Chương 49: The Shape of Conflict

Whatever the captain was expecting to hear, that had not been it. He held his position, but his expression broke when she answered the wrong question. Or all of them at once. Next to him, his soldiers murmured in shock. A GeneCorp fighter turned and stared in disbelief. None of them moved. Kelly left the silence there and watched them sit in it. The captain's jaw moved wordlessly.

"You—what sort of tactic is this? Are you serious? Is that a threat? Has Vaughn finally dropped the act and openly declared war on every one of us? Is that what this is? Do you bastards think international law applies only when it suits you? Or planetary crisis laws?!"

The captain threw it all at once, betting on legislation designed for the statistically improbable event of humanity facing an extinction-level threat by something without a shared solar system or a local tax ID—laws almost never cited outside training manuals.

"It won't be easy," he said.

"There are hundreds of troops here, just so you know. That's not counting your Vaughn dogs. Enough to cause actual damage. Even if you're some kind of secret weapon, like you keep claiming, if your side comes out ahead, it won't be bloodless." Kelly raised one eyebrow. Why was he still talking to her like they were co-workers? Was he… negotiating? That wasn't right. He spoke too freely. His tone belonged in a break room.

If he believed she still worked for Vaughn Industries and was part of a hostile force, he should be in full combat mode, but he hadn't even reached for his gun.

"This is your plan? Talk until I turn myself in? You're staring at someone you think sold you out. Where's the part where you do something? You waiting for a better moment, or are we both pretending this lines up? You working both sides?" Kelly asked. The captain exhaled, calming himself as though he had expected this outcome from the beginning.

"Look—I'm Captain Halverson, standard human flight corps. As you've seen, we launch by muscle; makes us easier to post where machines could be liabilities. They sent us here because we move fast and were considered disposable and mobile enough not to require extraction. That's how they phrased it. We're the ones who disobeyed the wrong person in the right uniform or survived missions that should've killed us."

"So what you're saying is…"

"They dumped us on this crater and said guard the box till pickup. That was it. The stampede bought us some time, but it's done now. Everything that reacts to that thing's heading this way—every kind of freak you can name. Even the off-worlders'll show up, armed, looking for a piece."

"These boxes pull in every greedy son of a bitch breathing. You just wait till the ground's covered in corpses and hope command remembers your name."

"If we run, they call it desertion during invasion. That's a firing squad. If we stay, we die when the first real threat hits. Some of my men made peace with that. I haven't. I'm requesting terms. That's how surrender works. You acknowledge it, and I stop being the enemy before anyone else gets killed." It made sense, in the way bad ideas often made sense after the fact and mostly to the people not directly involved.

Kelly didn't expect the guards stationed around the terraforming boxes to enjoy long, fulfilling careers. The boxes were leaking mana into the atmosphere at a rate that practically screamed "please come eat us" to every stronger, hungrier creature within range. The air was charged with mana. She felt pulled in two directions—her chest tight, her muscles loaded, her balance thrown somewhere between too much weight and a hit of something chemical. It made her feel slightly suffocated but also stronger.

The mana was everywhere now, seeping into her with every breath and pushing her body harder. She watched the air waver faintly, like heat off asphalt, except colder. Her hair lifted with the static charge, and her throat tightened—choked by the atmosphere. It kept building inside her, and every breath stacked pressure fast enough to feel closer to an energy spike than air. It made her feel…

not better exactly, but energized, like she'd downed ten energy drinks or could run through a brick wall if she didn't stop to think about it. Which naturally raised the question: if the effect on her—a human—was this strong just from standing around and breathing, what would it do to the things already meant for it? The things trying to kill them from the other side of the portals? If it was doing that to her, then maybe the incoming horrors were getting triple helpings.

The captain had let slip that thanks to the boxes, the mana would keep thickening—the current invasion wasn't the end of it. It was just stage one. Once mana got thick enough to chew, it would open the door for worse things. Much worse. To whatever lived on the other side. Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit. Apparently, the running theory was that everything they'd been dealing with so far was just the warm-up acts.

"Wait—everyone's showing up? Even the Off-worlders? Pretty sure that's an act of war. I thought this was supposed to be joint aid and rescue op or something." Kelly didn't mind being misinformed. It gave her something to do in the downtime between global incidents.

