I tightened my grip in response, grinning. ¡°Sorry, but she¡¯s and I are pretty much the same beast. Canines and all.¡± Elenor bared her teeth, which almost caused me to laugh, it was cuter than it was intimidating.


    He let go with a small frown, but nodded. ¡°May the lord guide your path.¡±


    We turned and walked away, biting back another snide comment.


    Elenor and I walked through the abandoned city, looking at the scarce few people who gave us long stares, watching our every move with a mix of hostility and curiosity. In situations like this, Elenor preferred not to sign at all, just remaining totally silent and letting me speak for us. As much good as the church might¡¯ve done for people, it did its fair share of bad too.


    People already didn¡¯t quite like a girl in a bulletproof vest in these sorts of places, one with a disability offended their sensibilities even more. A few of our first missions together got interfered with because people kept trying to ¡®save¡¯ her from the government that must¡¯ve been forcing her delicate soul to keep fighting.


    It was demeaning, but it wasn¡¯t malicious or outright hostile, so we would just skip town whenever it happened. Still, more hassle than it was worth, so I did all the communicating now, and she¡¯d protest later if she needed to. It always left me with an uncomfortable feeling of disgust in my gut, that I never quite knew how to interpret or express in a way that didn¡¯t make her troubles mine. So I mostly stayed silent, and dealt with it the way she asked me to, however that was on a case by case basis.


    It was a pretty easy walk to the place he was talking about, another of the old concrete slayed beasts that¡¯s corpse made its impression on the world around it. The shattered windows let us see inside, the walls of the place covered in paper, stabled or taped to the walls, drawings, and paintings all inscribed inside. The quality of the resources used seemed to have a slight timeline, as the drawings got better and better, the quality of what the artist was using decreased.


    From paints to crayons, to markers, to pens, pencils, and finally some kind of charcoal. He must¡¯ve cleared the place''s art supplies out, and it made sense. He drew a lot, seemingly endlessly. An entire office building was covered from top to bottom, some rooms had their floors covered in drawings with only a small room left for you to walk through.


    The subjects of the drawings changed rapidly, continuing just as much variety as the art supplies, but clearly, butterflies had been a consistent form of his.


    We stepped in, the drawing on the wall opposite of us tens of papers all taped together, one large butterfly drawn in black charcoal towering over us, its little antenna seeming tiny compared to the massive wings, the size of a person each. ¡°Springer?¡±


    ¡°Ah! Here!¡± There was a ruffling from another room, and a disheveled-looking man poked his head out. ¡°Ah! T-The butterflies! Right!¡± He disappeared for a second, before coming rushing out, throwing an old button-up shirt on. Elenor looked away from his bare chest as he closed each individual button. ¡°Y¡¯all got here so quick!¡±


    He stepped carefully around his drawings which cluttered the floor, not looking as he maneuvered step by step without even glancing at one of the paintings. Finally, he made his way out, shirt fully buttoned enough for us to get a good look at him. He had a scraggly beard that looked like he had made a few poor attempts at shaving it before giving up, and brown hair with bits of red in the beard. His shirt¡¯s collared was half up and half down, which he only realized after a minute of two, and fixed. He looked a few years younger than Elenor and I, maybe 18 or 19. He gave the impression of a man that had been trapped on a deserted island for a year or two, before making his way back on a makehshift raft.


    I looked him up and down and sighed. I definitely ignored him the last time I did this. Why couldn¡¯t I remember it though? ¡°Springer right? You wanted to come with?¡±


    ¡°Yeah! Yeah absolutely!¡± He made a gesture as if he was fixing his glasses, but considering he had none, her more or less just ran his thumb forwards up the bridge of his nose. Oh this will be so enlightening! Hold on one moment, I need my notes.¡± He ran back into his building.


    Elenor glanced at his retreating form, then to me. She glanced around, making sure no one else was around, before starting to sign. ¡°Him?¡±


    I shrugged. ¡°This should be literally nothing, and if his power actually is useful, then we might be able to get some help on the part that might kill us.¡±


    ¡°Civilian, bad idea.¡±


    ¡°There aren¡¯t any civilians.¡± She moved her head back, raising an eyebrow. I crossed my arms. ¡°Worlds ending. You¡¯re either helping or hurting humanity. No civilians anymore, everyone''s a soldier, whether they know or not.¡±


    She looked up at me, an expression that was hard to define, something like conflict dancing in her eyes. But any response she was about to make was interrupted as Springer made his way back to us, a beat-up old notebook in his hands. ¡°Forgot, sorta need this! Haha, so um, my name is obviously Springer, who are you two?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m Vidar. And this is Elenor.¡± Elenor nodded.


    Springer gave her a long glance, obviously making his internal judgments about a girl going into a fight with him. Before he could open his mouth and make a fool out of himself, I cut him off. ¡°If you¡¯re coming, we can¡¯t guarantee your life. Elenor and I are trained, experienced, and well-trusted with this kind of thing. You¡¯re not, and while we¡¯ll do our best to protect you, don¡¯t expect us to die on your behalf.¡±


    ¡°I wouldn¡¯t want you to!¡± He let out a puff of air, squaring his scrawny shoulders. ¡°I¡¯m prepared for that. I know I don¡¯t quite look it, but I am decent in a fight. Besides, it¡¯s a man''s responsible to protect wo-others. A-Anyway, there''s no such thing as progress without some conflict. If I want to learn more, I have to be ok with some risk.¡±


    I nodded lightly. ¡°True. Alright, we¡¯ve been told you know the area. Lead away.¡±


    He nodded, and tucked his notebook under his arm as we started walking.

 Loop

    The population got less and less dense the further away from the populated section of the city we got. More often than not, there wasn¡¯t a hostile force keeping people out of these distant areas, there just weren¡¯t that many people and they didn¡¯t want to be too far from each other, save the occasional hermit holed up in some defunct gym or shop.


    In this case, the reason why people hadn¡¯t gone this way became obvious. One of the largest buildings, probably the largest building in this city before it got toppled, was lying on its side, blocking the path forward. It wasn¡¯t impossible at all to get by, and there was even some wooden scaffolding already built to get up into one of the windows and through it.


    Springer led us past it, himself seeming well acquainted with the proper path. We could¡¯ve teleported as well, but getting three people across would¡¯ve been draining on Elenor, and unneeded.


    We had to brush some broken glass shards away, and I might¡¯ve hit my head on a doorway I didn¡¯t see hanging, but we made it pretty easily, falling out the side of the window for a small 4 or five foot drop and landing across the barrier dividing in town to out of town. The other side totally unpopulated.


    Springer reached into his notebook, drawing a piece of charcoal out of his pockets. ¡°Alright. We¡¯re decently far away from people now. I can roughly track the demons down with my power, just might be a little crude.¡± He drew on the paper, the image of a bird roughly coming to life in a very quick very shoddy drawing. He tore the paper out and threw it up, the paper shifting and crumpling in on itself, until it shaped itself into a bird as well, landing on his head. ¡°Nice. Go look for butterflies!¡± It took off into the distance.


    Springer turned to look at us, hands on his hips. ¡°See! Useful.¡±


    I glanced at Eleanor, who returned the gesture. I looked at him for a long moment, before holding both my hands up and slightly off to the side, moving my fingers slightly. Then I stuck two fingers out on both hands and rubbed my dominant hand overtop of the non-dominant one twice.


    She raised a closed hand up to the side of her head and then stuck her index up.


    Springer looked between us like a young child watching his parents discuss a financial matter. ¡°Um? What¡¯s happening?¡±


    ¡°Sign language, don''t worry about it.¡±


    ¡°Well, I¡¯m not worried so much as curious.¡± He grabbed his notebook and skimmed through it, eventually finding a blank page. ¡°Could I see that motion again? What does it mean?¡±


    ¡°No time, we have work to do.¡±


    He frowned slightly, but luckily my bluff wasn¡¯t called, and we continued walking further into the city, closer to the king''s shell. He sketched out the rough motions the two of us made, the art actually fairly crips and viewable, if continuing that black, from the void, style that was indicative of charcoal writing materials. He flipped it shut and held it by his side. ¡°Out of curiosity, what do you inland people know about the difference between animals and monsters? All I can learn comes from the preacher but, well, his words are somewhat biased.¡±


    That was interesting to me. Not many people took a critical view of a religious leader in smaller towns and cultures like this. ¡°Yeah?¡±


    He seemed to notice that he made a misstep. ¡°N-No, just, the only thing he says is that they¡¯re from hell and god will protect us if we pray enough. But, I figure you guys had a different definition since y¡¯all are all godless.¡±


    ¡°A lot wrong with that.¡±


    ¡°What?¡±


    I let out a sigh. ¡°Most people inland are some kinda religious. Some are new beliefs about powers and their origins, some are old ones adapted to fit the new society, and some are old ones that stay clung to their original tenets. But almost no one is godless. Everyone worships something.¡±


    He glanced between the two of us. ¡°Then, what do you guys?¡±


    Eleanor gave a small twirl, then a bow. I spoke in her place, giving her a small push to keep her moving forward. ¡°Theater, art, music, and culture. For me, it¡¯s probably just¡­waking up for another day.¡±


    ¡°That doesn¡¯t sound like worship?¡±


    I shrugged my shoulders lightly. ¡°Depends on your definition. Neither of us clasp our hands together and pray to it, but they¡¯re things greater than us that we respect and keep us going. If it brings us comfort and we dedicate time and effort towards it, what separates it from a god?¡±


    ¡°...I can¡¯t quite say I agree, but I understand your perspective. For me, knowing that god exists is pretty much the only reason I¡¯ve been able to keep researching. If it was all chaos from chaos for chaos, there wouldn¡¯t be as much intelligence behind the design of reality.¡±


    My mind wondered to the end of time, to the things that I couldn¡¯t understand at the precipice of reality. The thing that the only parts of it I could understand were the things it wasn¡¯t. Singular, mortal, comprehensible, logical, good or evil. ¡°...I think we¡¯ll just have to agree to disagree.¡±


    He shrugged. ¡°I¡¯m plenty used to that.¡±


    ¡°To answer your earlier question, we don¡¯t know too much about them. Being bigger is the main indication, it¡¯s the obvious one that gives a visual clue. But, as far as we can tell, anatoiclaly they¡¯re exactly the same, just scaled up. Problem is, that¡¯s impossible.¡±


    He blinked at me. ¡°That¡¯s a loaded word to use in discussions with a scientist who observed a natural phenomenon.¡±


    Eleanor raised her eyebrow, but I just let out a small exhale. ¡°Alright Scientist, you know what the square-cube law is?¡±


    He shifted slightly, and did that same strange motion, fixing glasses he didn¡¯t have on his face. ¡°...No. Please tell me?¡±


    Someone in a place like this considering themselves a scientist was pretty laughable, as mean as that might be. He was young enough that he was likely raised around here, in this sort of place without access to the modern technologies that marked actual scientific progress. No books at a college level, education from people who vaguely remembered old lessons of their own, if any education at all. Still, I couldn¡¯t deny he had an admirable trait in his honest desire to know more. ¡°It¡¯s a law that states that volume increases faster than surface area. When applied to animals, it means that an animals mass would scale up too quick for their muscles and skeletal system to hold. So, in a realistic situation, if these things were actually as they appeared, the King should¡¯ve torn every muscle and broken every bone in it¡¯s body with it¡¯s first step.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s¡­quite interesting. Would it be possible if the change of size was gradual, and therefore the animals had time to adjust?¡±


    ¡°Not a bad theory, for what information you¡¯ve got, but the law isn¡¯t that easy to circumvent. Mass would increase by the cube of the scaling factor, and muscle in the square, no matter how the upscaling happened. Basically, another power of increase that would need to be supported. Even if the change happened over millions of years, as long as it was the same creature, experiencing the same place and the same fundamental shape, it would just snap at a certain point.¡±


    Eleanor¡¯s elbow to my side caught me out of my explanation, and I let out a small grunt in response, looking at her. She signed, two pointer fingers hovering adjacent to eachother to look like an equal sign, then sticking her tongue out.


