Perry took a deep breath. Chicago was preparation for this. Heâd shored up his weaknesses and grown stronger. He should, in theory, be able to puncture a hole right through to wherever they were storing the other Digitizer and nab it.
Perry glanced down at his palm, covered in vantablack power-armor, looking like a man-shaped hole in reality. Iâm not even trying to be edgy, itâs just how it turned out. Iâm a happy-go-lucky boy with good grades, friends, a girlfriend and family. Why is everything I make BLACK!?
Sincethe number of versions is getting pretty high, weâll start giving them names. I dub the Mark Seven: The Black Death.
Okay, maybe Iâm a little edgy.
â¦I wonder if I could arrange for the suit to be powered by the souls of the damned. I think thereâs a Nocul spell for thatâ¦NO, I must resist the edgelord inside me!
âYou ready?â Solaris asked, unaware of Perryâs attempt at distracting himself from mortal terror.
Perry swallowed and nodded, scanning the horizon, covered in writhing steel. He could feel the nearest of Professor Replicaâs Digitizerâs radiating sensation from behind him like warm sunlight. He could feel it, knew it was there.
In the distance, he could sense another point, radiating the same sensation. He knew if he followed it, he would find his goal.
He also knew it was a trap.
The replicators, more than anything, wanted to checkmate Solaris, so the trap around the digitizer would be Solaris-rated. Why simply guard a precious object when they could trap their strongest enemy, too? Perry was starting to understand Mass Driverâs word about their predictability.
It was a trap. And he needed to smash it.
They wouldnât try a fast trap, because Solarisâs speed is relativistic. It would be something more in my wheelhouse. Somethingâ¦funky. Hopefully thatâs where I can find my opportunity to escape.
âHey Perry,â Solaris said, using his civilian name, placing a hand on his shoulder and leaning down, lowering his voice.
âNo matter what happensâ¦Try not to die, okay? Your family has never tried to kill me all at the same time, and Iâm a little scared of that.â
Perry gave a strangled chuckle.
âBest of luck, Sweeper.â Solaris said, giving him a final pat on the shoulder and a field promotion.
âHowâs the pay?â Perry asked.
Solaris gave him a wan smile. âItâs not about the money.â
Itâs about the respect.
Perry jumped off The Wall and turned his jets up to max.
He felt like heâd been crushed by a falling anvil across his entire body as he went from zero to mach speeds in fractions of a second. The System mustâve agreed with him.
HP: 11
âOH MY GOD!â Perry shouted, momentarily regretting the lack of time to test the suitâs systems. Heâd just accelerated fast enough to turn a civilian to meat-paste inside the armor. Perryâs Tinker side felt the need to burst into uproarious laughter.
His wizard side agreed.
âBAAHAHAHAHAHAH!â
The only reason he didnât steeple his fingers ominously as he blasted through the sky was because the sudden change in wind resistance might cause him to crash or explode.
Perry didnât head straight toward the hidden digitizer. The replicators were very smart. They would certainly plot his trajectory and beef up the security on the Magnum Opus if Perry headed straight for it.
Not to say they werenât guarding it zealously already, but a teeny bit fewer wildcard sandbaggers to pin him down could make all the difference.
So what Perry did was headed straight towards Chicago. This was another important Replicator site, and they would be forced to distribute ground troops to intercept in case he was planning on terrorizing the humanoids.
ETA fifteen minutes!
The sheer speed made Perry giddy.
The world slid by underneath him at an unreal, almost dreamlike rate, faster than individual Replicator could catch up to him. Perry watched with surreal awe as a Replicator bullet about the size of his fist kept pace with him for a mile or two before falling to the ground and splitting a tree in half.
The robotâs handheld lasers hit him like a flurry of hail before being absorbed into the black of his armor and converted to more power, unable to outpace the armorâs ability to eat light.
They tried to set up a blockade, and Perry simply weaved around it miles in advance, erring in the direction of his target.
