Chương 50: An Open Invitation to War

Kelly was finally seeing the shape of it—beyond the half-baked theories online. The large alien portal cube—almost a tower, really—was a magic terraformer. And this had been a joint recovery project on paper, but every nation walked in ready to sabotage the others. No one expected the alliance to last, and betrayal was built into the timeline, and when that failed, theft would follow. Once one side started losing, retaliation would come fast, dressed up as justice. It made sense.

Humans couldn't use magic naturally, so a machine that could mean power— real power. No more relying on portal aliens as living batteries or unstable monsters as research samples. This was tech: cold, controllable, scalable. A breakthrough, a weapon, and a guaranteed blood-soaked land grab all in one. For the first time, humanity had a shot at using magic tools, and whoever got it first could win the war and change the game before it even truly began.

That made it, to no one's surprise, the most fought-over object in three solar systems. Given how they used to dogpile her the second she blinked toward the exit—every loop, without fail—it was surprising Genecorp hadn't thrown everything at her the moment she showed up on Park Avenue. Perhaps they were unaware of the extent of her success, or confident in claiming it. Still, she'd turned their HQ into a flaming husk without anyone tackling her through a window, which felt less impressive than badly managed.

Crushing her should've been a warm-up between meetings. Maybe they were too busy chasing their magic box, or the stampede and urban collapse had tied up all their retrieval teams. Lucky her. She took the gap and burned it down. The world was breaking. You had an alliance, or you didn't have a future. With private armies and flags in play, Kelly figured the obvious: anyone flying solo was done. Genecorp, finally, had taken hits they couldn't shake off. More telling was the U. S.

soldier she overheard, calling Vaughn traitors with genuine outrage. Vaughn, apparently, still ran the city—for now. Kelly couldn't confirm anything, but she was starting to suspect that her employer's plan to betray the U. S.

government might have been what led to that same government gaining control of the machine, and to the mega explosion that happened at almost the exact same time as her very first loop—not the one that caused it all, but one that was equally large and occurred suspiciously close to the same moment. From what she remembered of her first loop—before the orbital strikes and before her weekly routine stopped being possible—there had been a second large explosion somewhere around this part of the city.

It had been intense, with enough color and scale to suggest someone had overcommitted. In every loop since the first, it had reappeared. Every instanced day. The orbital strikes on the floating fairy and his giant snake, however, had not—they were a one-time deal. She assumed some mysterious cumulative butterfly effect of time looping had somehow stopped it. Or maybe the timeline had been damaged enough that no one bothered trying again. Still, it was suspicious timing.

The machine had likely been close to real activation and collection. So had Project Portal. And then boom. Literally. And then: time loop. It occurred to her that maybe the box was located in some sort of focal point, where a battle of many interplanetary powers and agents could occur at any second—one of those points in space-time where every major agency, terrorist group, corporate death cult, and mysterious guy in a suit eventually showed up with a gun and a vague accent.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. Something was brewing. And Kelly? Kelly was pretty sure she was in the middle of it. Again. It was a realization that should have induced existential panic. Instead, she yawned, reloaded her sidearm, and wondered if she'd left the air filter on in this loop or the last one.

"Alright, that's enough," Kelly said, pressing a hand to her temple, though she was shielding herself from stupidity rather than pain.

"I zoned out during civics in school, and they never covered diplomacy with flying clergy. Save the theory." She stepped over a twitching zombie angel half-embedded in a sidewalk crack. Its wings were charred down to bone, one eye still blinking with vague menace. She crouched slightly, facing the undead, her hands on her knees.

"Well?" she asked it.

"You've been eavesdropping. Got anything to add, or are you taking the moral high ground again?" The angel gurgled faintly, then went still. Kelly stood up, glanced back at the captain.

"See? Even angels hate politics. Tell me how long I've got until the box retrieval is expected, and point me to the East Grid Botanical Lab. It's hard enough finding a bridge of rubble when your holy war with the zombie angels turned the entire block into rubble." She adjusted her vest, dislodging a tooth that wasn't hers.

"Also, if the East Grid's grown anything useful, make a note. We could use a salad."

"Also, good news," Kelly said, brushing blood off her sleeve.

"One of the factions is now, let's say, logistically disadvantaged. Strategically weakened. Very dead. I've killed everyone. You're welcome. So get going. Go on—leave. Or stay. Makes no difference. But if you stay, you might get caught up in the sequel." They didn't have to be told twice.

Once Captain Halverson rattled off the ETA for the magic box extraction and the general direction of the ruined botanical lab buried somewhere in the apocalypse, they took off into the sky with the urgent grace of people who'd very much prefer not to be around Kelly any longer. Implants flared. Limbs unfolded. Wings—if you could call them that—buzzed open like bad origami made of chrome and nerve endings.

Then they were gone, darting back into the upper atmosphere, where the battle above the terraforming structure was sputtering out, casualties finally catching up with death. Kelly watched them vanish with mild interest.

"Nice kids," she muttered, wiping a smudge of ash off her face with the sleeve of a jacket that wasn't technically hers.

"Not built for prolonged exposure to me, but who is?" Anyone without a PhD in "don't blow up the universe" would have taken the crystals to Vaughn Lab. Sure, Vaughn had the fanciest mana scanners on the planet. Vaughn were portal experts, their study of the tear in dimensions had helped Kelly crack magic—and reality. Vaughn also made guns, not gardening guides. The wood was magic. The crystals that grew from it were magic too. Vaughn could scan them, Kelly could copy them, and that was it. Copy-paste science.

That was so a-thousand days ago. Kelly didn't do copy-paste anymore. Her ambitions had grown. The Botanical Labs were the place for anyone serious about GMO plant life. Humanity had been inventing plant strains for millennia—if Kelly wanted to engineer, replicate, or flat-out invent a species from scratch, that was where the magic happened. Vaughn's people were geniuses too—if your definition of "botanical" included portal mana mishaps and the occasional controlled explosion.

The closest thing they had to flowers were, well… landmines with an attitude problem. And if she ever hit a wall with the mana studies? Kelly figured she could always "visit" her old lab and remind Payne why you don't mess with someone who can redesign chlorophyll for fun. The lab was out there somewhere, along with some answers on how a wooden staff with a crystal growing out of it could twist reality.

Eyeing the towering terraforming relic still glowing faintly in the distance like a god that hadn't quite finished waking up, she adjusted the strap of her gun, cracked her neck, and started walking.