*copyrighted material*
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A heavy, algid mist cleared as the two-wheeler’s yellow headlights pricked through the clouds on her path through the forest road. The air was cooling, arctic even under her soldierly gear, the shadows larger even as the sun filtered through, the paved route was full of twists and turns that took her upward towards the water flow obstruction, Ulf’s Dam. The hydroelectric power plant worked thermally keeping the reservoir from turning into rock-solid ice. Ulf’s Dam was key, Marut had proclaimed with urgency, mentioning its large quantities of hot water would save lives to the thousands in the next few hours. She had already been warned, while the success of this task had fallen over Archie and her with a hint here, and there of what to do. Avoiding the disruption of the space-time continuum was a priority like Kurt and Hagan had written on G.E.D.’s investigation archive, still safe in its ancient and bulwarked console they had found at the socialite party.
The blonde read the data on her integrated thermal screen as she approached the barrage, and saw febrile hues in the interior of the building. As agreed, Ulf’s Dam staff had been evacuated, yet left the system running for this mission, Marion had taken care of that with anticipation as her spies had been able to take control of it in crucial times. Vivian found a tunnel of exorbitant proportions that ran on a semicircle under the dam’s slope at ground level. According to her map, the other end of the tunnel took her back to Yorkwich in a U-turn. Usually, the tunnel would be guarded, but only a couple of warming yellow cable signs had
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been left behind while an extensive perimeter was being monitored from miles around. She kicked one of the signs and proceeded forward with her bike. The inside corridors were partially lit, she sped up and found herself traversing an endless road with more tunnels to the sides and flashes of light above her head. Thankfully her head device had received a recent model of the structure with specifications on where these corridors led. The passageway and hanging ceiling lights were no more at some point in the belly of the beast, yet she ventured in until she found the right place to turn left. A concrete ramp took her upon a twist.
Roanoke was internationally known for its infrastructure jewels but limited to its military-industrial complex, compared to this building Fort Yggdrasil had been an outdated piece of history that had been just that, an untouched symbol of the country’s ancestry, now destroyed. Despite holding Ulf’s Dam from the enemy, the power plant had been purposely made to lock itself from within for this unique event, the Starmen had built it knowing this day would come. Avoiding its construction hadn’t been an option nor doing it somewhere else, the location and machinery had been ideal to live comfortably on the Western side of the city, where the wealthy had barricaded themselves for three decades. Gone the dam, gone their luxurious life. The risks of this operation were worth it if succeeded, in the case of both sides.
Bixbee reached the entryway to the crest and left her bike there, concrete stairs before her. She hopped between steps in hopes of getting to the top as fast as her body could take her. She stopped and looked back preoccupied. Making it back to the dam’s exit route would be impossible, wouldn’t it? What if the water filtered through these concrete halls first? These walls would close in though, then what?
“Bixbee, the dam is at its maximum capacity, do you think this will work? Where are you placing them?”
“Not to alarm you, Archie. But I don’t know. Marut isn’t being clear. All I know is that A goes to B and B goes to C.” She sighed and turned around towards the softly lighted outdoors above her. “We will have to work with that for now . . . ”
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She rushed and found the afternoon sun partially hidden behind a wooded hill. She was now standing over the dam’s crest, she could see the massive pool of water to one side of the parapet wall while she had a free fall on the other side. It took Bixbee just a look at the rusty spillway gates to know exactly what to do.
“Archie, are you looking at these?” The blonde asked. She knew he had access to her crystal helmet’s recording device, and data having kept that heavy, wrist screen to communicate. Still a gift from when they first met at the training grounds of Marion’s spying bureau in this reality.
He zoomed at her image to realize she meant gluing the three explosives on the gates. “I think that will do the trick. Can you get there quickly? Crack a hole?”
