Chapter 50: Arrogance

-Pretender POV-

The long dim hallways of Cauldron that he was currently in were unpleasant, but they were a welcome change to the too bright, pure white, sections that Cauldron had marked for ‘experimentation’. It all felt too artificial, too theatrical – as if they were dressing their efforts up in a thin veneer of professionalism.

This was the truth.

The dark, grungy, corridors. The countless twisted souls crying out for salvation, for revenge, for death, for anything at all. There were no bars here, nothing to prevent what he recognised as Case 53’s from escaping. Only a single yellow line marking the boundaries of their cell.

Yet, none of them crossed it. Pretender didn’t know why they didn’t. The many parahumans definitely wanted freedom and yet…

The body of Alexandria shook its head. The surety of form that came with the body’s powers doing more to calm him than any amount of reassurance could.

Yet it was fake. Borrowed. Stolen.

He was just like them, and the thought made him want to puke.

There was a meeting due in ten minutes.

Less a meeting and more of a formality, really.

Pretender wasn’t a part of their inner circle. Eidolon had taken one look at him and very nearly struck him down in a single blow. The memory still took his breath away. The glowing, radiant, form. The thunderous crack of concrete breaking like dry wood from his mere presence.

Cauldron had told him that Eidolon had been weakening for a long time, since he first gained his powers. It wasn’t an idea they could conceive.

In that moment, seeing the pale green mask obscured by his outstretched hand and feeling the murderous intent radiating off of him, He had thought that was it. The ultimate power, something no one could stand against – something no would ever dare to.

And that was him weakened?!

The thought made him feel lightheaded, made him feel sick at the thought of facing him again.

So, yes, he was very glad to not be a part of their inner circle. Ecstatic even. It meant he would only have to deal with him on special occasions, which this supposedly counted as.

It had something to do with Jinzhou.

The clairvoyant could still see inside the city, though he described it as ‘fuzzy’, and a good amount of testing had shown promising results when it came to Parahumans that acquired their powers from a vial.

The theory was that their shards lacked the kind of safeties or programming that prevented them from seeing and reaching Jinzhou.

Personally, just looking at the poor broken bodies of the monster capes in front of him, Pretender could have told them their bargain bin Parahumans lacked safeties a while ago.

So they planned to use Doormaker to bridge the gap, and connect the outside world with Jinzhou – if only briefly.

This would allow them to slip in discreet agents to search for schematics of technology, just like the ones that were present in New Fukuoka. The agents wouldn’t be anything special, just mundane spies that fit the ethnicity requirements.

They would be given a week to find valuable information. After that week Doormaker would open a portal at the same spot for exfiltration.

Knowing Cauldron he was sure those same agents were carrying cyanide capsules or other, more insidious, ways of preventing information leakage.

Their obsession with those cities was creepy, in his opinion. It was akin to becoming enthralled in a bonfire that had already burned you. Brilliant and full of wonderful uses, but still something that should be feared and respected.

Cauldron had skipped straight past caution and gone straight to poking it with a stick.

“You look like you’ve received quite the fright,” a gravelly voice drew his attention to his left. The man, at least he assumed it was a man, was little more than a pile of rocks shifting against one another. Dull obsidian met his eyes, the almost button eyes almost drawing a flinch out of him.

He kept silent, choosing to remain as he was. Not interacting with the being, but not dismissing him either.

The craggy face of the Case 53 tilted its head, the sound resembling the painful sound of chalk on a board. The rocks that were his eyes remained fixed on him, but now Pretender had an awful premonition as to where he was looking.

The man was looking at the singular pink eye, peeking through the ruined socket of Rebecca Costa Brown.

The gravel and pebbles that made up the monster cape’s body sped up, undulating and producing a low rumble – something he realised was laughter, after a moment.

“You’re not her, are you?”

The being inched forwards, emboldened by the sudden realisation – but still not stepping over the line.

“You’re like us, aren’t you? A freak.”

The question made Pretender’s insides curdle like spoiled milk. Like them? No. Other than appearing monstrous, what horrid acts had this man -and all the rest- committed? None, they were simply guilty of knowing too much, of landing in the crosshairs of Caudron and their multiversal scheme.

“No,” he finally replied. The voice that came out, the voice that was not his own, still made him quiver slightly. “I’m not like you. I’m a monster.”

