Chương 99: A Coin, a Question, and a Coming War

"I heard there was an Echelon member that almost went overclocked during upgrade work this morning, tried to break away and retire from Gideon's inner circle," Kelly said. She wasn't really looking at Ren while she spoke. A coin hovered above her palm, time slightly misaligned around it. It jittered in place, stuttering through positions like a bad frame rate. Practice. Also entertainment.

"The news said his death was an accident, but flying a ship into the sun feels like it takes commitment. A checklist. Ol' Gideon moved pretty fast, didn't he."

"I knew him. He was a decent man." Ren said. His posture tightened, just a little.

"Gideon fried him alive. Took him up into orbit by the collar and threw him into the sun himself. He's manic about loyalty. Thinks he's Al Capone or something. Completely insane." Who the hell was Al Capone? Kelly didn't ask. She assumed it was probably some long-dead planetary governor, or maybe a failed corporate mascot, or a prohibition-era cook who got mythologized way out of proportion. History loved doing that.

"And why did you leave Gideon in the first place?" Kelly asked, curious, not judgmental. The coin skipped, froze, then resumed its stutter.

"If leaving comes with a first-class trip into the sun." She didn't ask how he'd survived his own retirement. Gideon Vaughn didn't strike her as someone who respected the difference between resignation and betrayal. He probably saw resignation as the ultimate betrayal.

"If you knew half the things they do, you'd understand," the aged veteran snapped.

"Their drug canisters kill thousands every year. Their experiments kill more. And don't get me started on their weapons—the illegal ones they use when no one's looking. That's just the surface. Kidnappings. Murders. Racketeering. Prostitution. Sex trafficking." His voice roughened.

"I thought I could make a difference working near the top. With the Echelon. With Vaughn. With Crystal Nanotech."

"Did you?"

"Yes. No," he muttered.

"I saved lives. But some of the people I saved probably went on to kill hundreds. The Big Four have been tearing at each other's throats for centuries. I thought Han, Cyber, the others had plans to take Gideon down. Turns out it's like trying to take a mountain apart with a chisel. Vaughn's the peak. Too big to kill. So they stall. Strategic peace. Delay." Kelly already knew most of Vaughn's official history. Mostly because they advertised it constantly.

Gideon Vaughn—at almost three hundred years old—had founded the defense company in Manhattan shortly after the Augment Wars. From there it expanded into shipping, warehouses, agriculture, food, biotech, manufacturing, oil, retail. And then into everything else. Ironically, Vaughn and the other defense and infrastructure giants had surged during Kelly's lifetime.

The AI coups had finished wrecking a planet that was barely recovering and reminded everyone why their precious corpos and heavily enhanced rulers were supposedly necessary. A lot of people blamed Jennie for that. Kelly didn't. As the DeadQueen, Jennie always had reasons. Jennie was a very reasonable person. She tended to only bomb people who deserved it—and humans, while occasionally great and lovable, were extremely bombable even on their best days. Kelly never asked her why she did that growing up.

Maybe she would, the next time she saw her. Kelly had thought her first moments as Ren's almost-disciple would involve some super-secret, demigod-level training. Maybe a monastery carved into a mountain that technically wasn't there, humming with hidden technology and an ancient war technique built to end civilizations before lunch. Something practical. Instead, it began with questions.

Honestly, it wasn't nearly as exciting as shaving her head and enrolling in an absurdly expensive, near-millennium-year-old, elite military academy where discipline was enforced by gravity-defying instructors and the curriculum assumed you'd survive atmospheric reentry by graduation. So far Ren had asked her about her Titles. Her mutations, which were not mutations, they were magic. What they did. How she acquired them. And everything else that could be peeled apart with enough time and stubbornness.

They talked about her time loop. The political pressure building around the universe's most valuable object, the only self-powered magical terraforming cube. The impending civil war orbiting it like scavengers, an ideology gold rush. She walked him through the things she'd faced across resets. Horrors from beyond anything with a language for reality, things that wore causality wrong and left rooms quieter after they passed. Goblins. Green perverts. Every single one. Trolls with the emotional range of damp stone.

Mimics that learned fast enough to be annoying. Giant living skeleton bone knights and skeleton abominations that fused and bound bone together, regenerated, and even generated force fields. She hadn't utilised their DNA properly yet. The bone stuff needed work. A weapon, a tool, or an enhancement. There was something wrong with it. Missing pieces. Data that just wasn't there. Their DNA didn't do anything special, even with magic layered on top. Cracking the death knights was on her to-do list, and very low on it.

The talk rolled through the angel Verrisimir and the god of Order wearing him like a puppet. That the term 'Angel' was a misnomer, an internet label—that everyone was wrong, the internet was wrong, the Status was wrong, and really, he was just a portal being with unknown physiology and wings. The floating ten-foot alien conductor hanging in the sky came up too—a causal error no one could clear.

And the massive interplanetary political game being played by every major power, governments, corpos, and groups, all circling the east grid and the cube like sharks with balance sheets was the final topic. In short, there were no special augment-specific combat arts. No superhuman martial arts training at all. She didn't even get to do a pose!