“Yes, sir!” Bixbee proceeded to sidle carefully to the outer structure. Her partner watched her slowly commencing her descent, holding his breath for every step she took. She made use of the unevenness and cracks of the partition to move around with ease. Archie—who sat on the backseat of the stolen ocher Duesenberg Model J at the other side of the city as Marut had instructed him—unbuttoned his collar and vest, breaking a sweat. The streets were empty and powdered with snow as the Roanokian Concord event continued to take place at the Yorkwich’s Ambitions Amphitheater. He had parked the car atop Wencke Twins’ Reach Avenue, a street that plopped sharply like that famous street of San Francisco that he couldn’t come to remember at that moment. He pulled at the door’s handle and stepped out of the car to bounce over the engine bonnet and sat cross-legged over the roof with sturdy, bronze binocular glasses hanging from his neck. The perfect view of the amphitheater and Ulf’s Dam in a single place. All Bixbee and he knew was that something would occur, and he was positive there was no occasion on which bombs were involved that brought anything good. He had been also provided with one by Marion, a single yet robust pack of explosives rather than Bixbee’s three small bundles. He couldn’t come to terms with why he needed such an instrument with him but did not protest. All he could do now is worry. Worry about Wyatt,
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Calvin, Marion, Felicity, Cobra, Tina, and Woodbone attended the event with Mickey, Rolf, and others with the negligent Rootstock committee who’d forced this peace treaty on them in the first place.
Meanwhile, Sissel, Edna, Ávrá, and Ernest were carefully monitoring the fabrics of time and space through Galileo Ecto Domination, creating a perimeter in the amphitheater’s surrounding area, all from within the Pegasus Emporium’s basement. The Visitors, the Starmen, and Chrome had the Rootstocks now in their possession. Further talks with the committee had been hopeless, if not, even more, self-destructive. Infiltrating into the Rootstocks, to then initiate bribery and dismantling operations that would cost the movement their recent advantages against the state. The enemy was amongst them now within the venue, who to trust was hard to tell.
Bixbee dug her heel against the rusty plate of one of the spill gates from above and used it as a slide. She ended up before that same gate, on the canal before its mouth. She squatted and adhered the first ticker with a high-pressure aluminum can hung from her belt, the can pumped a special translucent glue that stank pretty badly. Once secured, she jumped to the adjoining canal and repeated the process. The blonde stepped back and propelled herself again to reach the third and final spill gate, but before she knew it, all the air in her lungs was sucked out at a crushing speed. Losing all oxygen quickly made her blackout for ten seconds, and her breath clouded over her screen, she regained consciousness with a massive headache and squeezed between the fingers of a massive, blue-gray hand. She looked up to find a creature holding her, arms trapped underneath. Jaws on its chest, and its head had long, violaceous hair. On its face, a single eye looking at her intensely and a small mouth with sharp, silver teeth. Four legs just like a centaur, all tainted pale blue and hovering before the dam.
“ARCHIE! ARCHIE!” The blonde tried squeezing out, realizing the hybrid was frozen in place covered in several fabrics of time and space, bending themselves around its silhouette.
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This thing was trying to rip through them. She looked to her side, and her mouth went dry, the centaur was holding Wyatt in his other hand, wrapped in fibers as well. His ghostly antlers were shattered, the mythic triangle above his head losing its brightness with fissures and to the verge of shattering completely. Out of consciousness, he did not look like an old man anymore.
This version of Wyatt and the accompanying creature were no citizens of present times, just like her but better yet, came from a much farther stemming universe together. They did not belong to an alternate or a future universe quite yet but an in-between. Traveling so far from its origin point that time and space were vacuuming on both the creature and her lover’s shape. Just like a sewing needle ripping through silk, the hybrid must have traveled fast and created a dotted line through different realities to reach this particular universe in this exact time, yet the knot at the end of the thread was trapped for now until every fiber punctured open all at once in this reality. It could take a few minutes.
“Bixbee! What the hell is that?! Wh—hat is going on?!”