Once there was a ninety-degree angle between the digitizer and Chicago, Perry juked left hard enough to paste a human inside the armor, turning on a dime and putting the sensation of the digitizer straight in front of him. Not that the Replicators cared one way or another, but he relished the thought of them wasting resources guarding Chicago.
HP: 10
Was it worth it turning on a dime rather than making a slower turn to conserve HP? The difference could probably be measured in a handful seconds.
A replicator could do a lot to the human body in a handful of seconds, so Perry felt the trade-off was justified.
The sensation from momâs tracking spell in front of him rapidly became a sensation beneath him, despite there being no visible entrance or break in the forest. There was nothing in every direction for miles.
Of course they wouldnât advertise it.
MELT.EXE
A house-sized tube of forest above the Digitizer turned to liquid, and Perry dove right in. he made the tube so big in order to cause chaos when it flooded the room he landed in.
The instant before he hit the liquid, Perry spotted the light shifting unnaturally above him.
Perry reflexively whipped around, ready to blast whatever was sneaking up on him.
Turns out it was the sun, moving overhead at a jog.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om
Time dilation!
POW! Perry hit the liquid and sank dozens of feet under the surface of the forest before he had an opportunity to stop himself.
Perryâs mind worked fast. He was already inside the effect, which would presumably get stronger the closer he came. It was a seconds-to-hours kind of thing, which made sense for a trap designed to hold Solaris long enough to destroy the city.
Now, Iâve gotta choose. Retreat now and look for a way to disable it, wasting roughly an entire day in the process, or bet that I can find and disable whateverâs making it fast enough to avoid wasting all my time.
If he took weeks of real time to find and destroy the generator, then it was the same as failing his mission.
Making you Fail without even an opportunity to fight back. Thatâs their style alright.
If he went back outside the effect, there was no guarantee that heâd be left alone long enough to figure anything out before being swarmed. Less than that, even. After all, hours were passing per second on the outside world. They would be waiting for him en masse.
Based on the progress of the sun, Perry estimated about a week for every ninety seconds.
Well, letâs do this.
Perry took a deep breath and hopped himself up on Attunement.
Stability 40 -> 34
Attunement 50 -> 56
THERE!
Just like in Neuronâs Blue Hall, there was a localized effect causing time dilation. It seemed to balloon outward and encompass hundreds of feet in every direction.
It was also caused by a giant egg-shaped void overlaid on the background of stars. Replicators didnât build this thing, theyâre just using it as a trap.
MELT.EXE
Perry melted everything between himself and bored through the ground as fast as possible, bursting out right in front of the egg.
He flicked his Attunement and Stability the opposite direction.
Stability 34 -> 46
Attunement 56 -> 44
The void of space faded away, reality reasserting itself. Perry was in a solid steel cube with bright lighting surroundingâ¦nothing.
Where there was a massive sphere in his senses beforehand, now there wasâ¦nothing at all.
As the seconds ticked by, Perry hesitated, heart slamming in his chest.
Could I just go get the Digitizer and bail? In less than ninety seconds?
Signs pointed to ânoâ, but was it a better choice than breakingâ¦whatever this thing was? There could be a leak, or some kind of explosion, or he could be torn to shreds by vibrations in spacetime.
Screw it. Flipping the table when youâre checkmated is a legitimate strategy. Retreating now is losing. Fifteen seconds spent second-guessing himself was 28 hours. He simply couldnât afford to think.
Perry reeled back and smashed an armored hand down on the empty spaceâ¦and whiffed. His hand sailed through empty air, touching nothing at all.
What theâ¦? This was tangible evidence as any heâd ever seen that it wasnât just Perryâs senses that bridged the gap when he was Unstable. Senses canât detect things they arenât on the same dimension with. Heâd been blurring the lines every time.
The solution, thenâ¦
Stability 46 -> 34
Attunement 44 -> 56
The void popped into existence again, right in front of his face.