    This might be somewhat of a random interruption, but I think it¡¯s time to speak in some way shape or form about sign language and the form that it took with Eleanor and I. Sign language in general is a very unique form of communication, because while a standerized and genearlized language exists, it¡¯s not used too often besides by people new to interacting with it.


    This is a generalization, for the record, but after the end of times, it became much more accurate. The point that I¡¯m trying to get at, is that since the form of communication is more often then not isolated to a small group of non-hearing people, or a non-haering person and whatever close relationships know them well, signing often becomes more ¡®slang¡¯ than anything. Signs that wouldn¡¯t be found in a dictionary, almanic, or website, but large groups of people still recognize, or individuals can use to communicate.


    I believe I may have been the only person in Eleanors life that wasn¡¯t a government translater to learn and communicate to her in sign language. And we spoke every day for years together. At a certain point, our language became almost entirely concentrated to one only the two of us fully understood. Eleanor had the ability to switch to the standerized form of it, but personally I was somewhat stuck in our slang version, and often could only track conversations between her and translators based on expresson and body language.


    Point being, while the actual ASL sign language way of saying ¡®math¡¯ would be to extend two fingers outwards like the overhang of a cave wall, and have the two press past each other, pause in the middle and slightly back up then pass them fully past eachtother, Elanor and I both just shortened it to the small gesture with our pointers to make an equal sign.


    The stuck out tongue was just her way of saying she didn¡¯t like it.


    I ignored her as I turned back to facing Springer, who had stopped to stare at the brief usage of sign language, before yanking his eyes away from Eleanor and focusing instead on what I had told him. ¡°So than, what are they?¡±


    ¡°No one really knows. They shouldn¡¯t be able to exist under their own weight, shouldn¡¯t be able to eat enough to survive more than a day or two. But they sure as hell aren¡¯t natural. Something else wearing animal skin.¡±


    ¡°Demons?¡±


    ¡°May as well be. But for now, I think tearing some open is probably the right call no matter what.¡± I pointed to where his paper bird was perched up on one of the few buildings that had remained standing. It indicated its white and black beak down towards the remnants of a mall, the building stretching out a fair distance, the entrance we were using one of few that hadn¡¯t been visibly caved in or cut off. Its doorway was comprised of shattered automatic doors, long rusted away and most fallen out of their frames, subsequently lost to the grass and erosion below. The doors revealed a somewhat dark entrance, natural light only getting a little ways in before dying out. ¡°We¡¯ve got work to do.¡±


    Elenor lifted her index fingers on both hands up above her head. ¡°Finally.¡±  She pointed to herself, at the building, then made a throat-cutting gesture, which I don¡¯t think needs translation.


    Springer didn¡¯t need one, given the way he looked at her and spoke with trepidation in his words, like he was talking to an animal he thought was making up its mind on whether to eat him or not. ¡°Forgive if this is rude, but do you ever use words? You can hear from what I can tell.¡±


    Part of the little, I do the talking arrangement she and I had, was If it¡¯s a questions directed to her, I wouldn¡¯t butt myself in, and just let her answer. If her answer was to look to me, than I would responde as needed, but she didn¡¯t this time.


    She raised her hand and pressed her pointer and middle finger against her thumb in a way that seemed like she was saying ¡°Shut up.¡± The more literal translation would be ¡°No.¡± But both worked in this situation.


    He nodded, taking it as both an answer and a reaction to his question. ¡°Sorry. Oh, and, If you two don¡¯t mind, I¡¯d like to say a quick prayer before we do this.¡± He closed his eyes, hand going to a small rosemary he had kept in his pocket, holding it up to his chin and muttering hushed and private words.


    Elenor and I let him take his time, we weren¡¯t in a rush and there wasn¡¯t any reason not to. We traded glances once more, a hard-to-describe intent in her eyes, and one that I reciprocated. I repeated the earlier gesture, two fingers extended on both hands and the dominant one moving forwards and backward twice on top of the other. ¡°Soon.¡±


    He kissed the rosemary and placed it back in his pocket. ¡°Alright, how do we do this?¡± He nodded to me. ¡°You and I in the front, her in the back?¡±


    I almost chuckled, the dude pretty much just offering himself up to die. ¡°Eleanor and I will frontline, your job is to run interference, use your power to interfere with the butterflies, make them target things we don¡¯t mind getting destroyed.¡±


    He shifted slightly. ¡°I¡¯m not sure how I feel about letting a girl fight for me.¡±


    Elenor looked at me, and I nodded. In an instant, she was behind him. She kicked the back of his leg to force him to his knee, grabbing his wrist and twisting it to pull it behind his back, knocking his notebook out of his hand while drawing her knife and holding it flat against his throat. He let out a small gasp, eyes wide.


    I crouched down to be at eye level with him. ¡°Look. You mean well, and we get that, really. But Elenor has killed much stronger than you, much stronger than these things we¡¯re about to fight, and hell, I¡¯d say between the two of us a fight is a tossup. So, here¡¯s a lesson from the outside world for you. If you¡¯re not strong enough to enforce your principles, they¡¯re dirt. So either lose them or get strong enough to hold onto them. You think girls shouldn¡¯t fight? Sure, once there isn¡¯t a single one out there that can put you on your ass, once you¡¯re strong enough that you can disregard an entire half of the population of powered people, you¡¯re free to think and enforce that all you want. But right now, you¡¯re not even remotely close.¡± I stood back up, gesturing for Eleanor to get off of him, which she did after a lingering moment. ¡°So, to be blunt, either listen to us, or get better than us. Right now? You¡¯re going to listen.¡±The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    He swallowed thickly, nodding as he rubbing at his neck and already breathing deep. The two of us could almost hear his heart pounding, with how clearly hyped up on adrenaline he had gotten. His face was also quite flushed, embarrassment at being put down so clearly obvious. I helped him up somewhat forcefully, grabbing his arm and yanking him to his feet. ¡°We¡¯ll replace whatever paper you lose here, I know it¡¯s valuable.¡±


    ¡°Ah, right. Um, thanks.¡± He seemed a little wobbly on his feet, that moment probably the closest he had ever been to death, even if Eleanor wouldn¡¯t have actually killed him. Having a knife held against your throat without realizing that was going to happen still had him somewhat shaken. It was probably understandable, but working in our job, it was easy to forget that it didn¡¯t take much to spook most people.


    I gave him a pat on his back. ¡°Good man. Now pull yourself together. Eleanor and I will be in the front, you¡¯ll run interference. Any objections?¡± He didn¡¯t respond. ¡°Good.¡±


    I looked up at the building in front of us, and we all moved inwards. The light inside of it got dimmer but steadily brightened as we moved in. though not by much. Streams of sunlight poured in from broken parts of the building, and the open roof. The shattered walls allow light into the otherwise dark and dreary parts of the place. granting us enough reprieve to see what was in front of us. Moss and grass life had started getting into this place as well, originating from what seemed like decorative plantlife in aesthetically pleasing parts of the mall, now overgrown and starting to take over. Trees that had been carefully trimmed and small, just decoration, were now poking out of the roofs, above the mall which contained them, their massive leaves and branches drooping down into walkways and paths that people once strode.


    The ceiling, what parts of it weren¡¯t exposed or shattered, was covered in cacoons, green shells that looked like leaves folded over themselves, hanging from silky strings.


    Springer and I both let out a noise almost in sync, a sort of ¡°Awww,¡± Though his tapered into amazement, and mine into despair. I ended mine with tired, ¡°Shit.¡± as hundreds of dog-sized butterflies began to flood out of the different inlets and stores, perching up on banisters and the leaves of some of the large trees, all looking down at us with their large black eyes like twin black holes. The ones that had the iconic eye pattern on their wings made it look like thousands of pairs of eyes were staring down at all of us.


    I grabbed Springer by his shoulder and shoved him behind me, pushing my body in front of him as I lifted my gun to fire.


    I was interpreted, as they all flapped their wings in a horrible synch, a shockwave of air slamming into each of us. Springer and I got taken off of our feet, falling into each other slightly. I managed to reverse my own time before I was totally off balance, leaving me back in the firing position. I pulled the trigger, and one of the butterflies hit the floor.


    Hundreds remained.


    Eleanor had teleported the moment the attack happened, and I drew my pistol as I saw all the creatures turn to her, her knife stuck deep into the body of one. They got off the banisters and railing, begging to flutter and fly around. I shot as many of them as I could in rapid succession, feeling the kickback in my hand as it dislocated my shoulder over and over again, the twin cracks of my body and the bullet firing out repeating in synch.


    There was a slight limitation to how fast I could fire my weapon. Reversing the bullet back into the chamber and my body back into an unbroken state meant returning to the position I fired. Time and position in space were directly related. If I wanted to reload, I had to be in the same place I was in before it fired. It wasn¡¯t much, but imagine something like a millisecond delay between a shot fired, and being able to line the next one up.


    The intense fluttering and flapping of wings started shaking the ground, my body unsteady. It didn¡¯t hurt my aim much, not because of any skill of mine, but more so because it would be harder not to hit anything as I fired into the air filled with flashes of eyes and patterns.


    It felt like I was in the eye of a hurricane, just firing blindly into the center. The shaking of the ground and the pressure of the air forced me to steady myself with a hand on the ground for a moment, giving me the clarity to notice that I had been separated from the others, the butterflies surrounding me in a column.


    Before I could figure out whatever the hell that was going to build up to, I reversed my time to just before I entered the building, and ran back inside. ¡°Springer! You alive!¡±


    ¡°Yes!¡±


    I could barely hear him over the sound of air and wind getting pushed around in intense shoves. ¡°Get out!¡±


    ¡°But Eleanor!¡±


    I grit my teeth, before squairing my shoulders and gripping my pistol grip with both hands. I shot pointing up, not intent on hitting any of my allies. This dumbass thought someone who could teleport was trapped. I bit back the instinct to bark that out as well, knowing that the information would be revealing something about her abilities. Maybe it was the smarter choice, but I was confident that I could get him out of there on my own without revealing her abilities.


    I charged forward, lowering my gun as I followed the sound of his voice. I had to shoulder check on of the fluttering things to break into the tornado of wings and eyes. I pressed the barrel of my pistol into its body and fired, yellowish blood of some kind gushed out, splashing my body and leaving my face uncomfortably wet. I wiped it off, shaking my head as I looked around.


    The interior of the mall was covered in the things, and after getting into this formation, one of them dived down and slammed it¡¯s body into my back, causing me to stumble forwards before I could swing around and shoot. The shot had enough force to knock me off my feet, so I had to rewind to stumbling instead of the instant before the shot.


    I stabilized myself as I finally caught sight of Springer, who was running up a rusted and mossy escalator, trying to get to Eleanor, who was dicing through any of the creatures near her with quick movements, jumping off of the banisters to reach them, disappearing under my view before re-appearing in the air somewhere.


    One of the butterflies in the vortex dive bombed towards Springer, this one¡¯s face, if it could constitute that, holding a sharp proboscis on it aimed for him. I took it out of the air, having to stop and plant my feet to get the shot off, giving the rest of the fluttering insects time to close the loop around me once more.


    All of my shooting was probably pissing them off, but they were choosing the wrong target. Out of curiosity, and given I was the safest person to be taught this, I let them keep going. I realized what they were doing as the wind started to get sucked into a vortex from their motions, the wind getting batted out against their wings and then bouncing back, getting stronger and stronger. It started to suck the air out of the area, and the battering winds almost forced me up. Before it could get worse, I reversed where I was.