Archie stood up on the car’s roof to check the amphitheater. He witnessed its disappearance for mere seconds, the ‘C type’ warp everyone feared had formed in the sky and absorbed the building whole, and left a blur where it stood. From Bixbee’s perspective, a vision of the building hung on the clouds. The energy waves produced by the rupture shook the city as it stretched. Archie was brought down easily by them, he covered his head while on the ground as one by one, the waves dashed above him.
Bixbee gasped and felt the hybrid’s grip tighten, but something cold enveloped both of her shoulders. Pulsing gales formed a shield around her, opening the hybrid’s fingers. She caught a glimpse of Marut’s sapphire skull in her peripheral vision, saving her from being squashed. The Defender then threw her over the wall to put as much distance between her female, human friend, and the creature. The girl groaned as she hit the floor.
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“VIVIAN, HE IS AFTER YOU!! WE NEED THAT LAST BOMB IN PLACE, IN A FEW MINUTES!” Marut took a stance before the thing, it was finally moving its eyes and arms. “THIS IS CHROME’S ULTIMATE ATTEMPT TO WIN COMING FROM FAR AWAY! WYATT, COBRA, AND I WILL BUY YOU SOME TIME!”
A rupture appeared above Bixbee’s head and Cobra Killgore dropped out of it gracefully, wearing his gala tuxedo for the Roanokian Concord event. Carrying an automatic rifle in his hands and a large cannon-mouthed luger gun strapped to his chest.
“Cobra?” She frowned.
“Hey soldier, come on, get up.” He gave her a hand, and she took it. “We need you to blow up this place before the Starmen’s army gets out of the building. See that warp in the sky? They are coming in, in bunches. We’ll need a lot of water.”
“Where’s Calvin, Wyatt, and the others?!”
“Edna and Sissel are monitoring them, the girls opened this rupture for me to get to you from the amphitheater. I assure you, we’ll all get out of this together. I need you and Archie to focus on the tasks at hand.”
“R—right! . . . Archie—”
“I’m here, I’m here.” He wheezed, “Roger that!”
Cobra grinned, “Listen up boy! I need you to drive the ocher Duesenberg back to the Pegasus Emporium. But do it slowly and safely, this is going to be the longest twenty minutes of your life. Protect those explosives with your life. Okay?”
“W—wait, what else are we blowing up?” Archie stammered.
“Galileo Ecto Domination.”
“Hold up! What are you talking about?!”
But Chrome finally let out a roar, his attempts at freeing himself further were working, sending thunderous currents of energy everywhere. Cobra and Bixbee looked down from the dam’s crest as the air around the hybrid began to act like a liquid, its centaur body was now
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unconfined by physics, melting around its muscular horse legs and men’s arms. Its hungry chest salivating, its teeth made of protuberant knife-edged crystals, and a tongue with scales. Chrome’s current embodiment was far gone from his original human aspect, the one that had been stolen by the Starmen in order to carry on their plans of absorbing the Cosmos for themselves through Roanoke. Senator Chrome had for a second time been utilized to become a vessel to orchestrate their plans of perpetuity, sterilizing the stemming universes to be created to ensure a dominance that no foe would be able to match. If time and space could no longer be traveled by the insipid humans, if their spaces and roles within the organic order were suddenly shortened as much as the Defenders, their imprisonment would be definitive in three dimensions. But blowing up G.E.D at the right moment of this day could potentially ruin their plans for another two years.
The severely damaged and out-of-this-world version of Wyatt hit the floor as Chrome’s fingers untangled themselves from the fibers stopping his maneuvering. The human had slipped from his digits as he tried to crush him. He breathed out a warm fog cooking inside him as he shook on the concrete, it smelled like licorice wood burning as he took in his new surroundings. Then the flames came out of his guts to engulf him. In his current state, no regular person could help him to his feet, Cobra and Bixbee looked at each other with concern.