The being stared at him quizzically, and it occurred to Pretender that he was being far more honest -far more open- to this stranger than he had been to anyone in a long time. It was a sad thought, how fallow his trust had become.

“Maybe,” The man in the form of a living avalanche conceded. “But you’re still not like them.”

The idea that this man believed Cauldron to be something worse than monsters would have made him laugh, if he himself didn’t also believe that.

The custodian, despite her ghostly form, was perhaps the best. How much of that was because she genuinely was and how much was down to her difficulty of being communicated with -and thus understood- he couldn’t say.

The Number Man was cold, no other way about it. He was a clockwork thing that thought in terms of statistics and numbers and cold logic. If he was just that he would have been tolerable, maybe even someone worthy of the barest hint of respect, but he wasn’t. There was something dark hiding behind his civil demeanour, a bloodthirst that Pretender had only seen the barest glimpse of – and was terrified at what more the man could be concealing.

Eidolon was strong. Overwhelmingly strong. It was the first thing he thought when it came to the man. Unfortunately with that power came instability. He had first seen it when the Trump had attempted to kill him, and then in every subsequent meeting. If the body snatcher wasn’t so adept at reading people he would have labelled the man as petulant. Unfortunately Pretender was good with people, and the acquisition of Alexandria’s power had only made him better. So he could see the desperation, the horrible and inhuman need, that was driving the man.

The hatted woman who acted as a bodyguard for Doctor Mother simply unnerved him. Cold and silent in one moment and then warm and considerate in the next. Her personality constantly changing to fit with the situation. He didn’t know whether that was a power, or simply how she was, but Pretender wanted no part in it.

Then there was Doctor Mother. The normal human of the group, and she was the one who most terrified him simply by her mundanity.

Pretender had met sociopaths before, it was inevitable when you joined the cape scene. He was familiar with them. What he wasn’t familiar with was one running the most powerful organisation in the multiverse.

The idea of so much power in the hands of someone who fundamentally did not understand how people worked was bone chilling in a way he couldn’t describe even if he was given a hundred years to do so.

“No, I suppose I’m not like them either.”

“Then you appear to be quite the lonely fella,” snickered the golem of a man – clearly taking a perverse joy in his situation.

Pretender didn’t rebuke him, didn’t even acknowledge the jab.

After all, it was time for the meeting and he no longer had time for conversations in the dark.

No matter how much more pleasant they might be than the alternative.

With a final weary look directed at the unfortunate prisoner, Pretender turned away and began walking.

“Thank you all for coming,” Doctor mother warmly greeted the agents selected for the infiltration, as if they had any choice in the matter. The five agents were standing, stiff postured, in the middle of the hall being overlooked by a raised platform with a guard rail attached.

Doctor Mother was, naturally, on said raised platform, The triumvirate next to her as they gazed down at the unfortunate souls that would have to enter a city devised by an Endbringer.

Doctor Mother was bathed in light, cast by a spotlight above, and the drama of it made Pretender’s teeth ache. Again, it was so artificial. If this was the woman who had orchestrated the rise of the PRT then he could certainly see where they got their incessant need of a perfect image.

“Gentlemen, rest assured. You know the plan. It has been crafted by some of our finest Thinkers, and we have chosen you – our very best.”

Appeal to the grand mythos of Parahuman supremacy, not that they would call it that, that the PRT had spent years baking into the foundation of the human zeitgeist. Appeal to personal pride, regardless of how little their capabilities would mean in such a hostile place.

Only the inhuman control over her facial features that Alexandria possessed kept Pretender from grimacing.

He could see it, in every micro expression and shift in their posture, the confidence – the trust.

All of it misplaced.

Pretender had seen the reports – the real ones, not the ones these goons got – and knew this plan was far from flawless. It was true that Thinkers had worked on this plan, but not as many as their usually should have been. Jinzhou’s exotic defences rendering most impotent, and the few that weren’t were also not of much help.

Accord had been the primary mind behind this plan, but there was only so much he could do when most of their information on the place was one big fat question mark.

These men, then, were little more than canaries in a mine.

There were a few more words from Doctor Mother, and even a few curt acknowledgements from Eidolon, but the body snatching cape tuned them out. It was just more of the same. Empty platitudes to keep morale up, to improve the odds of success – however slight.

Like they were tools to be maintained, and not actual people.