    More information was good, but still, getting sent back to the entrance once more was beginning to drive me crazy. I managed to see as the column dissipated once I was outside of it, then started closing it around Springer, who had taken a knee to write something in quick desperate motions in his notebook.


    I couldn¡¯t fire straight into it without risking a hit against Springer.


    Alright, maybe I was a little too overconfident earlier.


    Luckily, a paper spear pierced out of the side, taking a butterfly out with it. We were all doing damage, but there were just too many of them. Even as the ground was slowly starting to get covered with the corpses of the winged things, it didn¡¯t visibly appear any different.


    ¡°Springer! A bomb or something man! Big!¡±


    ¡°But-¡±


    ¡°She can teleport, you literally couldn¡¯t hurt her if you were trying.¡±


    I shoulder-checked my way back into his column as well, gettin scratched and scraped by the wings and thin legs of the swirinling sized up insects. His frantic eyes tured to me, and missed as another of the butterflies with a sharp proboscis dove. I shot it down quickly, causing him to jolt, as I ran up to where he was and held my pistol up. ¡°Bomb! Now!¡±


    ¡°My powers don¡¯t work like that! It needs to be a living thing!¡± I glanced back at the paper spear that was getting enclosed by the butterflies, finally noticing that it was flopping like a fish, the spear part of it a long protrusion on its nose. A swordfish. Wonderful.


    ¡°How scavenged is this place?¡± If there were supplies we had a few options. Flour and a light was all we needed to improvise a fireshow.


    ¡°Top to bottom!¡± Things aren¡¯ always convenient though, are they?


    I lifted my pistol up and took a few more shots at the different ones, focusing on any that started their approach. I could feel the vortex starting to pick up, his papers getting blown and torn as the wind started to enclose around us once more. I tried to shoulder my way out, but they were moving too fast this time, all surging around us, and I just got cut up by the wings and sharp protrusions.


    My feet caught me before I could fall backward, leaving me back to back to Springer. He tore a page out of his notebook, throwing it into the air. ¡°Butterfly!¡±


    ¡°Yeah!? There''s a lot of them!¡±


    ¡°No just give it a minute or two!¡±


    I let out a grunt, firing a few more times into the column, before lowering my gun. While I still could speak, I shouted as loud as I could. ¡°Eleanor!¡±


    She was in the column in a moment, her hand went to my shoulder and I yanked Springer into her grip instead. She didn¡¯t argue, and the two disappeared in an instant.


    Back to the entrance I went.


    I ran back inside with a frustrated grunt. I lifted my gun to fire aimlessly, figuring it was just going to be a matter of hitting and running.


    There was a sound from above us, as something big slammed into one of the covered rooftop areas, the place shaking. We looked up, and the butterfly''s activity got a little slower, as if they had all paused to look as well..


    Perched up on the roof of the mall, a massive butterfly loomed. It was bigger than a person, and I actually recognized it. It had the charcoal-style rough edges to its frame, a pure black and white creature that had been on paper just a few hours ago, and deep in Springer''s home.


    It lifted itself off of the roof and slammed down into the mass of butterflies, taking a fair quantity down with it. Springer gave a shaky grin, before starting to draw on his notebook. He tore the paper out and threw it down, shouting as he did so. ¡°Buy me some time!¡±


    I didn¡¯t know what he was doing, but I presumed whatever it was, it was probably smarter than my idea of continuing to shoot into the air. Still, shooting into the air was what I was good at.


    The creatures had some degree of intelligence, greater than the animals they resemble if the little vortex attack wasn¡¯t proof enough of that. But they still weren¡¯t quite smart enough to realize that Eleanor and I were somewhat impossible for them to touch. That, and the massive demonic-looking butterfly on our team was very good at disturbing them.


    Eleanor and I drew as much aggression from them as we could, the sound of gunshots becoming somewhat endless as I stood still and fired, trying to bait them into another column. Eleanor took more of a backseat, teleporting Springer away anytime the creatures got too close and cried out in fear.


    After a few minutes of him scattering his papers around, he shouted once more. ¡°Ready! Get as many of them bundled up as you can!¡±


    ¡°Have your butterfly move to me!¡±


    He nodded as well, and the charcoal black thing made only vaguely out of paper, turned in the air and fell towards me. I shot rapidly around it, taking out nine or ten of the things following it as it dove.


    The thing crashed into me, which I hadn¡¯t expected, taking me to the floor with it. The butterflies descended on us, and I reversed myself to the entrance for a fourth time. I¡¯d choose anywhere else, but the entrance was the only place I knew was safe.


    I put my head down and sighed as I ran back in.


    Springer''s charcoal butterfly was getting brutalized, pierced into, and torn apart by the butterflies. ¡°It took me weeks to make that!¡± He shook his head, before lifting a hand. ¡°Spiders!¡±


    All of the little papers he had spread out over the mall, littered between butterfly corpses, all spring to life, folding and contorting into dog-sized spiders. They all turned up, and shot webs up of papery thoraxes, a wide net which got cast over the largest mass of butterflies, sticking them to the corpse of his charcoal drawing.


    He took out the largest chunk of them with that, only leaving stragglers in the 50¡¯s or 40¡¯s.


    Cleaning them up after that was pretty easy, like a firing range and clay pigeons. Just, if you missed enough, they¡¯d sink a sharp needle the size of a fist into your chest.


    Relaxing.


    The three of us were all huffing and sweating when the last one hit the floor, the bottom of the place caked in green blood and butterfly bodies, most of us the same. I saw Eleanor picking pieces of wing out of her hair as I went and shot the trapped creatures one by one.


    Then I went and executed the chrysalises the same way. Shot by shot.


    My companions were both catching their breath, Eleanor with her hands on the back of her head, pacing to not sit down or crouch. Springer on the other hand was crouched down low, hand against his head, taking deep breaths. I could see the corners of his lips twitching up, before her tamed them down over and over again.


    All of us had used our power an intense amount, which meant that Eleanor was probably seeing the consequences, whatever that was for her.


    Personally, I started getting that same overload I had when I was briefly the strongest in existence, the flashes of intense unneeded information about the world around me, its beginning and ends, all moving too fast for me to properly interpret beyond as a migraine.


    I leaned over the balcony of the upper end of the mall, huffing and puffing out breaths myself as the last chrysalis had a palm-sized hole in it, leaking some kind of watery greenish liquid.


    My eyes closed for a moment to gather myself, and when I was done, I moved down to join the two of them. I kneeled down to give Springer a pat on the back, before the reflux from my powers hit in full force. The knot in my mind didn¡¯t even slip this time, I kept that mental control tight, but it didn¡¯t matter, as something else forcefully pried it loose.


    The drill was becoming a lot more familiar to me now, something in the past. This time, I was in a church, the stained glass windows just as broken as before, but with no drawings covering them. I saw a large group of different people in the pews, a younger version of the preacher I met earlier speaking as church was fully in session.


    I started looking around for him, the contact giving me the impression this one would have to do with Springer. I tried moving around this time, finding that I could, somewhat like a ghost, as I just phased through anyone I tried to touch.


    I couldn¡¯t find him, not before the man speaking stopped, and a nun walked up in her habit. She bowed her head to the gathered people and began speaking about funding for the orphanage.


    Springer was a little boy she had brought along as an example. I heard her speaking about him like he wasn¡¯t there, her hand on the top of his head as if to comfort him. He was probably only 10 or 12. ¡°Springger¡¯s parents left him behind when they fled inland.¡± A resentful grumble went through the room. ¡°He doesn¡¯t have anyone here besides the orphanage, he relies entirely on the donations you all so graciously provide us. Though times seem dark, there is still a future, and our children are what makes such a thing.¡±


    He wasn¡¯t focusing on her or the other people, just looking up at the broken window, Jesus¡¯s face shattered in half, one of his eyes missing as he looked lovingly down at him. Perched on one of the broken shards was a caterpillar, inching it¡¯s way around the image of christ. The expression on his face was hard to describe, maybe something like curiosity, or ambition.


    The nuns¡¯ speech stopped, and the preacher stood back up. I heard the boy speak quietly to the nun, who looked ready to chastise him. ¡°The windows are so pretty.¡±


    ¡°Hush, listen to the good word.¡± The nun gently redirected him to the preacher, but the boy¡¯s eyes didn¡¯t stray from the glass windows. A longing in his eyes, a want for some part of what they were.

 Inverse

    I came back too with Eleanor shaking my side, and I groaned. ¡°I¡¯m fine, I¡¯m fine.¡±


    She let out a relived breath, before standing up. Springer had steadied himself somewhat as well, all three of us finally having caught our breath. He looked at me and nodded. ¡°That was¡­ intense. Anything else you guys need? I want to take one or two of them back with me. I¡¯d have preferred a live one but, well, I¡¯m not quite that crazy.¡±


    My mouth curled down, and I shook my head. ¡°No, sorry.¡±


    ¡°Ah, it¡¯s fine. I can take some more action¡­probably. What else are we doing?¡±


    The frown didn¡¯t leave my face as I stared at him for a while, thinking about how to say what I needed to. ¡°Springer.¡±


    ¡°Yes?¡±


    ¡°I want you to sit down for a second.¡±


    He looked confused but complied, taking a moment to sink down and cross his legs on the ground. ¡°Alright?¡±


    ¡°Eleanor and I, are supposed to kill you.¡±


    Eleanor slowly lifted a hand to the knife on her belt, which wasn¡¯t helping my attempt to calm the situation down.


    ¡°What?¡± He laughed incredulously for a moment, before looking rapidly between the two of us, both of our faces serious. ¡°What? I-I haven¡¯t done anything?¡±


    The frown on my face grew deeper, and a long sigh left me, like a force pushed down on my back and squished out the air in my lungs. ¡°Yeah, that¡¯s the problem right now. Do you know what an Inverse is?¡±


    He shook his head softly, his face a little pale but his focus unwavering.


    ¡°Most people have powers that work based on a few rules. The inverse work, well, in inverse. For Eleanor and I, the more you know about our powers, the weaker we are. The roots of our powers are things that exist in the natural world, absent of human interaction. For you, your power, theres no way bringing art to life is anything but related to a root that has to do with people.¡±


    He swallowed thickly, slowly nodding his head. ¡°Alright, yeah, I won¡¯t deny that. My root isn¡¯t anything, uh, natural. So, if by that logic I¡¯m an inverse. Um. What does this have to do with killing me?¡±


    I drummed my fingers against the grip of my pistol, forcing myself to keep eye contact with him. ¡°Because, the vast majority of inverse power users are homicidal at best. And the worse¡­The worst can become worse. The worst, can become animals in the literal sense alongside the figurative. The worst, become the monsters the size of cities. The King, Widow, J?rmungandr. We¡¯re pretty sure that they all started as inverse people. So, the standing order by the government¡­¡±


    Elanor ran a thumb across her neck.


    Springer lifted a hand to ghost over the same spot on his neck, breath catching in his throat. His hand slowly lowered, going to his notebook. I lifted a hand to calm him down. ¡°But, hey, we¡¯re not monsters.¡± I glanced at Elanor, who at this point in the course of her life, hadn¡¯t done anything like this. Unlike me. ¡°Look, the two of us are pretty high ranking members of the military. If we vouch for you, which we can, we can delay your death.¡±


    ¡°Delay?¡± His voice was shaky, a convict hearing what exactly a guilty plea will get them in terms of leniency, and finding it lacking.