"Kelly—No. Dr. Voss," Ren said at last as they stood in the combat hall.

"Or would you prefer your codename, Timer. Though that is only used for sensitive jobs." Kelly groaned at the sound of it while staring at the floor.

"Timer," she said.

"That name is a crime. It sounds like a kitchen appliance." The combat hall's gallery shutters reopened at the end of their conversation. Those watching were gathered in front of a massive protective screen—they must've been on shift break. Kelly briefly noted them exchanging pleasantries while downing Genecorp energy boosters. Most looked somewhere between twenty-five and mid-to-late thirties, though that was a meaningless estimate in a world where age could be negotiated surgically. And mechanically.

And aesthetically. Most wore standard combat uniforms and defensive gear, but one guy lounged with his boots up, power suit half open like an unbuttoned shirt. From what Kelly overheard, they were debating the latest Ultimate Augment Fighting Championship bout taking place off-planet at a luxury resort, which upper-echelon celebrity they'd most like to date, and—more ambitiously—how one might casually introduce themselves to Venus Vaughn.

Or a singer like Nyx Arclight, as if that was a logistical problem rather than a delusion. The sheer gall of the man was impressive. He must have had 'game' spilling from his sleeves. Or the combined delusion of a small nation. She didn't see Reggie among them. That was surprising, and it raised her estimation of his overall not-lameness, dropping him a few levels down her internal 'people I've killed who killed me' list. More than anything, she wanted to test her abilities further.

Really push them against someone who could push back. This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. With a bored sigh, Kelly tuned back in as Ren continued speaking. She briefly considered equipping a Mana Vacuum and seeing if she could skip this entire introductory phase. Just shift time: fast-forward through it. She didn't have the juice, the know-how, or even the capability—but it felt worth attempting on principle.

She was a creature of fun, and while this was arguably necessary, Ren seemed committed to draining every last drop of life from her through terms, conditions, and aggressively mundane conversation. She would never openly admit it, but Kelly was painfully aware that attachment made resets hurt more. In the past, when she'd let herself get close, watching the day roll back—and that version of a person vanish forever—felt uncomfortably like watching them die. Fun was easier. Better. Euphoria was life.

Discovery was her heartbeat. Violence was her cure. And Jennie—her Jellybean—was the only person with a mind capable of cracking time. The only one who had always, and could always, actually stay with her. Unfortunately, because Kelly now treated every day like her last, she avoided straining her soul by slipping forward in time beyond brief moments or anything she'd previously dared. Unless forced, she wouldn't risk her immortal, untouchable soul. And even then, she'd probably just prefer a reset.

"I know that, due to your time abilities, you may not be with us as a member forever," Ren said, continuing without noticing her boredom spiraling.

"We'll deal with that when the time comes.

"Still. As a new employee, I welcome you into the organization that I, Joe Haider, and Venus Vaughn created.

"We operate outside corporate jurisdiction by design. Not because we enjoy being labeled criminal, but because the system itself has made legality synonymous with extinction. Earth is choking. Entire regions are functionally uninhabitable without commercial air, corporate filtration, corporate permission. Progress is throttled by walls, games, collusion, and laws written to ensure everyone stays dependent, compliant, and dying at a sustainable rate."

"We built this organization to reverse the damage done to Earth itself. Every lawful pathway to address that has been buried under systems designed to prolong decay rather than stop it." He gestured vaguely, as if Vaughn Industries and Han Cybernetics were physically present and worth flicking dust off his fingers.

"Days like this," Ren continued, the present crisis implicit in every word, "are why Venus and I partnered with one of the greatest rebel minds of our generation.

"That is why this organization exists." He nodded, once, content. Kelly nodded and wondered how long it would take before he tried to almost-kill her, then kept talking.

"So that's it," Kelly said, the pieces clicking into a perfect, ugly picture as Ren finished laying it out.

"Thanks for the history lesson. Earth's a dump. A toxic, radioactive, mutagenic dump. And it's the most valuable piece of real estate in the system because of it." Thanks to the secrets of Earth's pollution and toxic hot zones Ren had explained, she finally understood why Earth sat at the center of humanity's markets. She leaned back, ticking the reasons off on her fingers. The poison zones were used for research—giant free labs. The pre- and post-war junk scattered around went right alongside them as resources.

Deadtech. Lost tech. Blueprints pulled out of places that were actively trying to kill you.

"The AIs won't trade," she went on.

"They've got all the advantages." Humanity leaned on the one thing it had left: Earth itself. A treasure trove to stay ahead of its cold-war enemies, or at least keep from falling so far behind you became someone else's blueprint. America was still standing because the country already existed in a state of pure corruption. The states themselves had fallen centuries ago. Han Cybernetics controlled the Asian markets, with sizeable connections and influence stretching across planetary systems.

The UK, the Chinese government, and the Eastern Coalition were stuck dealing with contested regions run by local augmented warlords—people who saw the current madness as an opportunity and carved out mini empires faster than it took to build a coffee shop. China had the highest population and concentration of peak-tier augmented tanks in the world, and everyone else had to plan around that. In short, the markets were a mess.