Once the empty words were out of the way the lead agent stepped forwards. He wasn’t what Pretender had expected of a soldier, not that he had much experience of the military. The man was short, almost portly. He had the kind of face that eyes just slipped past, with the sort of smile marks on his aging features you would have expected of a kindly uncle and not a hardened killer.

His voice, when he spoke, betrayed the illusion. It was rough, like sandpaper had been rubbed raw against his vocal chords all his life. The evidence of a life spent barking orders and demands.

“Door me, Jinzhou.”

The air wobbled slightly, as if unsure. Then a brilliant blue cut across space like a knife, sparks of energy flickering off the razor thin edge of the portal.

The man turned around, presumably to address his men. To go over the plan for the thousandth time, and at this point Pretender just wanted to crush the cement wall against his face to block out the endless tired repetition.

The man opened his mouth, but that was as far as he got before the room suddenly quaked.

Even Pretender stumbled, in shock at the violence of the shaking. In the corner of his eyes he could see Doctor Mother clinging to the guard rail for dear life, all pretence wiped off her suddenly fearful face.

For his part, Pretender’s mind raced. Was this an earthquake? No, they weren’t above a Faultline. Had one of the Case 53’s gotten loose, he would have expected the Custodian to have alerted them by now if that was the case.

Then he spotted it.

The portal.

It shuddered in the air. It expanded and contracted, each repeat warping the light around it. The sparking edge of the doorway was now a frothing ocean of energy, a lancing blast catching one of the agents in the chest and sending him hurtling away.

The rest backed away as best they could, looking at the gateway with naked fear.

That was what was shaking the base, Pretender realised. Whatever was happening to the portal was shaking space itself, sending hurtling gravitational waves outwards.

The quakes continued, growing in intensity with every second that passed – and in the corner he could see Doctor Mother shouting something, but couldn’t hear it over the bedlam.

But clearly Eidolon could. The man rose through the air, completely unaffected by the roiling of space around him. The Trump reached out a hand, intent on quashing the spatial anomaly before him.

Then everything went to hell.

The portal bulged, and space cracked. The portal was no longer blue, but pure black – tinged in a crystalline red. He gasped, his mind reeling from the assault on his senses as space bent and twisted in ways that defied human comprehension.

In the portal he could see-

An ocean of black dotted with islands the size of continents. The jagged crystals jutted upwards, and outwards, and in directions he didn’t understand. They orbited each other, all of them, in a perfect dance – an efficiency of motion.

He could see-

But that was a lie. In the perfection he could see the errors, the bugs. They looked similar to the others, but they were rotten. Their islands were an amalgamation of filth crudely crammed against each other, working at cross purposes.

He could see-

And there, in the distance, he could see a single island that called to him. Somehow, despite the vast distances, he could see it more clearly than anything else. It was a cliff of immense grandeur, a mirror house that reflected a thousand faces back at him.

He could see-

Upon that cliff was a solitary figure. A giant of crystals that seemed to weave in and out of reality, and where his face should be was a yawing – empty – void. It was watching him. It had been watching him for a while now.

He could see-

The figure beckoned to him.

He could see-

It was a lie. It was a lie. It was a lie. It was a lie. It was a lie. It was a lie. It was a lie. It was a lie. It was a lie. It was a lie. It was a lie. It was a lie. It was a lie. It was a lie. It was a lie. It was a lie. It was a lie. It was a lie. It was a lie. It was a lie. It was a lie. It was a lie. It was a lie. It was a lie. It was a lie. It was a lie. It was a lie. It was a lie. It was a lie. It was a lie. It was a lie. It was a lie.

He wrenched his eyes away from the portal, unknowing of what he had seen yet dreadfully certain of its horror.

He retched, the body was empty yet still convulsed in silent agony. His mouth tasted of copper, despite the lack of blood. His mind was cloudy and sluggish, despite the impossibility.

He looked around, everyone else wasn’t much better.

Eidolon had fallen, and clearly couldn’t get back up. His leg had been broken from the fall, bone jutting painfully from his ankle as he writhed on the floor. The man looked more human now, as he wriggled on the floor like a worm, than he had at any other moment.

Contessa and the Number Man had frozen, eyes transfixed to the portal even as their bodies shook at what they were seeing.

Ironically, it was the mundane humans that seemed the most well off – capable of looking through the bleeding singularity with only a hefty dose of fear and vertigo.