    ¡°...Inverse users like you¡­as far as we can tell, for Eleanor and I, the more we use our power, the more we feel drained, tired, overwhelmed. For you, and tell me if I¡¯m wrong, it¡¯s elating, exciting, euphoric, it makes you want more. Like a drug.¡±


    He swallowed thickly, eyes shaking slightly as he nodded once more. ¡°I-I thought everyone felt that way, w-we just know it¡¯s bad to feel that way right? To not get carried away?¡±


    I shook my head with my lips in a deep line. ¡°It gives me a nasty migraine, and Elanor gets dizzy and nauseous.¡±


    ¡°But¡­But it feels like¡­like bringing something to life for me. It¡¯s¡­nice.¡±


    I started to lower myself down, not wanting to be towering above him while we talked about this. I groaned slightly as I sat down in front of him, resting a hand on the ground and another on my knee. Both away from my gun. ¡°That feeling, it¡¯s different for everyone, but for most people, it drives them insane. I don¡¯t know if you¡¯re hiding something, inhumanly strong willed, or special somehow, but you¡¯ve shown no signs of the same lunacy other people in your situation have.¡±


    A shaky breath passed through his lips, and he closed his eyes for a moment. ¡°Is there¡­Is there any evidence if this sort of thing is hereditary?¡±


    I glanced at Elanor, who frowned holding a straight expression for a moment, before she raised her hands. She shook her hand from side to side. When I didn¡¯t look away, she flexed her hand as she thought for a moment. ¡°Complicated. We don¡¯t know if the issues come first, or the powers. People who have issues give birth to kids with issues. But it¡¯s not guaranteed. Powers can birth inverse, and inverse can birth powers.¡±


    I translated it out for him, and he nodded along taking the details in quiety. ¡°So¡­So what happens to me? I mean, I knew it was bad to give in to the powers, I mean,¡± He let out an almost delirious laugh. ¡°Giving into power is like, the most textbook evil thing you can do but¡­So, if I¡­what would have to happen for me to¡­be like the Demons?¡±


    I lifted my hands up and to the side, palms open. ¡°Don¡¯t know. It¡¯s just that, at the center of the corpses of those beasts, the ones we recovered at least, we found people. Well, we haven¡¯t touched the King, but the other guys. We don¡¯t think all of the big ones are from your type, and the little ones definitely aren¡¯t, but¡­we¡¯ve got no clue how it all works. We assume you all have an intrinsic understanding of it, because it happened almost twice before powers became well established. There''s a lot to gain from someone like you, willing to communicate and talk to us, trying to resist the power. I don¡¯t think the government will treat you harshly as long as we¡¯re vouching for you, and you¡¯re working with them. Chances are pretty high you¡¯ll be sticking around us, or stuck in a base somewhere, but we won¡¯t have to kill you.¡±


    ¡°Is- are those really my only choices? I¡­I can¡¯t stay in my home?¡±


    I shook my head slowly. ¡°You¡¯re a risk to millions just by still breathing. But you also have the chance to save potentially more people by letting us learn from you. Honestly, I understand if you hate this, if you hate me for telling you, but¡­My hands are tied by duty and by the weight of lives beyond us.¡± If I had the choice, I¡¯d pick the quick death personally, but that probably wouldn¡¯t comfort him much. ¡°You consider yourself a scientist don¡¯t you?¡±


    ¡°I am. Don¡¯t say that to me like I¡¯m a preschool kid playing in the dirt wearing a Halloween lab coat. I might not have your resources but I learned what I could.¡± He started running a hand through his hair, his shoulders lowered, and his eyes closed as if some part of his body was now missing. ¡°I didn¡¯t do it very well apparently. I lived my whole life never¡­? I never noticed?¡±


    I paused for a second, as the palpable self-disappointed radiated off him instead of any kind of despair or grief. ¡°...Like I said, most of the time the tell is mania. That and people don¡¯t talk too much about their powers.¡± Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.


    ¡°And I didn¡¯t much talk to people.¡± He slowly picked himself up, and I paused a second before doing the same. ¡°...Can I ask? I know we haven¡¯t known each other very long, but would the two of you really just kill me?¡±


    ¡°This conversation happening is us trying not to. If you tried to run, tried to fight either of us, then yeah, we¡¯d have killed you.¡± It was half the reason I asked him to sit down first. Because it¡¯d be harder for him to start running or drawing. His head lower, easier to draw my pistol to in a shorter time.


    ¡°That¡¯s¡­pretty messed up.¡±


    ¡°No arguing there.¡±


    This was a first for the two of them, a person with Inverse powers who wasn¡¯t crazy. It wasn¡¯t for me. The persecution this group of people received wasn¡¯t as severe as it could¡¯ve been, since it became naturally taboo for people to discuss their powers unless needed. When someone figuring you out brings physical pain, conversations about yourself start to become less frequent. It also didn¡¯t help that the government was quick to shut up information about people with Inverse powers, not wanting those individuals to realise that people learning about their powers made them stronger. Lot of good that did.


    In all honesty, beyond the shaky morality of putting a young man into a shallow grave for a crime he had no hand in perpetrating, I was smart enough to figure some things out based on motif alone. And the guy who spent his time in a giant building covered head to toe in butterfly drawings, who wanted to come with us for the sake of understanding the butterflies more, and had the possibility of turning into a monster. Well, he was probably the Monarch.


    The Monarch was a butterfly, if everything about this place hadn¡¯t made that obvious. A monarch butterfly. The flaps of its wings literally could¡¯ve caused hurricanes, and did cause tornadoes when it used them in full force against some of us. I had thought, at this point, that it would be where it¡¯s supposed to emerge from in a year or two.


    The stomach of the King.


    A caterpillar, probably larger than a semi-truck, inching its way through the insides of another creature, biting into gore and viscera with its pincer teeth made for eating leaves. Hollowing out a thing the size of an island, then metamorphosing in its skeletal shell.


    I looked down at Springer, trying as hard as I possibly could to recall information about him from my past life. But, my memories were too scrambled. I hadn¡¯t even really thought about it, but I was having trouble remembering things from this time.


    There was the usual forgetfulness of five years passing, and of going through hell in the years that followed. But to relive a memory, and retain none of the information? To recall none of it at all? Something was wrong with my head.


    Regardless, what I did remember indicated that this man would be one of the contributing factors to humanities death. A pretty large part of me was tempted to forgo the mercy and put a bullet in him and be done with it.


    But the larger part of me knew I had more to gain by keeping him close like this. A lot of progress got made once some people with Inverse powers revealed themselves as non-threats. There was a lot of cruelty first, but progress after. I was hoping to skip the prior and get straight to the latter with him.


    He was also the best possible choice to do this with, of the inverse that transformed that I knew about. His transformation would require the chrysalis first and foremost, Meaning a period of immense vulnerability. If he went crazy, we¡¯d probably have a year or two to do something about it before he was a problem.


    Springer was starting to make up his mind, eyes closed. ¡°...I mean, it isn¡¯t much of a choice but, I¡¯ll go with you two. I¡¯d like to see the inland world, there''s probably more to learn. Maybe¡­there will be a way to get rid of this, and let me be normal.¡±


    I put a hand on his shoulder, letting out a relieved sigh. ¡°For what it¡¯s worth, I don¡¯t think it¡¯s the powers that make you different from normal.¡±


    He let out a small exhale, a tired attempt at a laugh. ¡°Yeah, guess that¡¯s fair. Alright. Is there¡­anything else for us to do here?¡±


    I looked at the various corpses strung around, nodding. ¡°Eleanor¡¯s going to stick behind and burn the corpses. You and I are going to take a walk, collect whatever you can carry with you, and say your goodbyes.¡±


    He nodded, and I threw a hand over his shoulder as we walked, just trying to calm him down and ground him. ¡°You made the right call. We¡¯ll both do what we can to keep you treated well.¡±


    He was silent, and once again pushed up glasses that weren¡¯t there. He was looking straight down as he walked. ¡°You know, I always wondered if, maybe, we deserved the monsters. God wiped the world clean once, maybe this is just him doing it again? I can¡¯t help but wonder what I¡¯ve done wrong to deserve the flood, or if the individual doesn¡¯t matter, and he just judges the whole. Then, does that make me a proof of corruption? A trial we we¡¯re built to fail?¡±


    ¡°...I mean, not that I believe in your god, but this would be a pretty fuckn weird way to wipe the world clean. If he exists and just wanted us dead, we¡¯d just be dead wouldn¡¯t we?¡± I gave him a pat on the shoulder, pulling away from him. ¡°I probably wouldn¡¯t ask the preacher, he¡¯ll try and kill you.¡±


    ¡°Seriously?¡±


    ¡°He¡¯s part of the church. They think you guys are literal demons in human flesh. We just think you¡¯re crazy.¡±


    ¡°Great. That¡¯s¡­wonderful. My life is amazing. Perfect, no flaws or errors whatsoever.¡±


    He seemed like a pretty good guy, but it was worth remembering that he did give in, in the past. He became a monster. Looking at him as he wallowed in the complex emotions of discovering this, I couldn¡¯t help but get my own doubts.


    A wave of steady anxiety passed over me, starting from the tip of my spine, steadily running it¡¯s way all the way down my body. What if he was faking it? What if he had known from the start? What if this trip had been a way of getting himself closer to his metamorphosis? Maybe we caught him off guard, but he was still just acting. Still just pretending.


    ¡°You alright?¡± His words brought me out of my train of thought, and I realised my hand was on my holster.


    I relaxed the hand, letting it rest to my side. ¡°Fine. Lets get going. Am I going to have to fight the preacher to get you out of here?¡±


    ¡°No. I¡¯ve wanted to make a trip inland for a long time. My uh, parents went that way, an-¡±


    ¡°They left you behind, I know. Chances are they¡¯re dead, and if not, impossible to track down.¡±


    ¡°How did you¡­?¡±


    I turned to face him as we walked. ¡°Assume that I know everything about you. Assume you can¡¯t ever lie to me because I will always know it. I genuinely think you¡¯ve been given a shit hand in life. But If I think for half a second that you¡¯re lying about something in regards to your power, if I think you¡¯re doing something behind our back, I won¡¯t hesitate. The fate of the world is in my hands, and I¡¯m not going to falter in doing what I need to do.¡± He nodded hesitantly, and I clapped him on the shoulder. ¡°Good.¡±


    He shifted uncomfortably, and pushed my arm off of him. ¡°Would you quit threatening me then being nice? It¡¯s sending mixed singles.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ve got mixed feelings about you.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, I think I¡¯ve picked up on that.¡±


    We finished the rest of the walk back in silence. It only took a couple of minutes before the vision behind us started to fill with smoke, the bodies lit up properly by Eleanor.


    There wasn¡¯t really any distinct reason to burn the bodies. They didn¡¯t come back from the dead, or pollute the area, or create more monsters from the corpse. It was just superstition. When something unnatural dies, you burn it. You turn it into ash, so that it¡¯s corpse, so that it no longer exists.


    There''s a purity there. In fire. In burning something. There¡¯s a calm that washes over you while you stare at the fire burning away at the thing that tormented you. A sort of nothingness that takes over your emotions, holding you in stasis as you watch it with blank eyes. The flame is like a shifting wave, only capable of moving forwards, climbing up. The surety of it, the knowledge that nothing can return from ash.


    In a more pragmatic way, the smoke clouds that pop up after a successful monster extermination are a deep comfort to people. Seeing that column of polluted air rise up means your troubles are lessened. It¡¯s something like a calling card. Places like this all had there own names for us. Dogs, government agents, help. But back home, inland, people like us were known just for our success, for our smoke. It¡¯s why the official name of our kind started getting called Plumes. The government encouraged it, it was a name a lot more gentle than the people who held it, and it had a kind of respect. Which was most of why people here didn¡¯t use it.


    Our vests have a little capsule of thermite and tend to scavenge the rest of what we need to set the bodies alight without hurting the world around us. I thumbed it idly as I looked up at the smoke.


    ¡°You know.¡± I broke the silence as I pulled my eyes away from the rising cloud, joining the others in the sky. ¡°I think I¡¯d like to be given the same courtesy when I die.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s¡­odd. Monsters burn, people get buried.¡±


    I didn¡¯t respond, just deciding to keep moving forwards.