With the world sliding into a magical apocalypse, it was the perfect moment for someone to shake the board, assuming one of the Big Four didn't do it first. Kelly's money stayed on the guy who could fly you out of orbit without a shuttle and hurl you into the nearest star wearing nothing but a T-shirt and some slacks. They talked some more. Turns out there were already rumors about a power source inside the terraforming cube, something capable of powering all kinds of magical devices.

Ren didn't know what it was or how it worked, only that his information network had picked up the rumors and that they were circulating in the right places. Kelly already knew. It was the giant crystal inside the terraforming cube, the one covered in dense, tiny runes packed so tightly they blurred together if you didn't focus. Maybe the crystal. Maybe the cube itself. She'd seen it before, but only broken and dormant. Even then, she'd suspected it was some kind of power source.

That was the only explanation that made sense. Shutting the cube down and then taking control of its tech would change humanity permanently. The magic theory alone would advance them by centuries. The plan was simple in the way only terrible plans ever were: whichever faction controlled it would unlock the knowledge, figure out how to recreate the magical power source, and use it to build magical augments. Human military forces would finally get the edge they needed to claim real dominance across the galaxy.

Ren said he knew Vaughn well. Once humanity finished dominating the Tüin and the rogue AIs, once both were completely at humanity's mercy, they would use the machines and whatever they created from the cube's tech to break the dimensional boundary and open a permanent passage to the other side. An invasion. Humanity's invasion. Taking over the magical dimension that had made the mistake of opening passages to Earth in the first place. That was why Project Portal was too important to stop.

That was why it kept going through the collapse. That was why they were letting magical extradimensional creatures rampage across the world, killing whoever was unlucky enough to run into them. It sounded bad. Even to Kelly. And her upbringing had been loose on ethics at best. Ren said that since the last war, and after twenty years of false peace with two major enemies—ignoring the smaller ones—humanity had been preparing nonstop for the next big one. Military academies gained prestige and multiplied.

Global and interplanetary skirmishes fueled economies and produced hardened, experienced soldiers for the major powers. Every few years, the major academies organized crusades. Expeditions into dangerous planets, enemy strongholds, overreaches nobody officially acknowledged. Explorers, peak tanks, promising elites, entire regiments of recruits sent in to get real combat experience. Raids into hostile territory. Survive, learn, come back different—or don't come back.

Since the last real global war more than twenty years ago, military tech and research had grown exponentially. Facing two technologically superior enemies forced humanity to move fast, and it did. Ren thought civilian casualties would be high. Lower than before, but high. He thought humans would definitely win. Kelly thought about the god of order. About the way the bastard had talked, like there were plenty more gods waiting in line. She didn't share Ren's confidence.

After at least half an hour, the old monster finally stopped.

"I don't know if your time looping comes from stealing power from the being above Times Square," Ren said slowly, "or if it's a mutation, or if it's the result of your own work and a very unfortunate chain of events, like you claim. But from what you've told me, nobody else knows about it." He paused.

"That makes it an invaluable advantage. An incredible mutation."

"I haven't had a student in nearly three hundred years," he went on.

"And for someone whose talent exceeds even the most monstrous soldiers I've heard of, I'd be careless to let that pass. Foolish, even." Ren glanced toward the reopened gallery shutters, then back to Kelly. His attention zeroed in, as if he were sliding a window shut.

"My time is limited," he said.

"Multiple operations are running. I can push my schedule back by a few hours today. Nothing beyond that." He shifted his weight against the flooring, one arm folding across his chest.

"There is only so much I can teach you before you stop being a student and start being a resource in future loops. I'll do what I can." His gaze stayed on her when he continued.

"After that, you should attend a military academy. With your abilities, you should steal every datachip you can get your hands on. I'll give you a recommendation." He paused, just long enough for the implication to settle.

"If you're caught, you'll be executed. If you don't get greedy, get lucky, and if anything I teach actually sticks in that hard head of yours, you won't." Kelly found herself agreeing. People loved talking about how prestigious and brutal the academies were. How life-changing they were in a world surrounded by war, superior enemies, and ancient monsters. How rare, valuable, essential, and well-guarded their datachips were. The academies themselves were stuck-up nightmares.

Full of over-specced, well-fed, silver-spoon-loving mouth-breathers who thought every problem was solved with two guns and a whole lot of shouting. Their datachips, though? Priceless.

"That being said, we will start your training now," the old veteran remarked. Kelly felt a strange sensation in her chest. Was this… love? For battle, obviously. Not for that old bag of bones and metal.

"This will be better than training sheltered academy recruits," Ren said.

"Given how you discovered your abilities in life-threatening and pressurized circumstances, this will be the best way to bring out your potential. I will try to avoid killing you. It shouldn't be too hard. Develop new abilities. Try not to die." Kelly stopped time-skipping the coin above her palm. She barely felt the steady, subtle drain on her mind, body, and soul. Something as small as a credit was a trickle. It was easily manageable. Ren watched the coin freeze and stutter in the air.

"The way you're altering the time of that object," he said, his voice low and assessing.

"Can you do that to me?"