Chương 132: 131: Ambience

Some of the enforcers saw it coming. Their HUDs erupted with warnings. ⚠ APIS CONCENTRATION: CRITICAL ⚠ CONTAINMENT FAILURE ⚠ UNKNOWN BIOLOGICAL ENTITY ⚠ ENERGY DENSITY: BEYOND CALIBRATION ⚠ DO NOT ENGAGE The readings climbed faster than the systems could process them, numbers accelerating across their displays until one enforcer finally stared at his HUD in disbelief.

"Those numbers can't be right." His HUD recalibrated, and the numbers climbed again.

"Command, we have an unidentified entity approaching Sector Seven. Apis emissions are…" The display flashed red. MEASUREMENT ERROR. He swallowed.

"…off the scale."

"Fall back," another enforcer ordered immediately.

"Forget the perimeter. Everyone teleport out. Now." No one argued. The enforcers disappeared in flashes of light, abandoning weapons, barricades, and equipment without hesitation. They were professionals, and they understood when a situation had ceased to be a battle and become a containment failure. The creature came anyway. Apotheosis leaked Apis with every breath. It seeped from its body in luminous, unstable wisps, spilling between its scales and dripping from its claws like radioactive venom.

The air around it distorted as it moved, metal blackening beneath its presence while concrete softened and machinery began deforming simply because it was nearby. HSSSSSSSSSS… An enforcer who had been too slow to teleport staggered backward as his HUD screamed EXPOSURE: 12%, followed almost immediately by 31%, then 67%. His armor began dissolving around him.

"Get me out!" The command never came. His body ruptured beneath the armor with a wet SPLAT, leaving behind something that had once been a person. Even that distinction disappeared moments later as the Apis consumed him until nothing remained. Apotheosis continued walking. People ran through the corridors as enforcers abandoned their formations, engineers fled their workstations, and maintenance workers scrambled through emergency exits while alarms screamed throughout the facility.

The creature did not pursue any particular target. It simply moved, and anything alive that crossed its path was consumed. A claw punched through a reinforced wall with a violent KRAAASH, tearing through the machinery behind it as though the entire facility had been constructed from wet paper. An engineer screamed somewhere beyond the breach, and Apotheosis's head snapped toward him. Its jaws closed around the man before swallowing him whole. It kept moving.

Korhess and Ouro rounded the corner and immediately stopped as the ambient Apis struck them. HSSSSSSSSSS… Korhess's antlers flared emerald, and her eyes narrowed as the pressure rolled over her. The fragment of the Nonagon within her responded instantly, reinforcing her body against the corrupting energy. She remained standing. Ouro was affected differently.

Her chains erupted around her body with a rapid series of metallic CLINK-CLINK-CLINKS, absorbing the surrounding Apis and drawing the volatile radiation away from her flesh and into their own links. The chains began glowing orange as they filled. Ouro's expression tightened.

"Si stanno riempiendo…" They're filling up… She stared at the chains as they continued drinking faster than she had ever seen them drink.

"Madonna… no, no, no. Non possono assorbire tutto questo!" Oh God… no, no, no. They can't absorb all of this! Her serpentine physiology gave her another advantage, since corrosion and poison were dangers her body was naturally equipped to resist, but even she could feel the strain building within her. Clock was different. His Gloom reserves were completely gone, leaving him alone beneath the invisible storm of Apis as his body began to deteriorate.

The sensation was like being skinned alive while someone ground salt and pepper into the exposed flesh, and Clock clenched his jaw against the incomprehensible pain. His durability was monstrous. Even without Gloom, his biological strength was sufficient to threaten solar-system-scale opponents, his body capable of withstanding blunt impacts that would have annihilated worlds. Yet this was not blunt force. The Apis behaved differently. It seeped into him, searched for weaknesses, and corroded him from within.

The damage was slow compared to the punishment his body could normally endure, but Clock understood immediately that he could not remain here for long.

"Thin-point energy," he muttered, narrowing his violet eyes.

"That's the problem." A fist could withstand enormous force, yet a sufficiently concentrated blade could still penetrate it. The same principle applied here. Clock could endure catastrophic impacts, but concentrated energy of comparable magnitude could breach his defenses, and erasure was worse. Ankou's level of erasure remained one of the clearest boundaries his body could not simply overpower. He looked toward Apotheosis, and his expression hardened.

"This thing is worse." His physical strength alone was already absurd. Under normal circumstances, his Gloom multiplied that threat by giving him speed, turning an already devastating punch into something catastrophic when delivered at relativistic or light-speed velocities. Add telekinesis, transport, Reverse Blasts, and the multiplication mechanism behind them, and at full capacity Clock was not merely a powerful fighter. He was a potential engine of universal destruction. But this was not full capacity.