 Means, Motive, opportunity

    Springer didn¡¯t have much. His building was spacious but mostly empty. Some old scavenged pieces of furniture which he pulled clothes and drawing materials out of. He seemed to agonize mostly over which books from his somewhat meager collection he was going to bring along.


    They were pretty rudimentary scientific stuff, the kind of things made for little kids to get them ¡®into¡¯ science. Stuff like, 1000 fun facts about the earth! Or What¡¯s the scientific method? Easy little things that made up the basis of his early learning. Still, it was genuinely all he had, the only way to further his understanding and education given where he grew up.


    And hell, he may have been basing it off of a kids guide, but the journals and journals filled with different experiments was pretty impressive. He had figured quite a lot out on his own that I wouldn¡¯t have at all if I had grown up the way he had. The life cycle of frogs, butterflies. How plants grew. It was hard, based on how separated he was from the group of people, if he had been told these things then confirmed it all with research, or genuinely just got curious and went and studied, but this was a lot of information. We might¡¯ve been taking a much more important part of this community than was communicated. Or at least, someone who would¡¯ve been very essential once the old figures, those who grew up before the separation from most civilization, passed on.


    One things was for sure though, he was going to flip the fuck out when he finally got connected to the internet.


    Once he finally picked his essential belongings, with my encouragement that there was much more to see in the inland cities, we started making our rounds to meet with the people he needed to talk to.


    There weren¡¯t too many, I got the sense that he generally wasn¡¯t the most social kind of guy, and one who didn¡¯t have too many relationships. He was more than happy to allow people to spread the information to each other than he was looking to see each and every individual person in the little civilization, though he no doubt knew each of them. We went with the story that he just wanted to go inland, maybe find his parents. It lessened the glares I was going to be getting, and the attempts to rescue or kill him, so I appreciated it.


    We visited an old woman with a heavily wrinkled face and smile lines who cupped his cheek and kissed him on his forehead, telling him to be proud of himself. She had been inside the ruins of a public library, shelves and shelves of torn and broken books no doubt agonizingly picked up and sorted properly after the place had been first knocked over.


    Our next stop was at a sort of orphanage, an old school taken over by a similarly old woman, much younger one alongside her. There didn¡¯t seem to be enough material or the ability to get another traditional looking habit for the younger one, so she wore a somewhat makeshift version, sewn together from skirts and hoodie materials. It looked pretty comfortable if not very visually appealing. They both wished him well, with the nun telling him to track down his parents and give them ¡°a taste of whats to come when they burn.¡± A little intense.


    During which, the younger nun came up to speak to me, bowing her head slightly. ¡°Um, sir, is it alright for Springger to go with you? You inland folk don¡¯t much like us do you?¡±


    ¡°The aggression is pretty one way. I mean, we aren''t going to roll out carpets and throw flowers over him when he comes, but it''s more that no one will care. The city is big, and people in it don¡¯t care about you unless you give them reason to.¡±


    ¡°That¡­sounds awful.¡±


    ¡°There¡¯s a lot of people. You can¡¯t care about all of them. The worst thing he¡¯ll get is some weird looks if he¡¯s acting weird by our standards, but I¡¯ll be with him most of the way.¡±


    ¡°Ah, thank you sir. Springer is a bit strange but he¡¯s a good guy. I hope he¡¯ll come back someday.¡±


    I don¡¯t respond, looking up at the man as he says his goodbyes and returns to me, rubbing a little bit of mist out of his eyes. ¡°Alright, ready to go.¡± He said a brief goodbye to the young nun as well, the two of us walking out.


    ¡°Not interested in saying goodbye to the preacher?¡±


    ¡°Father O¡¯Conner and I have a uh, sorted past. I¡­had some sinful desires when I was younger, and he saw fit to ensure I didn¡¯t keep them. Suppose he was in the right for it but, I¡­don¡¯t feel too comfortable around him.¡±


    I nodded, brushing past the curiosity about what sinful desires someone like him specifically had. ¡°Alright, let''s wait for Eleanor to find us, and we¡¯ll head out.¡±


    It didn¡¯t take her too long, finding us back at Springer''s home. She placed a hand on both of our shoulders, and in an instant, the town was far in the distance.


    It only took the one jump for her to be a little woozy though, so I took her arm over my shoulder and we decided the walk for the rest of the day. It had already gotten pretty late into the afternoon, the sun starting to set over the horizon.


    For some context as to why Eleanor and I were treated as rather high ranking members of the military, and classified as A rank Plumes despite neither of us holding that rank, the time it took for us to do our rank evaluation, receive orders, execute the butterflies, and start heading back, was only one day.


    It would¡¯ve taken a non-teleporting team at least a week, even if they had some kind of automobile. With how rural and disconnected the specific area was, the roads had mostly become overgrown and mostly un-usable, save for the large ones that were kept clear as a matter of security.


    The two of us were quite literally the best methods of quickly ending a problem that our government had. Granted, we were slowed way down thanks to Springers addition, the man extra strain on Eleanor.


    I in theory could reverse my own time until I was back in the city, since it hadn¡¯t been too long, but I was skeptical about leaving Springer alone with Eleanor. It was probably Paranoia, and it wasn¡¯t like I didn¡¯t trust Eleanor. In a fair situation she would slit his throat before he could blink, but I didn¡¯t know if I could trust it to be a fair situation.


    We set up camp in an abandoned and looted gas station along an overgrown weed covered road. It wasn¡¯t comfortable and smelled either like expired chemicals or mint depending on where you were, but it was shelter.


    We all said our goodnights, and went to sleep.


    That¡¯s what Springer thought anyways, as he slowly and somewhat uncomfortably found rest in the foreign place. But there was no way in hell I was actually going to sleep with him right next to us.


    I think it may have taken him a few hours to actually fall asleep, and late into the night I got up off of the ground, wanting to pace around more than I wanted to lie down with my eyes open.


    It was hard for me to remember once again that less than 24 hours ago, the world had ended.


    I sat up on an old cash register desk, the register itself long broken apart for electronic parts by some unknown looter who had been the first to get to this place when it was abandoned.


    Looking down at both of my sleeping companions, I ran a hand through my hair. The end of the world.


    All the major civilizations fell one by one. The little ones like the place I had just been were wiped out in their entirety by monsters, nothing strange about that. But what had happened next had occurred with intelligence, with plans. I had been moving from task to task, but given this long to finally think, I had some time to get a gameplan going. My counter strategy.


    There were a few key events which led to the end. The first was the death of Adam. It happened as the vast majority of people learned about the Inverse, and the way that our powers worked or didn¡¯t work. Someone with an inverse power managed to kill Adam, and live streamed it, displaying their power and speaking the knowledge of how it worked out for almost the entire world to hear. At the same time, he explained Adam¡¯s power, severely weakening him and giving him the advantage needed to kill him. How he learned that immense secret, I didn¡¯t know.If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    My biggest claim to fame in the past was being the one to have killed him, and to have avenged Adam.


    I mean, I obviously didn¡¯t do it myself, the government had put together a specialized task force


    That was sorta the secret of our unit. Elenor and I were anti-personnel specialists. Modern weapons just stop working on monsters once they grow big enough, and neither of us can do anything besides be annoying to them at that point. But against people? Two teleporting figures, both capable of almost instantly killing a person, myself able to effectively negate most non-fatal wounds, there weren¡¯t many things that stood on two legs that could last more than a few seconds against us.


    I never really liked that. It¡¯s not like military in its original kind disappeared with the advent of the monsters. No one was under the misconception that complete unity had somehow happened just because an external threat finally matched that of our fellow man.


    We were still ready and willing to do what every civilization before us had done, and war.


    But, what Eleanor and I were, it was dishonest. Plumes were signals of hope, icons that the monsters had died, that the world just became a little safer. What the hell were killers like us doing with that title? The iconography itself felt wrong.


    There was much more nobility in fighting the monsters. Nothing gray about it, it wanted us dead, we needed to kill it first.


    But in all honesty, the world right now needed men dead more than it needed monsters dead. Our biggest issues were people. The monsters on their own we could fend off fine, but every major step in our complete overtaking happened because of people. People whose lives I had to end.


    There is, I think, neither any ethical or moral excuse to end a life, and yet equivalent, often no choice. I was a soldier, though the name was different. Though my generals were not men, but the forces of earth, of the heavens. My weapons and appointed might the knowledge they had given me. I was still a soldier. Still just a killer, a dog trained to bite.


    But what else could I be? What else could I do? The other options were crueler. Doing nothing, not doing what I had to do. Allowing the death of everything, seeing the end and welcoming it. Isn''t it more moral to rage against an untimely end? More human to fight your demise so long as you have feet to stand on, and arms to guard yourself with. Or maybe, I was just making excuses for myself.


    My eyes flicked to the sight of movement, and I saw Elanor stand up, rubbing at her hair, displacing strands of pink and blue as she stared at me. She moved her hands sleepily right after. ¡°Can¡¯t sleep?¡±


    I pressed my pointer and middle against my thumb, pointing towards her.


    She nodded, before looking down at Springer. ¡°You sure about this? I know you¡¯re a soft guy but, he¡¯s an Inverse. We should kill him shouldn¡¯t we?¡±


    An advantage of both of us speaking in sign language was that he had no chance to hear us and wake up, and even if he was fake sleeping, he wouldn¡¯t make out our conversation. ¡°Probably. But I think he might be more valuable alive.¡±


    She walked up next to me, gesturing for me to scoot over, which I did, and hopping up next to me on the cashier desk. ¡°You¡¯re just saying that. You¡¯re soft.¡±


    ¡°I killed you, you remember I said that right?¡±


    ¡°Yeah but you did it for a soft, sappy reason didn¡¯t you?¡±


    ¡°I did have a reason, but I don¡¯t think that makes me soft. I didn¡¯t feel¡­soft, when¡­I killed you.¡±


    She wrapped an arm around my shoulder, and dragged me closer to her, her other hand reaching up and threading around in my hair, finding a solid grip and holding it for a second, before letting go.


    Despite being on the thinner side, Eleanor was solid to lean against, and a weak scent of a floral perfume met my nose.


    I let her do whatever she wanted to me, both a little confused but soothed by the feeling, even if something like 6 combined inches of kevlar were separating us. She had a talent for things like this, as ironic as it was. Knowing when to talk, and when to just let the moment and mood sing out its own truth.


    She held me against her for a long moment, before the tension in her arm released, and she freed me to sit back up, reclaiming her hand to speak with. ¡°You¡¯re ridiculous. You know, the hardest part of your story to believe, is that you didn¡¯t end up sacrificing yourself for someone else somewhere along the way, and actually made it all the way to the end.¡±


    A small, somewhat pathetic laugh broke free from my lips. ¡°I uh, I think I¡¯m probably a bit more selfish than you think. I¡­had my opportunities to do something like that. I didn''t take them.¡±


    She paused, thinking about that. ¡°Did you really?¡±


    My thoughts turned to a wave of blond hair, blood splatters tainting it red, and two emotionless blue eyes. ¡°Yeah. Yeah I did, but I didn¡¯t. I¡­could say a lot of things in my own defense¡­but the truth is that I¡­just wasn¡¯t willing to die. I¡¯m not as good of a person as you think I am. I don¡¯t even know If I¡¯m at all the person you remember. So much of me has changed in what was a single a day for you, and years for me.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re still Vidar though. Still you.¡±


    A single though pierced my mind, a response to her question I refused to speak aloud, too afraid of her reaction and the implication of my own words. ¡®Am I?¡¯


    There aren¡¯t quite moments of silence when discussing things with her, after all, there is always silence. However, no matter what kind of communication you use, certain social ailments manage to pierce in no matter what. And the uncomfortable feeling of a proposition challenged only internally by another person presents itself here as the stark stillness of my hands, and the lack of any motion.