It was Marut, who grabbed him by the shoulder and straightened him up. The features of her face were in complete pain as she had to make him the question that followed. “Where’s Krishanu? Where is my baby brother?” She had been the twin to be born first in their past life back in Patna, India.
“We couldn’t stop him . . . ” He said, “We couldn’t . . . ” His gaze rose to look at the hybrid, who showed its teeth. His belly’s jaws opened and salivated, Marut’s world was now crashing down on her. A world without her brother again, the twins had been eleven and alone when Krishanu had swum into The Ganges river. The boy had followed a revenant that had spoken
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to him on various occasions, the spirit had the shape of a woman. She had walked barefoot into the river and said his name, he had followed after. By the time Marut had caught up with him, he was being drowned by a demon. She jumped in to rescue him, but none of them ever came out of the river. Soon, this version of the eldest Elsner brother would be gone too, without Krishanu, the soul bonding would slowly fade away to dust.
Marut sucked the pain in and instructed the others what to do, first Bixbee. She was now allowed to plant the final bomb with Wyatt out of Chrome’s grip. The creature’s eyes followed her as she ran past, its neck began to twist in circles as it was made of rubber until its head was on the loose having ripped itself from the body. It flew after the girl sprouting slim arachnid legs, and Cobra followed closely with a burst of bullets. The twin sister then told Wyatt to stay where he was, and he stood in combat position facing the hybrid as it charged forward, quickly standing out of its way. The initiation of a dance between them.
The ghost extended an arm and made a swift movement with her wrist, winds began to engulf her allies one by one as protection. Now she understood why Krishanu had insisted she befriended Ægir and stop seeing her as a menace to what she believed being a Defender was. The Defenders had yet again failed, letting Krishanu die against The Grip of Modern Men. They had failed her brother and her, their most fervent believer. Ægir had taken the time to teach her how to use her own powers in this outer realm. This was the perfect moment to get expelled just like her new friend had been ages ago.
Bixbee began descending the wall one last time, meanwhile, Cobra was kicking the head around, smothering its face with bullets as it tried to follow her. Wyatt found himself grabbing onto one of the creature’s thighs for dear life as it hopped around to shake him off, his powers were still there somehow, so he set himself in flames to burn him. The hybrid shrieked in pain and knocked off part of the parapet in a charge, both of them falling into the waters of the dam. Bixbee felt the shake on the walls on the other side and knew she had little time to work with. With her heart racing, she pumped more glue and fixed the last bomb.
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Cobra rushed to look at both sunk to the depths between upsurges of vapor particles created by the reindeer king, an inextinguishable force still. Chrome, however, took the shape of a root-mouth sort of deep-sea creature with fangs at the core and long human arms as its stinging tentacles. When the arms tried to reach him in between Marut’s shield and realized it could not, the thing instructed its sentient head to sprout wings and take off to open a rupture where flying Starmen minions began to pour in. Chalk-colored, angel-winged heads with horns that shaped a star.
Bixbee had just climbed up to the crest when the flying head picked her by the neck. She took out her gun and opened its mouth shooting straight into its brain several times. Its eye went berserk before its body grew stiff, falling into the dam with her. Wyatt and the sea creature fought just a few meters below them while she tried to stay on the surface many times. But Marut had to create a heavier shield for Cobra, as he changed to his shotgun and blasted at the swarm of minions that had engulfed him from all sight, trying to bite off the shield.
Wyatt and Bixbee were briefly left exposed underwater. It was evident that Chrome’s powers were slowly reaching this universe the longer he stayed in it, a hybrid was called so due to its ability to morph into any element. The twin made a hard attempt on locating Bixbee and cast a new shield saving her from drowning as the air was cast around her. But Chrome was swinging her from the waist under the water’s pressure with a slimy hand. She had spit water inside the air bubble and then lost consciousness. Wyatt was being savagely mauled by the root-mouth pulling him into its teeth, yet he had grabbed onto the tentacle holding the girl, blazing it with fire and a fist in the creature’s jaws also heating things up since it wouldn’t let go.