Not even remotely. Clock watched Apotheosis leak another wave of Apis into the environment. HSSSSSSSSSS… His expression became grim as his regeneration slowly reversed the damage, restoring his body in small bursts toward a healthier state. Yet the ambient Apis delayed each recovery, seeping into him faster than his body could repair itself.

"This isn't a fight I can win like this." Korhess glanced toward him, but her future sight flickered before she could respond. For an instant, she saw Apotheosis tearing through the corridor. Another glimpse showed the creature standing over Clock. Another showed nothing. Another showed Katherine. Another showed herself. The visions collapsed into static. Korhess's mismatched eyes widened.

"I cannot see it clearly." Ouro turned toward her.

"Your sight?"

"Fractured." The Apis surrounding the creature was too volatile for her future sight to form a coherent sequence. Possible futures collided and dissolved before she could properly interpret them, leaving her with only fragments of what might come. She saw Apotheosis, Katherine, herself, and Clock, along with deaths that might happen, deaths that might not, and futures that contradicted one another so completely that none could be followed. Korhess tightened her grip on her spear.

"It is as though the future itself hath been drenched in poison." Apotheosis lifted its head. Its eyes found them. Clock, Korhess, and Ouro all went still as the creature continued leaking Apis into the corridor. Around them, the HUDs of every surviving enforcer within range began screaming simultaneously, their displays filling with warnings as the systems struggled to comprehend what stood before them. WARNING. APIS DENSITY EXCEEDS SAFE PARAMETERS. WARNING. PREDICTIVE SYSTEM FAILURE. WARNING.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience. ENTITY CANNOT BE CLASSIFIED. Every HUD suddenly went silent. A final message appeared across every display. DO NOT APPROACH. Clock stared at Apotheosis while Ouro's chains tightened around her body and Korhess's emerald flames burned brighter against the spreading Apis. Somewhere behind Apotheosis's dark, glassy eyes, something hungry smiled.... Ouro noticed Clock's discomfort.

Her silver eyes narrowed as she watched him grimace, his skin reddening beneath the relentless assault of the ambient Apis. She moved closer, concern sharpening her voice.

"What is wrong with you?" Clock's jaw tightened.

"Gloom. I've run out. I have nothing left." She stared at him as though he had spoken another language. The chains around her waist shifted as she reached for the one holding her mace. She unhooked it and ran her fingers slowly along its links, searching for something hidden within the metal. Her forked tongue flickered between her teeth as she concentrated, sensing the energy buried inside. Then she found it.

"Touch this." Clock looked at her.

"What?"

"Trust me. Touch it." He hesitated before reaching out. His fingers brushed against the chain's surface, and a pulse of energy immediately surged through him. Violet Gloom flooded into his depleted reserves, warm and familiar, spreading through his body like blood returning to a starved limb. Clock gasped as the sensation filled him, and the burning pain across his skin began to recede as his damaged flesh slowly recovered. Five percent. It wasn't much. But it was enough. Clock stared at the chain in disbelief.

"How…?" Ouro smiled, the pierced ring in her tongue catching the light.

"During our fight, when you rammed Reverse Blasts into me, my chains absorbed the energy. They also absorbed the ambient energy from the dimension itself. That place was created with Gloom, so the energy was everywhere. My chains simply stored it." Clock stared at her in amazement.

"You mean you've been carrying around reserves of Gloom this entire time?" Ouro shrugged.

"Apparently."

"That is… incredible." Ouro's smile widened.

"Sì. I am incredible." Korhess, who had been watching the exchange in silence, inclined her head with approval.

"Thou hast proven thyself more resourceful than I anticipated, Ouro." Ouro grinned.

"I try." Clock looked down at the chain again, his expression becoming more thoughtful. The pressure bearing down on him no longer felt completely insurmountable. It was only five percent. But five percent of Clock was still something worth fearing.... Korhess turned toward Apotheosis. Its narrow, piscine head tilted slightly, thin tendrils trailing from either side of its skull while a translucent fin trembled behind its head. Most unsettling were its eyes.

Two glassy cobalt eyes stared from beneath its ridged brow, bright with an intelligence that felt far too deliberate for something so monstrous. Apotheosis watched them, its attention settling upon Korhess.

"You are strong." The words came in a low, rasping voice, rough but surprisingly clear. Korhess studied the creature from head to tail, taking in its crimson scales, elongated limbs, translucent membranes, and unnatural anatomy.

"What manner of creature art thou?" Apotheosis tilted its head.

"Did you hurt my mother?" The question carried no anger. That made it worse. Ouro's expression tightened as she glanced between the creature and Korhess.