    Her mouth twitched into a small frown, and she sighed, one of few external noises she would ever make. ¡°Did the two of us really make it all the way to the end? A little bit baller if we did.¡± The sign the two of us had for baller was her making the motion of shooting a basketball.


    ¡°We did. Jo?lle too. It got close a couple of times, and we were both kinda wrecks at the end. Guess I¡­still am.¡± I let out a deep sigh. ¡°I mean, don¡¯t I already seem different to you? Wrong somehow?¡±


    ¡°How?¡±


    ¡°Just¡­Wrong. Not who I am.¡±


    She thought for a long moment. ¡°You¡¯re definitely different. A lot more jaded, sorta erratic too. I mean, at the examiners room, we apparently fight so civilians won¡¯t have to. But recruiting Springer, there are no civilians. You contradicted yourself.¡±


    I blinked at her, slowly taking in that statement. ¡°I¡­I¡¯m just¡­¡±


    ¡°I think you need to take a second to breathe. And consider what is and what isn¡¯t important to you. Why are you actually doing all of this?¡±


    There were noble reasons. Of course there were, I was saving the world. I had changed the course of history for the better just by giving us a second chance, if I could actually save the world, it would mean that I had saved not just the population of the world now, but every single human being after my passing. Every child born after this period should I succeed, would be a product of my own efforts.


    But that wasn¡¯t what was driving me. That wasn¡¯t why I was doing what I was doing. Not to save people. Not to change the world, not to keep humanity going. My reason was as base and simplistic as it could be. The same as any animal, predator or prey. ¡°I just don¡¯t want to die.¡±


    ¡°You want to live.¡±


    I nodded. That was it. At the base of everything. I didn¡¯t join the military out of a desire to fight for people, it was because they offered me the food I needed to survive. The reason I had killed other people, the reason I had turned time backwards. ¡°I want to live.¡±


    ¡°Then there it is. That¡¯s who you are. Someone who wants to live.¡±


    My lips twitched down, a little bit of frustration at the inherent selfishness of thinking like that. ¡°I think I¡¯d like to be more than just that.¡±


    ¡°Well, I think you¡¯ve got time to be something more. What good story about saving the world doesn¡¯t include finding yourself along the way?¡±


    I let out a small breath. ¡°Worrying about something stupid like how I feel, seems dismissive of the hard work and awful things we have ahead of us.¡±


    ¡°Probably. But what can you do?¡±


    ¡°Not worry about it?¡±


    ¡°Clearly hasn¡¯t worked for you.¡±


    I couldn¡¯t refute that.


    She gave me another pat on the shoulder, before jumping off the counter. ¡°We¡¯ve got a hard time ahead of us saving the world, right? We should sleep while we can.¡±


    I didn¡¯t respond, just turning to look at Springer, who was sleeping soundly. It was ironic, if I wanted to guarantee I¡¯d wake up for tomorrow, I had to stay awake. I spoke since her back was turned to me. ¡°You do that, I¡¯m just¡­I need to think a little longer.¡±


    She raised a hand up to her head and gestured it in a circle. ¡°Going crazy.¡±


    I let out an annoyed huff as I leaned back, lying down on the counter. ¡°Feels like an understatement.¡±

 Traveling

    Phones were a scarce resource in these times. We still had them, and much of the infrastructure to keep them usable was tentatively bandaged together to be functional, but we had next to no ability to create new ones, and the unfortunate fragility of them led to a lot of issues. I spent quite a bit of time just repairing broken ones with my power whenever we were without a mission.


    The command was for A ranking or higher units to be provided with one, alongside their Keeper, to allow for easy communication. We were trusted to both have our own, since I could obviously fix anything that happened to them.


    All of which was to communicate why Springer looked at us like we had both pulled the Holy Grail and the Ark of the Convenient when the two of us took phones out. We texted our status to Eleanor, alongside a brief explanation of Springer and what we were doing with him.


    She responded in affirmative, asking us to be careful with trusting our backs to him and telling us to go ahead and to stop at one of the stations instead of teleporting into town.


    We both responded in the affirmative and started to head out.


    The line between inland and outside was decided by a massive train path. Created with excruciating effort when the government decided that the coastal areas were lost causes. It wasn¡¯t quite a perfect circle, more of an oval that stuck up into what was Canada, getting closer or further to Mexico depending on how far the coast was. The train line was never more than 200 miles close to the shore. And in fact, the closest anyplace got to the ocean was the Great Lakes in what was Michigan and Wisconsin.


    There were communities on the perimeter outside of the train as well, but they were largely considered outside of the government''s territory. It wasn¡¯t hard to move back into governmental protection, and there tended to be a large surge of people to the interior whenever a major attack happened.


    There were lots of stops, and more than a single train on the tracks, all keeping supplies, resources, and people moving constantly around the interior locations. It was the heart of our infrastructure, and it was destroyed only about a year from now.


    As with most things, it had lots of different nicknames and official monickers. There were the state-assigned patriotic ones, the ¡°Beating heart.¡± The ¡°Circle of life.¡± The ¡°Sheild.¡± Then there were the derivative ones given by detractors or exterior civilizations. The snake, the dividing line. But most people just referred to it simply as what it was. The Train.


    We were making our way there, walking between one of Eleanor''s jumps, letting the woman rest her body on mine as we kept moving. The area was dusty, somewhat devoid of life, yet full of it.


    Most of the traversable area was a rundown highway, everywhere else had been mostly turned into forest or plains, animals long taking over the area. Some monsters had snuck past the exterior civilizations, but most were your typical animals.


    The highways had provided the largest degree of resistance to the reclaiming force of nature, the concrete, though its paint had long faded, remaining solid and not soil.


    Springer¡¯s addition had put too much strain on Eleanor, and the return trip was taking us enough time a car would¡¯ve probably been quicker now.


    There was a rumbling on the street, causing the three of us to turn towards the other direction, able to see headlights staring down at us, getting closer. We all moved over to the side, waiting.


    Cars weren¡¯t useful to the exterior civilization, except in their own small cities. They had been at first, but when fuel in the gas stations eventually ran dry, it stopped being such. Most still had one or two, put away for emergency use if they needed to get out of their place quickly. School buses or vans for getting lots of supplies with them.


    In general though, in a case like this, it would be another military official, off on their mission. In a case like this, bumping into them would probably mean a quicker and easier time getting back.


    The car, an old pickup truck, purred as it slowed down, and we caught sight of the guy sitting on the bed, a sniper''s rifle sticking up next to him. He gave the three of us a two-fingered salute, and reached down, opening the tailgate. ¡°Soldiers. Names rank and unit?¡± He had an eyepatch over his left eye, breezy black hair, and a tan complexion. He seemed like a person who had a weightlessness to them, whose eyes, or eye in this case, looked a little bit past you.


    ¡°Vidar, A rank, Powered unit 3.¡± I nodded to Eleanor. ¡°Eleanor, A rank, same unit.¡±


    ¡°And the one without armor?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m going to have to ask for your clearance level before I share that.¡±


    He shrugged. ¡°Eh, don¡¯t really care that much. Names Will. Powered unit 29.¡± He nodded to the front, the widow rolling down to reveal a woman in a familiar vest.


    She had short brown hair in a pixie cut, squinting at us. ¡°Judy.¡± She rolled the window back up.


    He reached his hand down, helping Eleanor up as I climbed up myself. Springer followed along, very hesitant and somewhat skeptical of the whole thing.


    The seat wasn¡¯t very comfortable, bumpy and the wheels forced me to cram myself in the corner to make room for the other two. ¡°Anyone besides Judy actually in the car?¡±


    ¡°Na. I just like the wind in my hair. And we¡¯d need to know you guys a lot better before either of us let you in our baby.¡± He patted the side of the car. ¡°I¡¯d ask where yours was, but if I¡¯m right you guys don¡¯t need one eh?¡±


    ¡°We know you?¡±


    ¡°Na, the academy just remembers you. You know you guys are still the only unit that''s ranked higher than the power ranks of the members?¡±


    I think I actually did remember him. He hadn¡¯t been around very long, but he was part of the unit that was put together to kill the inverse that had killed Adam. I remembered him as seeming unbothered the whole time.


    I didn¡¯t quite remember what had happened to him, nor did I remember his partner at all. ¡°What¡¯s your unit¡¯s callsign?¡±


    He tilted his head like he was trying to remember, before letting out a small ¡°Ah. Right, I think it was Sleepy.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s the story there?¡±


    ¡°The two of us fell asleep in the shooting range.¡±


    That would do it. Callsigns were something of an inside joke between people who attended the same academy. Embarrassing or telling stories of a person. Eleanor and I were called Mutes for pretty obvious reasons. I hadn¡¯t talked much when I first got there, and she was silent.Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.


    The car rumbled as it carried us across a road that had probably been well-maintained and smooth to drive across at some point. ¡°You guys also dealing with some stuff in an exterior?¡±


    I nodded. ¡°Same story for you?¡±


    ¡°Yeah, a falcon.¡±


    ¡°Butterflies.¡±


    ¡°Lots?¡±


    ¡°Tons.¡±


    He nodded lazily. ¡°I think the smaller ones get more, the bigger ones just get bigger. Ours was about the size of a¡­I don¡¯t know, like a car? Should¡¯a seen the corpse. Was damn good roasted.¡±


    Springer¡¯s head moved back like he had been hit, and I almost didn¡¯t blame him. ¡°You¡­ate it?¡±


    ¡°Sure did. Better than rations.¡±


    ¡°But they¡¯re¡­that can¡¯t be good for you.¡±


    He shrugged. ¡°I¡¯m still standing. Judy is too, plus she ate half the damn bird. Should see her eat, she¡¯s the real monster.¡±  he smiled as he looked back at the front of the car, before turning back to us.


    Springer looked between us and him. ¡°Are¡­Are all military units comprised of a guy and a girl?¡±


    I shook my head. ¡°We¡¯re given partners based on our powers. Complimentary is the objective, but when that isn¡¯t feasible, we just get two people under the same Keeper.¡±


    ¡°Who is?¡±


    Will¡¯s remaining eyebrow raised. ¡°Jeeze, you¡¯re from pretty deep in the boonies huh? We all get a single person who knows what our power is. Too many people would make us all super weak, so just one person is in charge of 30 or 40. They then make units, and only keep a couple under them.¡±


    ¡°Ah, right, I forgot that other people knowing makes you guys weaker.¡±


    He blinked, and I pulled my weapon up at the same time Will pulled a sidearm from his side, my barrel pointing at him as his pointed at Springer. ¡°He misspoke.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t think he did. Care to explain?¡±


    I let out a sigh. ¡°Look, we have clearance from our Handler, he¡¯s non-hostile. Get what I¡¯m saying?¡±


    He didn¡¯t lower his weapon, Springer holding his hands up. Eleanor had her hand on her weapon as well, holding the knife with narrowed eyes. ¡°He¡¯s an Inverse.¡±


    ¡°He is.¡±


    ¡°He¡¯s tricking you.¡±


    ¡°He isn¡¯t.¡± I hope.


    The man tapped the side of the car three times, and it slammed to a stop. Eleanor and I were thrown off balance as we jolted forward. Springer did too, having to catch himself with his hands.


    Will grabbed him by his collar, yanking him forward and pressing the barrel to his head, spinning him around to face me, keeping his body between me and my weapon. Changing tactics, I pointed towards the driver''s seat of the car.


    His eye narrowed. ¡°It wouldn¡¯t pierce.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s made for me. The bullet is .50 cal.¡±


    He clicked his tongue, and raised both of his hands, pistol pointing up. Springer got away in an instant. Clambering up and over the side of the car, probably falling a little awkwardly.