Is it weird that this thing looks almost the same as my armor? Perry thought idly as he raised both hands up and brought them down at the egg.
Crack.
The pure black void cracked, revealingâ¦Otherness.
An icepick headache slammed into Perryâs temples, causing him to stagger backwards as the cracks grew and spread, a living miasma emerging from the egg, questing forward blindly, amorphous pseudopods forming to T̶ÌÌaÌ·ÍÌsÌ´ÍÍtÌ´ÌÍe̸ÍÌ¢ reality, like a child might eat a crayon. The distance between himself and the monster shortened. Not because it moved closer, but because the creature ate it.
Wellâ¦this might be a problem, Perry thought as red lines began to erupt from the ground in his periphery.
Some kind of sealing spell? Perry wanted to look, but couldnât bring himself to tear his gaze away fromâ¦whatever he was looking at, as if the act of taking his eyes off of it would give it some kind of license to change him.
Thatâs whatâs going on, Perry thought, wincing against the headache, but forcing himself to keep his eyes open. If he turned his stability up, this thing would be free to affect him however it wanted, because it was infinite compared to him, existing in more dimensions at once. It could rewrite him like a paper dollâ¦probably by accident. He was stabilizing it into a form that could be perceived simply by paying attention to it.
If he stoppedâ¦
It was an interdimensional explosion happening in slow motion, Perry was grounding it in his flow of time by virtue of his Attunementâs gravity pulling it along with him along the axis of the fourth dimension. If he stopped, it would spread through time itself and arrive at all times, in all places. Perry himself might cease to exist as he was if he dropped his Attunement or left. Thatâs what his Dimensional Tinker subclass was telling him.
But wait, if I failed, wouldnât I not exist to attempt this at all? Does that guarantee a successâ¦Or what if I already have failed and the Paradox I am now is different than Iâm supposed to be? Would I even know? Is thisâ¦a Paradox?
A shudder ran down Perryâs spine, a manic grin began tugging on his lips as he took a step forward, raising a hand and speaking in a low, firm voice. Like when youâre trying to project confidence to a wild animal.
âSir, Iâm going to have to ask you to leave this dimension in the condition you found it and go about your business, where-when-whatever you came from.â
Naturally the abomination didnât understand a single word he said, but it did reach one of itâs lumbering pseudopods forward, tentatively touching Perryâs armor.
The intangible thing slipped through Perryâs armor like it was made of jello, landing a cold touch on Perryâs wrist.
Ah crap.
Like it had finally tasted something worth itâs time, half a dozen more pseudopods lashed out of the egg and surrounded Perry, the cold touch of the creature wasnât cold as he could define itâ¦more like cold in the sense that it was an absence of something heâd been submerged in for so long heâd taken it for granted.
Typically this would be heat, but in this case it wasâ¦existence, perhaps?
Perry unleashed every weapon his suit had to no effect, his arms and legs retrained by the creatureâs transparent limbs, dripping liquid insanity onto the floor. The strength afforded him by his suit was meaningless, because strength had no meaning in the creatureâs grasp. Space and time itself seemed to stretch and warp as he was drawn closer to the egg, cracking further every second to reveal a baleful, hungry eye that seemed to draw him in.
âHey,â Perry said, trying another tactic. âYou know Mars, Jocelyn and Clank? Theyâre pretty stand up guys, and they vacation here occasionally, would be rude to mess up their hang-out spot, donât you think?â
Sure, it was kind of a pathetic name-drop, but Perry was in a bit of a pickle here.
One of the pseudopods wrapped around the side of his face, sinking gently through his helmet to silence him. Perry wasnât sure if it was because he was annoying the creature with his monkey-noises, or if it simply was an accident. Didnât matter either way.
Fuck it.
Perry opened up his mouth and took a bite outta the apocalypse.
A keening wail echoed across realities as the creature yanked backward reflexively, drawing him violently toward the shell towards itâs thrashing visage. A fire seemed to well up inside Perry as the world devolved into thrashing mayhem.