"Mother?" Clock remained silent, his violet gaze fixed upon Apotheosis as he assessed the strange energy radiating from its body. The creature carried traces of Katherine, yet its structure was completely different. Its body appeared biological, but the Apis flowing through it behaved unlike anything natural.

"Is this another experiment?" Clock asked quietly.

"Something the Nest created?" Ouro's gaze traveled over Apotheosis again.

"Or something they were keeping hidden?" Korhess slowly lowered her spear, though her fingers remained wrapped firmly around its shaft.

"Thy presence bears Katherine's essence," she said, her voice becoming measured.

"Yet thou art no creature I have ever seen. What art thou?" Apotheosis's gaze remained fixed upon her.

"Katherine." Korhess's brow furrowed.

"That is not an answer."

"Katherine is my mother." Silence settled over the corridor. Ouro stared at Apotheosis for several seconds before looking toward Clock.

"She has a child?" Clock's expression hardened.

"I don't know." Korhess regarded Apotheosis with renewed suspicion.

"Wherefore dost thou call her mother? Were thou fashioned by her? Hast thou been bred within this Nest? Or art thou another consequence of whatever was done unto her?" Apotheosis did not answer. Instead, it took one slow step forward.

"Did you hurt her?" Korhess's grip tightened around her spear.

"Thou askest the same question twice." Apotheosis's cobalt eyes remained fixed upon her.

"Answer it." Ouro shifted her stance, her chains tightening around her body.

"That thing is talking like it understands everything we're saying." Clock's gaze never left Apotheosis.

"It understands more than that." Korhess glanced toward him.

"What meanest thou?" Clock's jaw tightened.

"It's recognizing us. It's evaluating our strength. And it knows Katherine." He looked at Apotheosis again.

"That isn't some mindless experiment." Korhess's expression hardened.

"Then what is it?" Apotheosis took another step forward.

"Did you hurt my mother?" Korhess drew a slow breath, her posture settling into readiness. She could feel something beneath its question, something primal and absolute, as though the creature did not care about their identities, their powers, or the circumstances that had brought them together. It wanted one answer, and everything else was irrelevant. Korhess slowly raised her spear.

"I shall answer thee with mine own actions." Apotheosis's posture changed. Its shoulders lowered. Its claws flexed against the floor. The tendrils around its skull lifted as though sensing the coming movement. Korhess shifted her footing.

"Prepare thyself." Her body blurred. She crossed the distance in an instant, her spear still held back as she drove a punch into Apotheosis's jaw. THOOOOM! The impact detonated through the corridor. The walls trembled. Dust erupted from the ceiling. Farther away, inhabitants watching through the Nest's surviving cameras erupted into startled cheers, their voices carrying faintly through the facility. Korhess's eyebrows rose. Apotheosis had barely moved. Its head had shifted only a fraction from the force.

It slowly turned back toward her. Korhess stared. She had held back severely. She could not afford to unleash her full strength inside the Nest, not with civilians still trapped throughout the facility. Her Apis gave her extraordinary control over her physical output, allowing her to adjust her strength almost like turning a numbered dial, increasing or decreasing it with precision. Yet even that control had limits. There was a threshold beyond which her strength became increasingly difficult to restrain.

She had not come remotely close to it. Apotheosis had barely noticed the blow. Ouro moved next. Her mace swung into its ribs with enough force to produce another violent shockwave. THOOOOM! The floor cracked beneath Apotheosis's feet, but the creature remained upright. It looked down at the mace pressed against its side, then slowly raised its head toward Ouro. Ouro withdrew the weapon.

"…That should have hurt." Apotheosis tilted its head.

"You are strong too." Its cobalt gaze shifted between the three of them.

"But did you hurt my mother?" Neither woman answered. Something changed in the creature. The curiosity disappeared. Its body lowered, its long limbs bending beneath it as its crimson tail slowly swept across the floor. Korhess felt the shift immediately.

"Prepare thyself." Apotheosis's tail snapped outward. WHOOOOM! A compressed wave of force tore through the chamber, slicing across the floor and walls with enough violence to rip furniture, machinery, and metal fixtures from their foundations. Clock reacted instantly, throwing out one hand as telekinesis seized the incoming force and held it suspended several meters from them. The shockwave screamed against his invisible barrier.

"Move!" Clock shouted. Korhess and Ouro reacted immediately. The three scattered as Clock redirected the force upward, where it tore through the ceiling and blasted into the enormous chamber above. They were no longer fighting in a corridor. — The sun was rising over Patagonia, its light spilling across the snow-capped mountains in soft bands of gold. The people Thornburgh had carried there stood scattered along the slopes, staring towards the southern horizon where the sky had begun to change.