But hearing that the place where she currently stood was holding an open invitation, and that the guest list would include parties who usually didn't cross borders without paperwork and orbital backup, and usually needed six layers of clearance and a satellite escort, she started to realize she might have been standing in one of the more dangerous locations in the city.

"Yeah. Why else do you think we're even involved? Where do you think we came from?" Halverson said.

"The whole 'aid' thing's a front. Off-worlders aren't any better than the portal freaks tearing up cities, and the corporations?" He practically spat the words.

"They'd never agree to sharing command, even if you held a gun to their heads. If this wasn't us against everybody, they would've pulled the same excuse-filled crap they always do."

"Look, I don't know what this is," Kelly said, pointing to the shattered ground.

"I got here right before your little religious war in the sky slammed into me—which, by the way, was rude as hell and frankly felt personal—I mean, I was literally just walking." If that was divine intervention, the gods owed her an apology. The suspicious nature of that collision still bugged her and forced her to recall a Trait that mentioned the universe trying to kill her—but she placed it further down her to-do list for now.

There were more immediate problems that needed solving, like squeezing as much information out of the captain as possible.

"So what's this all supposed to be?" Kelly asked.

"Why hasn't someone shut it down already? Feels like the kind of place that gets vaporized from orbit. And why is everyone showing up here? There are alien mana boxes everywhere, aren't there? What makes New York the hotspot instead of, I don't know—Shanghai or Utah. Especially Utah."

"You… you seriously don't know?" the captain said.

"So all that shit at GeneCorp… that was you? Not Vaughn? That wasn't part of the coup? Then who the hell are you?"

"I told you already—I'm immortal. Like, actual immortal. Not like the ones who pretend they are until they get thrown into a star and vaporize. I mean I've been crushed to the atom and still get to make my own breakfast." She paused as if trying to remember his first question.

"And Park Avenue? Yeah. Everyone's dead. Well, not everyone—the ones who weren't part of the fight are still alive. Anyone around your level or higher either died in the stampede or ran for it. It wasn't that hard to get through after the thousandth time; I made it through no problem and kept moving. That's all I'm doing now—just passing through, honestly. Bit of sightseeing, light genocide." She paused to glance at the sky, then continued.

"If you want help with the zombie angels, I'll need compensation. Ammo, batteries, chocolate bars. Something meaningful. Mostly, though, I'm just killing people who annoy me. So unless you'd like to join the very exclusive pile of corpses, I'd suggest you start talking." Captain Halverson hesitated, taking a second to process what she said, his jaw twitching. Then he gulped. Audibly. Up to now, he'd been operating under the deeply flawed assumption that Kelly was sane.

Now he saw the truth: that things had gone so far off track they were already sipping margaritas in hell. More importantly, he was starting to understand the nature of the organism standing across from him. He stared, wide-eyed, realizing too late he'd boarded a train with no brakes, and worse, the thing across from him looked thrilled about it. Nobody sane walked solo into a warzone.

Nobody with his durability or less took a hit hard enough to scatter ribs across districts and kept walking unless they chased death on purpose and had the level to match. Nobody got through a Park Avenue building—genetically armed, privately secured—without becoming paste. Except someone had. One person was seen at the blast point. No one else entered. It had to be her. His senses said she'd snap from one hit. Those same senses once said dogs couldn't fly, right before hellhounds shredded his team.

He'd stopped trusting them. Especially since the portals. So he checked. Care beat courage every time. Truth bent easier than bone. People forgave a lot if you labeled it "plausible deniability" and filed on time. So he wasn't asking how she pulled it off. Hidden tech, black ops, divine luck—it didn't matter. Asking a covert operative to explain their secrets mid-op was a death wish.

"I'll keep it simple," Halverson sighed.

"New York's machine is considered the most powerful so far. The U. S. Government and the Interplanetary Nations have wanted it since the machines first showed up. But no one had a clear way to extract it until recently. Once a method was confirmed, the major powers signed off on a joint operation to recover and examine it." Kelly remained silent, urging him to continue.

"That agreement only applies to the ones included in the law. Groups outside that—terrorist entities, unaffiliated beings, whatever else shows up—aren't bound by it. Everyone involved knows the deal won't hold. They're pretending to cooperate because the timing isn't right yet. Our government's heading in. So is The United Kingdoms. So is Vaughn and the others. So are enemy factions. Every side understands what's coming. Once the window opens, it's going to be a bloodbath."