You know what? I havenât had breakfast yet.
Perryâs body seemed to move on its own. Biting, chewing, swallowing, c̴̽ÍÌÍ ÍÍ oÌ´ÌÍ̺Í̤nÌ·ÌÍÌ¿ÍÍsÌ·ÌÌÍÌÍ̼ÌuÌ´ÌÌÌÌÌÍ̬Ím̵ÍÍÌ©i̶ÌÌ Í̦Ì̬ÍÍ n̸ÌÌÌÌÌ»Į̬́g̶ÍÌÌÌÍÌ®ÍÌ«. Heâd never been so hungry in his life. It was more than mere starvation. It was a fire consuming his stomach and the only way to put it out was to desperately shovel more of this delicious feast into his mouth, hoping it would douse the flame.
HUNGRY.
The bright red lines in his peripheries glowed brighter, and Perryâs eyes rolled back in his head.
When he opened his eyes again, he was sitting in a leather chair in a well-appointed library, wearing fine Manitian eveningwear.
Sitting across from him wasâ¦him.
Fake Perry raised a brow but didnât move as Perry took in his surroundings. Sunlight was beaming through a massive window behind him, filtering through manitian trees heâd only seen described in books and in a few refugeeâs front yards.
In front of him was a fine wooden coffee table between himself and his doppleganger.
Perry ran a finger across the underside of the expensive table and came back with rusty brown dried blood.
Huh. Less clean under the surface. Iâm nearer the window...
âWould it be terribly cliché if I asked where we are?â Perry asked.
âNot at all. Weâre inside your soul.â Fake Perry responded, flipping a page.
âWhich would make youâ¦Abunâzaul, I take it?â Perry asked.
âThatâs just a label. I prefer to be called Perry,â Abunâzaul said, his voice and cadence exactly the same as Perryâs. âIâm currently assimilating you. This will go easier if you relax. I want you to know the copy will be perfect, so you donât have to worry about your friends and family. I will love them exactly as you did.â
âRightâ¦â Perry muttered, glancing around, his heartbeat spiking despite himself. âYouâre not real.â
âOh?â Abunâzaul asked, using Perryâs own face to display genuine curiosity.
âThis is a mental prison, Adregardeâs Mental prison, specifically. I didnât know exactly what the red lines were a moment ago, but a glowing red formation and trapping you in your worst nightmare are both hallmarks of the spell.â
âFunny that Replicators can cast spells.â Abunzaul said. âThey kept that one close to the vest.â
âBut it makes sense,â They both said as one, pausing to glare at each other reproachfully.
âIf the Replicators have even the barest hint of souls, then they are âlivingâ things as far as magic is concerned.â They echoed each other.
Not to mention a mental prison was one of the only that stood a chance of Containing Solaris. When combined with the time dilation from the egg, it was brutally effective.
âSoâ¦This is your worst nightmare?â Abunâzaul asked, motioning to the illusory library.
âHaving my soul consumed from the inside out and being replaced by you? Yep.â Perry said, folding his hands over each other. âTherefore this is Adregardeâs Mental Prison. And you are not real.â
âOkay, okay, fair point.â Abunâzaul said, nodding and setting his book aside. âLet me ask you something. How does Adregardeâs Mental Prison fetch your worst nightmares?â
Perryâs skin went cold. âA conduitâ¦to the soul.â
âAnd where am I held?â Abunâzaul asked.
In my soul.
âSo, can you definitively say that I did not hijack the spell to breach containment and arrange this little meeting? Are you sure the creature you fed to me just now didnât knock anything loose in your System? Did you think that poking and prodding at your own soul wouldnât have consequences?â Abunâzaul asked, the light seeming to dim as he stood to Perryâs full height.
âYouâve woken me up,â He said, clenching a fist.
âAnd I. Am. Hunger.â
âFuck,â Perry muttered, lunging to his feet as the Perry mask began to peel away, revealing way too many teeth.