He did not know whether it would be enough. He did not know whether he had saved enough people. He did not know whether the force that threatened to scour half the planet would spare even this distant sanctuary. He stood apart from the crowd. His legs trembled. His hands were empty. The wolf was gone. The hunger had receded. Only the father remained. His gaze searched until it found Kiri. She stood near the edge of the clearing, small...... alive. The light came.... Its sound reached Tokyo first.

Silence swept across the Pacific at the speed of light, a wave of absolute stillness that swallowed the dawn itself. Fishermen paused with their nets half-raised. Commuters inside crowded trains felt their ears pop as every display flickered. Children stopped speaking mid-sentence. Elderly men who had survived wars, earthquakes, and tsunamis slowly lifted their heads towards a sky that suddenly felt unfamiliar. Something had happened. No one yet understood what. Within seconds, every newsroom on Earth erupted.

In London, the giant screens of Piccadilly Circus flickered away from advertisements to a visibly shaken presenter struggling to steady her breathing.

"We're receiving reports of an unprecedented seismic event in the southern hemisphere. Communications across large portions of South America have... have ceased entirely. Authorities are asking the public to remain calm while..." She stopped speaking. Someone in her earpiece was shouting. The satellite feed from Santiago vanished. Buenos Aires followed moments later. Every camera simply...... ended. In Lagos, markets emptied almost instantly. Merchants abandoned their stalls. Buyers forgot what they had come for.

Thousands stood shoulder to shoulder beneath a sky slowly bruising with impossible colours, staring south in uneasy silence. Mothers drew children close while radio stations repeated the same impossible reports. Alongside them came stranger ones. Witnesses claimed brightly coloured meerkats had begun appearing throughout the city, climbing traffic lights, sitting calmly atop buses, and wandering through markets as though they belonged there.

Authorities initially dismissed the sightings as panic-induced hallucinations before emergency lines became overwhelmed by identical reports from every district.

"No known zoological facility in Lagos has reported escaped animals," one broadcaster announced.

"Officials are currently investigating reports of what appear to be... illustrated meerkats." No one knew where they had come from. Early statements suggested they had escaped from some unknown containment facility. No such facility could be found. In Moscow, frozen rivers cracked as instruments registered impossible thermal spikes approaching from the south. Soldiers checked their equipment again and again, each reading more absurd than the last. In Cairo, sections of the Nile began to steam.

Farmers fled the riverbanks while worshippers gathered in mosques and churches alike, praying beneath a sky that seemed somehow... wounded. In New York, the stock exchange halted within minutes. Every major broadcast abandoned scheduled programming. Traffic stopped in every direction as millions stared silently at phones broadcasting identical headlines. MASS CASUALTY EVENT SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE COMMUNICATIONS LOST CAUSE UNKNOWN Between interviews, another curious report surfaced.

"Authorities are also responding to hundreds of sightings involving small, brightly coloured meerkats across Manhattan," another presenter said.

"Officials believe the animals may have escaped from a research or containment facility, although none have yet been identified." Videos spread across social media faster than moderators could remove them. Some creatures simply sat watching the sky. Others wandered calmly into hospitals, schools, and apartment buildings. Experts had no explanation. In Rio de Janeiro, the beaches emptied as the Atlantic withdrew unnaturally from the shore.

Christ the Redeemer overlooked a city frozen between prayer and disbelief while local stations reported dozens of vividly coloured meerkats emerging from alleyways and climbing onto abandoned cars as though searching for something. In Johannesburg, mines collapsed beneath shifting earth. Survivors stumbled into daylight covered in coal dust, only to find emergency responders distracted by impossible news arriving from every continent. The meerkats were everywhere. Cape Town. Sydney. Berlin. Toronto. Seoul.

No zoo reported missing animals. No research institute admitted ownership. They had simply...... appeared. In Delhi, oppressive heat settled over the city while hospitals filled beyond capacity with victims suffering unexplained radiation sickness and heatstroke. Priests recited ancient prayers as children pointed excitedly at oddly coloured meerkats weaving fearlessly through crowded streets, blissfully unaware that the creatures had wandered out of a storybook rather than any ecosystem on Earth.

In Paris, the Seine rose steadily against its banks. Tourists gathered beneath the Eiffel Tower watching breaking news unfold across every screen in the city. Broadcasters spoke of catastrophe, missing continents, impossible energy signatures...... and increasingly inexplicable reports of illustrated meerkats calmly strolling through cafés, museums, and railway stations.

"We have no explanation," one French reporter admitted.

"Authorities believe the animals may have escaped from a classified containment site. At this time, that remains entirely unconfirmed." No one understood why they had appeared. No one yet realised...... they were quietly saving the world.