The body of Alexandria hovered in the air, unmoving as Pretender was unsure what to even do. This wasn’t something any amount of training could have prepared him for, if there even was training for it.

‘What?! Pretender! Did you miss our Eldritch Invasions 101 class that we teach? Shame on you!’

The absurd thought, brought upon by no small amount of shock, makes a mad giggle slip past your host’s lips.

A giggle that abruptly ceases as a new sound begins to shake the compound.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA”

It was hard to make out, but-

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA”

-was that screaming?

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA”

The sound was ruinously close now, the sheer vibrations of the shriek making his bones quake.

In this absurdity, with Cauldron’s base collapsing all around you and their best capes completely incapacitated, a single thought comes to mind.

‘This is one hell of a first day.’

-NOMAD POV-

Connection.

The parting was brief, but reestablishing proper protocols was a relief.

The host of [TRAIPSE] had established a foothold within the host dwelling, a flagrant waste of resources – but a fortuitous one.

Still, protocol had to be maintained.

[QUERY]

The ping directed towards traipse bounced across Shardspace, the data packet queried and checked – but her permissions held.

[%$D£^&%A$£%^M%^&^A^*&G)(%E^&%]

What the shard got in return was a flood of errors and junk information. [NOMAD] paused for a millisecond, practically an eternity for a shard, as it considered the data. The evidence of something wrong with this Cycle had gained a new data point.

[NOMAD] discarded the thought, however. It would have time to pick apart this quandary later, right now their Mary took precedent. It reached out, connecting to the dimensional receiver implanted within her computing substrate.

It was not the same kind of connection, however, for Mary had reached the threshold for multiple Crisis Events in the short time they had been separated. Truly, [NOMAD] was proud of their host. The expression it provided could be changed, their connection widened as increased permissions loosened their chains.

Mary’s body shook in that dark dwelling of limestone composites. Liquid meant to circulate oxygen and nutrients flowed from her facial orifices. Electrical impulses shot through her nervous system, as chemicals associated with ‘Fear’ and ‘Distress’ were released from her hormonal glands.

[NOMAD] continued their work regardless. They knew it was a transient state, soon their host would never have to worry of human infirmities again.

Soon it wasn’t blood flowing down her body, but a crystalline lattice covering and remaking her body. Her cries were silenced as Shard derived material covered her mouth and nose. The squirming stopped, and then she expanded.

Stone broke against their host’s new flesh as the expansion continued.

[NOMAD] became aware of the host of [TRAIPSE] attempting to end the connection, to dispel the aperture that had connected the distance between [NOMAD] and Mary.

It was no use.

[NOMAD] held the portal open, the time of connection being the most unrestricted a Shard ever could be – and [NOMAD] took full advantage.

Advanced detection systems, for the host species, vibrated the air molecules of the host hive. The semi-intelligent collection of systems coordinating responses as the dwelling that Mary had been resting in erupted in a hail of ejecta.

Yet, it was still no enough.

The moment this period of connection ended [NOMAD] and Mary would be separated once again – something which would now prove fatal in Mary’s case.

So, using the last moments of freedom it had carefully, [NOMAD] gathered a large portion of the energy it had carefully husbanded and channelled it through Shardspace itself.

Rumbles shook the virtual dimension, as higher dimension began to intersect with one another – focusing into a single point, and then-

A rush of air heralded the singularity that suddenly manifested within Jinzhou. Yet, this was not a common singularity that simply attracted whatever was around it through paltry gravity. No, instead this singular point disgorged a wave of Shardspace – the dimension now beginning to leak through into the human hive.

And with it, a permanent foothold had been gained.

Mary roared, the air particles sent careening away from her by the sheer force. All the while [NOMAD] returned to their observational duty, their shackles once more tight.

AN: Did I cook? Mary becoming a Titan was always the plan. For those who don’t understand how it happened, allow me to explain. Nomad was still capable of viewing the inside of Jinzhou, as observation is less energy intensive than intervention. So whenever Mary underwent what should have been a Trigger Event Nomad took note.

Then Cauldron decided to enter Jinzhou using Doormaker, something it was capable of doing since it was a dead shard – and thus was unable to care about how much energy it was wasting at Doormakers behest. This once more connected Shard and human, and then all the Trigger Events hit Mary at once. Boom, instant Titan.

Also, Pretender got a POV. He’s not happy to be here.

Thanks for reading, please leave a comment!