But Chrome was determined to kill her, this Vivian-less reality had to remain that way for the Starmen’s plan to succeed. Just a little hole with a toothpick in the fabrics of the organic order. Old Regan Vivian, who possessed all written chronicles of all of her selves had
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foreseen as much after meeting Kurt Stoen, the mucilage of everything that involved the Elsners. The reason why her dynasty existed in the first place.
The root mouth began banging her against the crest’s wall in an attempt to break Marut’s shield. Even with its visibly stinging tentacle hand wrapped around her waist, the twin’s magic protected her from all harm. Not even trying to squish her to death was possible. To the creature’s uncontrollable anger, its enemy’s fire finally cut through the tentacle and then he sent a large fireball projectile beneath her that made the bubble soar to the surface and higher than the wall. Marut looked startled, her first time using her power outside of the Defender’s domains, and she was now too exhausted with Cobra, a one-man army taking down the flying minions. Marut had no energy in her left to keep the girl in the air and saw her plump down.
Cobra wheezed as a monstrous blackbird dotted with eyes across its body as if it were an infection, and that left an orange trail in the sky, slipped out from the rupture left by the hybrid’s flying head. Head first, the animal zipped before she could fall into the water again. Then rose once more with Bixbee’s bubble grappled in one of its claws. The British emissary recognized the man that sat on the other claw, Kurt Stoen, the technologist. The man his former boss, Yuudai, had posed in pictures with so many times.
The bird began to descend in circles, the man’s right eye glowed orange like a flashlight even from the heights, and a black line ran across his iris from top to bottom where his pupil should have been. The resplendency set the flying minions on their way out like a terror-stricken flock. Kurt stared at him knowingly and gave him a graceful nod, the British man saw respect in his manners. A way of acknowledging his own work as a diplomat, a formidable replacement for Mr. Yuudai Uemura.
Aside from his beaconing eyeball, he had the same tanned skin as in the pictures, with growing white hair all over a bed of dark straight hair, yet the youth he sported then was gone. The emissary saw him stand up and look at the rupture from where he had come through, he projected a beam of light directly at it that came from his socket, it closed the wound clean,
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leaving only the other rupture open from which water would flow from the dam to the amphitheater for Ægir and Woodbone to manipulate inside the building and drown the rest of Starmen’s minions. It had been Krishanu and his ability to listen to the Cosmos that had forged this plan for over two years. Connecting every possible outcome of the future and decompiling them to find their previous event. Krishanu had luckily found hybrid Chrome jumped to this universe from its own apocalyptic and dark future, where he came to pass.
Stoen and his blackbird landed over what was left of the dam’s crest carefully. The man hopped off the foot of his beast and carried Bixbee away and safely into Cobra’s arms. The ghostly twin raced to look at the girl in complete guilt for not doing better.
“Lieutenant Colonel Killgore, Sir.” Kurt began, then looked at the ghost, “Madame Marut . . . I’ll be guiding you all in this mission. Archie Dahlgren has safely reached the Emporium with my assistance as well.”
“Vivian! Darling, talk to us!” Marut broke down. Seeing her slowly regain consciousness through the crystal of her helmet, and realizing who’d saved her.
“Cobra, I need you to ride her bike for her. Wyatt is still fighting Chrome right now and—” The floor moved beneath their feet as a tornado made out of flames moved erratically in the water. At this very moment, the dam’s building began the lockdown.
“I think that is our call, Mr. Stoen. I heard it gets odd after this.”
“I’ll answer as many questions as you want, but we need to go now . . . Madame, follow them closely, I’ll meet you guys in the tunnels, let’s get going!”