    I reached over and yanked Will¡¯s gun out of his hands, leaving the sniper rifle as I held onto his weapon. ¡°Get back up here Springer.¡±


    ¡°He just tried to kill me!¡±


    ¡°No, he would¡¯ve succeeded if he was really trying.¡±


    Will smiled but didn¡¯t speak to deny it, just lowering his hands. ¡°Just wanted to see if he¡¯d do something. It¡¯s not really my business if the two of you are going rogue. Not until I get the order to kill you anyways.¡±


    ¡°You won¡¯t, because we aren¡¯t.¡±


    Eleanor tapped her knife¡¯s holster, trying to communicate that he wouldn¡¯t win. And in fairness, a sniper against a teleporter was a hell of a mismatch. But we didn¡¯t know what either of their powers were, so it probably wasn''t smart to be overconfident. ¡°Alright alright. I¡¯m sorry, Springer right?¡±


    He reached out to help Springer up, and Springer very wisely didn¡¯t accept it, getting up on his own back onto the car. A female voice called out from the front of the truck, the driver''s side window down. ¡°You still alive?¡±


    ¡°Yup!¡±


    ¡°I need to get the shovels?¡±


    ¡°Nope!¡±


    The window rolled back down wordlessly, and the car started rumbling forward. Will looked back at us. ¡°Isn¡¯t she sweet?¡±


    I shook my head softly. ¡°I don¡¯t want to get involved in whatever you two have going on.¡±


    ¡°Oh relax, just a little bit of friendly messing around. Can I get my pistol back?¡±


    I looked at him and handed Springer his pistol. The man took it tentatively, looking at me. ¡°I don¡¯t know how to use one of these.¡±


    ¡°Just hold onto it, don¡¯t point it anywhere you don¡¯t want to shoot, and keep your finger off the trigger.¡±


    He very gently placed it down on his lap.


    Will let out an amused breath. ¡°That¡¯s messed up.¡±


    Springer glared at him. ¡°It¡¯s messed up to draw a weapon on someone who hasn¡¯t done anything!¡±


    ¡°Sorry sorry, we don¡¯t tend to take captives when it comes to you guys. Just doing my job.¡±


    Springer looked at me, very clearly wanting clarification. I sighed. ¡°We¡¯ve got no way to stop powers. Meaning it¡¯s absurdly hard to keep people captive. Inverse especially since, to properly hold them down, we¡¯d need to know how their power works, and that makes them stronger. So, we don¡¯t try to take you all captive. That''s another part of what makes you valuable. Your power¡­can be neutralized pretty easily.¡±


    He let out a small breath, scratching the back of his head. ¡°This keeps getting better and better.¡±


    Will relaxed back against the side of the jeep. ¡°Well, your kind is sorta responsible for the collapse of society.¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t call them my kind!¡± Springer bristled, having to forcibly relax himself. ¡°Look, I appreciate the ride, can we just¡­relax?¡±


    Will shrugged again. ¡°I¡¯ve been disarmed. You guys pretty effectively got me so, sure!¡±


    He was pretty laid back, even if that response hadn¡¯t seemed to indicate such. Pretty much any other agent would¡¯ve shot without hesitating as long as he did. I let out a sigh as I looked up, seeing the buildings start to get denser as we made our way closer to civilization.


    I hoped this encounter, if nothing else, was effective for Springer in teaching him not to be so loose with his words.


    Given how heavy he was breathing, and the way it was taking him so long to calm down, I imagine it was.


    I wish I could say we continued the rest of the ride in silence, but Will wouldn¡¯t shut up and was more than happy to chat with people he had just threatened to kill. These days everyone seemed to have a screw loose, but he was at least a good conversationalist.


    The buildings in the distance got closer and closer, and the car drove to a stop at the exterior. The window rolled down, and the female voice spoke out. ¡°Leave.¡±


    Will nodded to us, extending his hand to take his sidearm back. Springer looked at me, and I nodded. He handed the gun back.


    Will took it back, holstering it with a small yawn. ¡°Alright, well, if we bump into each other again, hope it isn¡¯t because we¡¯ve gotta kill ya. Sleepy out!¡±


    The three of us disembarked from the back of the pickup truck, and it drove off, likely getting stored somewhere for them to return to pick it up next time they needed to drive out somewhere.


    He waved to us in the distance, and Springer let out a long breath, shoulders dropping as he relaxed. ¡°Are all of you guys like that?¡±


    ¡°No, he seems a little manic even by our standards.¡±


    Eleanor signed, comfortably doing so in the open now that we were inland. ¡°Judy seemed nice.¡±


    ¡°Did she?¡±


    I shook my head. ¡°Let''s just hope we don¡¯t have to deal with them again.¡±

 Holy Things

    The tracks were pretty massive to see, the train they belonged to the only of it¡¯s kind, great and thundering in its appearance, it was an animal itself. A beast of burden empowered by human ingenuity. And It needed the space to be such, the tracks being the size of a 2 lane road.


    We walked over them without any real thought, though Springer took the time to hesitantly look both ways. It was a pointless gesture, anyone within a mile would be able to hear the ground shaking long before you¡¯d be able to see it.


    It was the kind of action that got some of the people walking around to stare at him, an instant of action that proved he wasn¡¯t someone who was from here. Like I promised his friend though, weird looks was all he got.


    There was a great station to our right, which would block our entrance, necessitating us to walk past it instead of to it. It held a covered section, like how airplanes would dock and unload people. It was built to take in some of the government supplies they didn''t want visible to the rest of the citizens.


    The train was split into three main cars. Or rather sets of train cars. The frontmost four carried people. A lot had changed in life, but people still quite liked moving around, and the train was a very useable piece of public transportation. Often, and with a sort of nostalgic annoyance, it¡¯s called ¡°The first and only American train to run on time.¡± The track it runs is far too big for people to make more than the first couple of stations distance for something like a work commute though, and most of the people inside are either doing just that, or traveling.


    The middle 4 were supplies for industrial companies and productions. Raw materials, food, grain, seeds, medical supplies, cleaning agents. It was mostly unloaded by workers, blue collar laborers or low paying positions akin to old dockhands, who¡¯s chief responsibilities were the movement of crates and resources.


    Finally, the last 4 were government exclusive cabs, used only though not always for the transportation of supplies, ammo, and people.


    The crowds all got denser and denser the further in we got, that dividing line of the tracks crossed, and now we moved into civilization proper. That meant an immense overpopulation.


    The footsteps all rattled together like a great thundering of applause, always moving, always active. The chatter from so many people created that sort of indistinguishable noise, where you could recognize individual sounds, maybe even a conversation if you really managed to focus, but the sheer overwhelming volume of noise consumed most of your hearing in sound rendered meaningless by virtue of it¡¯s quantity.


    It was clearly pretty overwhelming to Springer, who¡¯s head kept swinging around to look at the various sights and sounds, the people in seemingly endless numbers all walking to some destination or another.


    I had to shout slightly to speak to him, grabbing his arm to stop him from getting lost in the crowd. ¡°It¡¯ll calm down at the base!¡±


    ¡°What!?¡±


    I let out a sigh, and used my off hand to sign to him. I spun my finger around in a circle pointing up, then raised my hand flat and lowered it slowly, then did the same gesture I had done with Eleanor earlier, two fingers flat on both hands, rubbing my dominant hand over the non dominant one.


    ¡°What?¡±


    I honestly couldn¡¯t tell you why I thought that would work.


    Realizing I wasn¡¯t going to effectively communicate what I wanted, I just kept my hand on his arm, continuing to drag him along slightly.


    People gave the three of us a wide berth, stares and weird looks as two Plumes guided a very confused looking man around. But no one did more than look, never stopping in their stride or really worrying about it.


    Springer was starting to breath heavy, the stimulation for someone who¡¯d never seen anything like this starting to really get to him. I let go of his arm with a sigh, and he swung around to look at me, eyes wide and clearly having been somewhat relying on that contact to keep him grounded.


    I looked to Elanor, and held both my hands up with pointer fingers raised, then pointed forwards. Then I pulled Springer towards her. She nodded, grabbing his arm, and the two of them vanished in an instant.


    I felt a little bad pushing her to use her powers more, but I knew she could take it. The walk wasn¡¯t too bad, and I didn¡¯t want to have to worry about Springer having a panic attack or something. The military was already going to be treating him like an armed bomb, better to give them less reasons to be anxious about him.


    I stuck my hands in my pockets and kept moving, relying on people moving around me to get forwards. A couple of people not paying attention bumped into me, but that was part of the price of moving in a crowded area.


    There was a kind of building dread inside me that I couldn¡¯t quite place the source of. A sort of slowly crippling despair that seemed to rise up out of my gut and into my mouth, feeling like each breath gave off fear and anger in some small part.


    I realized what was bothering me so much as I came to an abrupt stop, watching the hundreds of different people all going about their business.


    They all died.


    All of them.


    So, so many people. In quantities I could only ever understand numerically, not as real people.


    Each one with their own lifes, with their own people, loved ones, hopes, dreams, goals, failings, ambitions. Every single one of these people was relying on me to save them. Every single one of these people will be dead if I can¡¯t do something about it.


    It was like my collapse at the end of time all over again, the stark overwhelming sensation of knowing so much. In  the same way, the unknown lives of these people seemed to call out to me, threads in a single creation, all moving together as if weaved.


    The thundering sound of their footsteps stopped, the overwhelming chatter halted in a moment. I was breathing heavily, and looked around, seeing that I was far outside the city now. Back on the highway, back far from that sensation, far from that experience. That pressure.


    I fell to a knee, my heart drumming in my ears. I could almost feel it in my throat, the constant beat beat beat, hitting me like a hammer to the chest with every rapid pulse. Sweat was running cold down my forehead. I felt my fingers grip the dirt under them, having to close my eyes and slow down my rapid breathing.


    It¡¯s hard to describe the kind of weakness that overtook me. A sort of nameless panic, a pressure and intensity that had no form but still existed. An invisible weight on my shoulders, like a world bearing down on me.


    I had no time to worry about who I was saving, no capability to understand the entirety of the mission. Myself. I had to worry about myself, and no one else. The alternative was almost unbearable. The responsibility I would hold over so many people crippling.


    It took me a minute before I nodded to myself, letting out a final calming breath, as I closed my mouth and started inhaling through my nose, controlling myself more.


    Collected, I returned to the city, as far as I had gotten before my hasty retreat, and started walking to my destination.


    There was a time limit on my powers. I couldn¡¯t just return to any point in time whatsoever. I had about a day as my limit, though it was one that increased or decreased depending on how many people were still alive.


    The way to enter into the military part of the station required a little bit of awkward walking around, almost a half circle path from the way we entered to the secluded and guarded entrance. High fences with barbed wire at the top, and two figures with clean shaven faces, military cut hair, and assault rifles to their sides both looking straight ahead.


    It was the chief difference between powered units, or Plumes, and regular military officers. Discipline. Plums were trusted with significantly more individuality than a soldier was, often allowed, though not encouraged to dress themselves under their vests, style their hair how they pleased, and like Eleanor, have dyed hair. The main reason was that we by necessity had a lot more autonomy than a soldier. Mostly, we got thrown in a direction and told to figure shit out.


    People trained to follow orders to the letter and nothing else weren¡¯t as good at that kind of thing. Thanks to these looser rules, the standard to be a powered unit was a lot higher, and the selection stricter.


    I saluted the two, and they returned the gesture. The one on the right spoke. ¡°Present identification card.¡±


    I fished around in my vest and pulled out my card, my face, name, rank and unit all clearly present. The two shifted slightly at the sight, before nodding. ¡°Clear. How''s the border?¡±


    He handed the card to me and I took it back. ¡°Full of monsters who don¡¯t like us and people who only barely like us more.¡±


    ¡°Less monsters now though I imagine?¡±


    I smiled, the man returning the expression. ¡°Yeah. A lot less. We wouldn¡¯t be able to leave the base if we didn¡¯t have good soldiers guarding it though.¡±


    ¡°Thank you sir.¡±


    We exchanged salutes again, an entirely unnecessary formality considering I didn¡¯t technically outrank them, but somewhat fun nonetheless.