Cobra ran to the exit with the girl in his arms, Bixbee’s motorcycle had fallen flat on its side but was all good. He started the bike, headlights on, and made sure she held tight to him, Marut would take the task to keep her awake during the ride so she wouldn’t fall off, and holding her by her shoulders. They lost all vision of the crest, the fire tornado, and Kurt as a well-hidden gate door closed the access to the crest before them. Killgore wasted no time and drove out of the alley, into the tunnels, and went south—crossing his fingers—the ceiling lights
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flickering as the structure trembled and the walls seemed to move like jello. They ran into more closing gates, which he was able to overcome for a few inches.
Their luck seemed to have ended when Cobra made out an already bolted gate in their path, but Kurt and his blackbird caught up with them in a whirl from above, he opened a rupture in their way, transporting them briefly in and then out as fast as they had come. They’d entered a soundless and colorless void for half a minute, cold like jaunting through a chiller. Stoen could tear open ruptures to a million places all by himself. Yuudai had taken many things to his grave, keeping them from his own government, and Cobra had begun to piece things up on his own.
Debris had begun to fall as they reached the final gate, a door made out of stainless steel bars that had shut completely in the lockdown process. Kurt opened a new rupture to the soundless land, but this time the British man saw Calvin touch his shoulder as he rode by. Lips moved, but his voice never came. Bixbee—who held Cobra tight with her eyes shut—saw him too and looked over her shoulder, she saw him standing, looking back at her but his facial features including his mouth were gone, replaced by a cluster of orange eyes.
Marut flinched, knowing this had been Krishanu’s doing all along, he had achieved the reconnection with the organic order making contact with Kurt.
Bixbee pushed her spine up, shaking off the tiredness in her eyes. She tried turning her helmet on, even resetting it but nothing worked after going for a swim. Escaping the last obstacle, they found the paved road she had found earlier that day, surrounded by woods.
“WHA—WHAT WAS THAT?!” She gasped looking up at Stoen in flight a few feet across from them.
“It means the Calvin from this universe has successfully entered the ‘C type’ warp hole to Drstasara’s lair.” He looked ahead calmly and said, “Just like I did so myself a long time ago, and was granted with one of his many eyes. Humans, however, can only hold two of them separately. I hold the Right Sight. Calvin will be receiving the Left Sight shortly, and when that
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happens, we’ll finally be able to expel Chrome from your universe.” Then he sighed, “I apologize for keeping this from all of you, completely or halfway. But Chrome is determined to kill you Bixbee, your participation in what is to come will be crucial for us to succeed. Mickey and Marion of this universe, Krishanu, the Old Regan Bride, and I planned this secretly.”
“Krishanu . . . ” Marut sobbed, using her boney fingers to clear her empty—yet abundantly wet—sockets. The last time she had cried like this, she had woken up in eternity to see her brother, a child made out of bones and horns. Meanwhile, Cobra frowned, his arms tensed onto the handle of the bike thinking of Calvin and Wyatt having to sacrifice their humanity together, having dreamt of freedom out of Roanoke. He remembered very well his private discussion with Mrs. Mulhouse in the Renou’s campsite years ago, hours after pulling Calvin into the Instauration River, the very first time he’d met the child.
Bixbee sniffled, looking away. “THIS PIECE OF SHIT—”, the blonde punched the outside of her helmet with the side of her fist a couple of times, she had lost the manual detonator underwater. One last blow got the system running and she quickly set the detonator on her screen to 20 seconds. Kurt was well aware of the weight he’d put on her shoulder on purpose. “This has been the last straw . . . ” She announced in a hiss, time was now ticking.
The dynamite set everything aflame in an ear-splitting second, bending trees caught in hot energy and evanescing them all together in an all-embracing halo that, far from divine, desecrated the surroundings.
Stoen nodded to himself and used the Right Sight to build an orange-hued, frosty-textured wall that kept forging itself from behind them as they rode on. The mystic wall stopped the halo and seconds later, the flooding that ran up to them three feet tall was accompanied by a landslide.
“How the FUCK did you know he was gonna do that?” Cobra looked at the girl in complete distraught.
“I—I didn’t know . . . ” She tried an apologetic smile.
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Kurt’s bird rocked from side to side over the flood and his structure. “Fear not, I have it under control!” He yelled at them. “Speed on, we need to make space for Calvin!”
“You mean our Calvin?”
“Not exactly. You’ll see soon enough.”
Cobra sped up as required moving with the hills, the water crashed onto the walls like ocean tides in deep waters. Kurt’s surging walls resounded under the weight like the hollow steel of an old boat.
To their shock, a gigantic crocodile caught up with them from the flooded side. The reptile hummed and the walls seemed to want to splinter for a moment as the creature’s piercing eyes would not look away from the travelers. Wyatt came into view and grabbed onto Chrome’s tail somehow. Stoen’s bird gained altitude and the bike riders looked at each other quizzically, the technologist dropped a glowing orb of the same matter much ahead from the waves making a duct that crossed the road just ahead of Cobra and Bixbee, forming a ramp over it for them to jump onto.
“Madame Marut, I need them to rise! Please!”
“It will be done!” She proclaimed having recovered her strength. In no time, wings sprouted at the sides of the motorbike, wings made out of golden imager quills. The vehicle was lifted off the ground and over the recently constructed pipeline. Chrome squeezed into the canal and spun, trying to destroy the construction and get to his victims, but the water flushed him to the opposite side of the road, leaving him on dry soil. Wyatt punished him while he could with a fire ring closing on its croc snout. Bixbee was perplexed admiring the view of the fight when Cobra told her to look over at the waters, they were retreating like a coming tsunami but the tides would not make an appearance again after this.
Kurt smiled. “Bixbee! Get a good look at the amphitheater!”
The blonde girl used her helmet and zoomed at the building hanging from the clouds, she met waterfalls everywhere falling from the venue and onto the crater left underneath its
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shadow. The longer she stared, the more she realized the building had returned to its original place, a hitch in the organic order made it seem to quiver up and down like candlelight.
Chrome shrilled, tossing and turning until he stretched into a sloughy centipede with human feet, its cries morphing to those of a wailing woman. Long hair began to grow on its back as it moved forward like a headless chicken, certainly its head was nowhere to be seen. Marut flew the bike away from its clumsy moves, its cries were agonizing to the ears like a force that drained energy. Its long and zigzagging body crunched the walls and pipeline Kurt had left behind.
Bixbee snatched Cobra’s rifle from around his neck upon being unable to find her own and turned to face the hybrid chasing after them. She let out a storm of shells wounding its front feet to the point of breaking and twisting under its own weight, yet seemingly unstoppable. Then she realized the detachable head—now looking human—was still alive, crawling over its centipede body, trying to reach its own neck at the front creeping under the belly. Wyatt was already after it, scaling the wiggling monster as fast as he could go, and Kurt’s features seemed to tell her something was wrong as he looked back and forth between Yorkwich’s Ambitions Amphitheater to Chrome’s head.
“Marut!! I need us on the ground again for just a second!” Bixbee said, taking some more ammunition from Cobra’s belt.
“Would that be a good—”
Kurt had to intervene, “Madame Marut, we need to get rid of Chrome’s head now!”
“What’s wrong Mr. Stoen?!” Cobra inquired, realizing too that the man looked a bit unsettled.
“There have been changes that none of us could predict, Calvin has stumbled upon a setback because of this. We have not yet passed the threshold, for now, nothing is certain.”
Without any more words, the technologist’s bird made a U-turn and threw himself on the monster, pecking it several times and circling above like a predator. His master could have
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simply put a wall between it and the motorbike, but without Calvin in place, any unregistered move could entirely change the course of this event.