    I moved into the station. From this point on, most of what transpired for me was talking to various government officials, discussing what to do with Springer, and negotiating certain benefits or guarantees for him.


    I¡¯ll go into more detail later, but for now, I¡¯m going to turn our attention outwards. Away from myself, Eleanor, and Springer. How exactly I know about things that occurred without my presence, is something that I will reveal later. But for now, let me just assure that everything written is fully accurate to reality. Let me also state that I don¡¯t know these events at this point in the story, however I can¡¯t tell said story in full accuracy without moving beyond myself on occasion.Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.


    There are 2 people I want us to look at, who will be relevant to the coming days.


    To the furthest East of the interior, there''s a train station, just like the others. Built around it, in such a way that the military and supply train cars are left outside, and only the cars which carry people run into the bottom layer of a church.


    It¡¯s often considered that you can tell what a civilization''s culture is just through taking a critical eye to their architecture. As one of if not the only major building created not by our government, I think it would be considered a prime example of this.


    It was somewhat ramshackled, and it had the sort of fundamental brutalist appearance which comes with a construction that was done with scarce supplies, but the best minds that money could buy. It was efficient in its grandeur. Mostly built out of stone and mortar, both to resemble the historic churches of a similar make, and also because it was easier with the supplies and powers on hand. The exact thought processes aren¡¯t privy to me, but the effect is still noticeable.


    Giant, both in its upward climb, its high spires which poked up into the heavens, and in its width. It was easily the size of a warehouse, probably bigger than some.


    To leave the train station, you would walk upwards, as if emerging from the basement, and be instantly caught off guard by the size and openness. Ceilings so high it looked as if they were part of the sky rather than stone and mortar.


    Stain glass windows, these ones unbroken, unblemished, displaying probably the entire history of the bible if you took the time to look through all of them. Though, mostly they were just pretty to look at, and allowed the natural light to shine through and into the possession.


    No walls were left blank or undecorated, the stonework itself artistry in its own way, elaborate patterns that could¡¯ve had meaning all like its own tapestry on the walls and ceilings.


    Rows upon rows of pews filled the place, capable of housing a number in the quadruple digits of sinners, faithfuls, and everything in between.


    This main area was built upwards, so that the people walking through the train had to come up to see it, and had to walk down to exit. That way the entrance and exit weren¡¯t close enough for the rumblings of the train to interrupt the preaching.


    It always reminded me of St. Patrick¡¯s cathedral in New York. I had grown up close enough, and my parents brought me there once just to see it. Not that any of us were christians, I was named after a norse god after all.


    Still, it¡¯s the kind of memory that sticks with you. You always understand the influence of the church as something invisible, like a rumor or a whisper, something unseen but known. But, to actually be in a building that utterly breathtaking for the first time, you get that sort of breathlessness as if the air had been knocked out of you, and are left wide-eyed. Believer or not, you look around that place and think to yourself, ¡°Something about this place is holy.¡± That devotion to god people always talk about is now stone instead of air, cold and pressing up against your feet, instead of spoken.


    Whether there is divinity or not, the echoes of grueling and loving labor are built into the walls, it¡¯s impossible not to feel something looking at it all.


    It was itself a message as well. A recruitment effort with its placement undoubtedly, but more than anything, a declaration. Humanity is still capable of great things. We have been shaken, disturbed, knocked down, but we are not dead. It would mean much more to someone who believed in the god that¡¯s being praised, but even for an atheist, its visage was meaningful.


    It¡¯s inside this place that I want to look.


    At the altar which acts as the helm for this great craft, the centerpiece in which a women stood in long white robes, decorated and embroidered with golden patterns, much like the stonework of the walls, they were intricate and seemed to hold meaning, even if unknown to all but the most diligent readers and theologians. In one of her hands, she held a scepter, an ivory base built out of the remains of one of the teeth of Jormungandr, the giant snake that Adam killed. Its base was decorated with gold and jewels, a rounded head glittering as the light of the day hit them. She seemed, as I mentioned, to be one with the building, built into its works, the alter the background of a painting, like the Last Supper or The Creation Of Adam. Herself that eyecatching center.


    She moved her hands as she spoke, the long sleeves of the pristine cloth swaying along with her, her face a steady and quiet mask of diligence and unquestioning belief.


    She spoke to thousands, her voice loud enough and the walls of the cathedral echoing the speech out. A vast book opened in front of her, though she almost never needed to glance at it, looking instead outwards towards the people.


    This woman is Anna Santoro, the current leader of the church as a faction. The one who implemented the systems which now connect the exterior civilizations, the woman who sends the devoted out to wander the dead world and preach the word of the gospel to the destitute, with bibles in one hand and life saving supplies in the other. If they have faith and ask for more help, more shall arrive, in the form of trucks and trailers full of even more grace. If the preachers are scorned, hated, driven out or god forbid killed in their attempts to preach, then the gates of hell open on earth, and under her command, cities are razed, the land not salted, but burned, so that when something new grows back, it grows back stronger. Any who ask forgiveness, who convert and who will confess their sins, are spared. And, more importantly, god fearing.


    Criticism and skepticism towards them is easy, but I can¡¯t deny that the number of lives the churches aid has saved is almost incalculable. Christiaintiy was already a staple of this land, and violence has occurred rarely under her command.


    Outside of the high command of the military, she was perhaps the most influential person in America. Up there in the scale of the world.


    Her preaching came to its conclusion, and the people all rose, a sort of fullness inside of them that a believer feels in a church, when they have that connection, that belief in a higher power reaffirmed, its connection strong, and their devolution renewed.


    She stepped down to speak to the people, and they flocked around her eagerly, all excited to discuss with the person revered as a saint by the more entranced believers.


    It took several hours after an already quite long procession before the church was cleared out, and she gave a soft exhale, her eyes closed.


    When they opened, a man approached, having just walked in from the outside. He was dressed in a fine suit and tie, from a brand that didn¡¯t exist anymore after the apocalypse. He gave her a small nod, which she returned.


    ¡°Another successful sunday, Ms. Saint?¡±


    This man is Duke, or sometimes The Duke. He¡¯s the second in command underneath her in terms of the church¡¯s hierarchy. They didn¡¯t follow the Vatican structure of popes and deacons, but there still was something of an unconscious pyramid of status. He managed most of the infrastructure and economy of the church. The one to accept tithes and donations, as well as structure what money goes where. Though, he had little to no ability to command differently than how she ordered, given her influence over his followers.


    She let out another quiet breath. ¡°Duke. That title is unbefitting. I am a lamb unto the lord just as all others are. It was Peter in Acts 10:34, who said ¡°Truly I understand that God shows no partiality.¡± I am no greater in his eyes than any being who devotes themselves to his good word. For there can be no greater or lesser in infinite love.¡±


    ¡°Spoken as eloquently as expected of the leader of his church.¡± The man in question was older, in his early 50¡¯s to late 60¡¯s. He had an intricate trimmed face, kept perfectly clean shaven, with salt and pepper hair. ¡°Though, I don¡¯t think it can be unequivocal that God treats his subjects equally in all things. It¡¯s Timothy 2:11 to 2:12 who says ¡°Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.¡± Doesn¡¯t quite seem the most equal.¡±


    She straightened her posture, shoulders falling lower and her back straightening. She placed her hands behind her back, and despite being shorter than the man, she appeared much taller, and to be looking down on him. The soft smile on her lips a vipers grin. ¡°God is an all loving creator. And though men and women may have different roles under his command, it is by no means unequal. All of us have our tasks and our responsibilities under the Lord our God.¡±


    ¡°Such as the scriptures'' strong emphasis, that the way of godly living is monogamous, and the wife''s duties to her husband?¡±


    ¡°Yes.¡± She closed her eyes once more, the picture of serenity. ¡°That is his word. As I¡¯m sure you know,  I too, am merely waiting for the right one.¡±


    The man nodded slightly, running a hand through his hair. ¡°Everyone in the church is well aware of your trial.¡±


    She held her scepter to her side, lifting it up and holding it across her chest. She nodded her head once more. ¡°I am trusted by many to be their teacher, and though it may be perhaps arrogant of me to say, my place in this world seems ordained. Though I desire to be faithful to his word, I will not abandon my duty to fulfill my own peace. Anyone who passed my test therefore, is graced by god to be my husband. And any who fails, not yet the one to whom I shall be lovingly submissive.¡± She once again settled her posture, her eyes sharper than they should be for the soft expression on her face. ¡°Do you happen to protest this compromise?¡±


    He fixed his collar. ¡°Not at all. It seems quite the intelligent way to keep yourself free from unordained suitors. I just wished to inform you that in the coming months, when you hold the trial again, I shall be participating.¡±


    They stared at each other for a long moment, the womans face unshaken, and her dark brown eyes boring a hole into his. Finally, she simply bowed her head. ¡°My father loved you quite dearly before his passing. I do have to wonder what he would think of a wedding between us.¡±


    ¡°Your trials are open to anyone aren¡¯t they? As you said, It shall be God''s decision whether or not that happens. His passage was tragic, but he was a man of God before anything else.¡±


    ¡°Of course. If you don¡¯t mind, I am quite tired.¡±


    ¡°Oh of course, it¡¯s as Peter says, we men must show honor to the weaker vessel.¡±


    She closed her eyes once more, slowly opening them. ¡°That passage referred to how husbands should treat wives. Do not make the mistake of referring to me as such again.¡±


    The slight smile on his face fell to neutral and he nodded. ¡°Sorry, I hadn¡¯t meant to offend.¡±


    ¡°We all make mistakes. Perhaps, you should confess such sins later.¡±


    He bowed his head once more, watching her as she moved through the building. She moved as if he wasn¡¯t there, flanked by a man wearing a thick white cloak, a gray cross up and down its front and back. He had been in the back of the building throughout her speech, close to her throughout the entire duration of her preaching. Almost one of the statues. His only emote though the entire day was to look over his shoulder, glaring at the man, before continuing to walk with her.


    The church was built with living accommodations inside. Though they were fairly meager in relation to the absurd luxury of the rest of the building. It was constructed under the orders of the leader before her, her father, who had seen no reason to have more than the bare necessities for his living.


    Anna made her way to her room, and let out a long breath, the serenity finally falling off of her face, the breath turning into something like a hiss as she tried to recollect himself.


    The man accompanying her stood resolutely to her side. ¡°Saint, shall I-¡±


    ¡°You will do nothing. It¡¯s fine. Though I¡¯m disgusted he¡¯s even forced me to just think of it, there is no world in which he accomplishes the trial. Neither God nor my Blessing will be on his side. It¡¯s more likely he did this to try and incite some form of retribution. The worst thing we could do is sabotage him. He¡¯ll fail on his own and have nothing to whine about.¡±


    ¡°...And if he doesn¡¯t?¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t even suggest such an awful thought. I don¡¯t have time to worry about petty relationships. There are great works to be done, and I need the ability to do so without having men pestering me for marriage. Much less one as old and power hungry as him.¡±


    He nodded. ¡°As you wish.¡± He pressed a hand to his chest in a form of salute. ¡°As always, I¡¯m yours if you desire anything.¡±


    ¡°Peace for now. But thank you Antonio.¡±


    He nodded once more, turning and walking out to leave her on her own.


    She turned her gaze up, the roof high even in the relatively sparse living area she had taken over. ¡°...You are too unfair sometimes. I ask humbly, as your servant, do not allow any man to interrupt my duties.¡± She looked back to her room, and moved to a desk, getting herself set up, and beginning to go over paperwork. Supply routes, requests for aid, government communications. Her work would never be done, but that wasn¡¯t an excuse in her mind to stop or slow down.