Marut descended the vehicle until the rubber wheels screeched within the first contact, and Cobra regained all control of it. From this angle Bixbee had a better look at the sneaking head that was now adhered to the belly, upon eye contact between the hybrid and her, the old man’s head opened his mouth to shoot off a beam of light that Cobra dodged right on time, feeling the rush of heat on a straight line towards them out of instinct. Bixbee wasted no time shooting the damn thing, Chrome’s face contorted in fits of laughter like it was made of wax. British emissary Killgore moved left or right, according to the girl’s instructions from then on as to which side the monster would unleash its attack. Her bullets were actually having a negative effect on the hybrid, slowing its moves entirely. She felt disgusted when the ill-formed head began to cry real tears like a child, yet kept blasting its light beam at them another couple of times.
That’s when Kurt’s blackbird plumage turned bright orange, eyes open wide across its body, and closed its claws on the centipede, pummeling it with a force that made it turn to its side. Chrome cried harder with Kurt’s judging eyes on him. The monster charged another beam, this time targeting him, but Wyatt was there to put his huge head in a chokehold, it had no option but to burn his tongue and insides with its own unreleased energy. The hybrid wriggled in pain and tried to get back on its feet, but Wyatt was cutting the air from him still. Cobra and the girl got off the bike with Marut close behind them. Something had changed in the air, a roseate thunderstorm seemed to be gathering above them.
“W—what is going on?” Bixbee gasped.
“It’s Calvin.” Kurt sighed in relief. “They are all ready to take Chrome away.” Lighting struck the centipede once, then twice, a third time, and a fourth. Every thunderbolt created a chain running from one of the hybrid’s extremities and vanished into the clouds. A cluster of
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enormous eyes blinked open at the center of the storm, now directly above them. The centipede kept fighting.
“What do you mean by ‘they’?” The British man looked stunned at the view in the sky.
“I had to speak to Calvin in many realities to prevent this.” Kurt chuckled. “What you are seeing is all of them working together to stop a tragedy, I’m talking about many. Hundreds of him have found one another through Drstasara in a neutral dimensional space . . . At least we can keep the world together a little longer.”
“Cobra and I . . . we saw . . . ” Bixbee blurted out, realizing it was them they had encountered in the colorless void.
“He hopes you know you’ll be doing an amazing job, Bixbee,” Kurt said firmly. The chains began to be pulled up, and the soaring eyes opened a rupture to slowly leverage Chrome into this tear that would take him back to his reality.
She took her helmet off now bawling, looking at the sky, blinking the tears away, searching around for Wyatt, who was sitting on the floor heaving thirty feet away from her, and ran to him, embracing him between sobs. The sky began to cry with her with drizzles.
“I’m—I’m fine. . .” He breathed.
“No, you are not, you idiot! Look at you!” She held him tight, “You are broken!”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t even know you, ma’am! Don’t talk to me that way!”
She pulled him into a kiss, and his back almost gave way under her weight. And then said, “You are the only one who’d be joking in this situation!”
“You hadn’t seen me like this in a while, huh?” He snorted, meaning his young appearance. Bixbee was an inch away from strangling him, but Kurt began inspecting his broken antlers. And patted his back softly before wrapping one of Wyatt’s trembling arms over his neck to pull him up.
“There’s still time to save him, I think I might know how. Give my son one last kiss and I’ll take him where he belongs.” She was petrified hearing those words, Kurt had just called him
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his son. But she nodded, gave him a goodbye kiss, and saw him avoid her gaze before they both could get onto the gigantic bird. Chrome had finally crossed to his reality when Stoen’s bird circled a few times in the sky and then entered the rupture, closing itself seconds after.
Minutes passed, and the storm began dissipating. The girl returned to Cobra and Marut with crossed arms knowing they needed to check on everyone at the amphitheater and at the Emporium, and count the casualties of this occurrence. Hopped on the bike again, and moved on. Yet, all of them looked for answers in the night sky in quietude. Bixbee looked at the ghostly twin worriedly as she seemed very distracted on their way to Yorkwich City. For the first time since she had died at the young age of eleven, Marut felt touched as the girl grabbed her hand with human warmth and squeezed it. Now she was more than just an apparition.
END OF CHAPTER #19