Adamant Blood

Mark and Isoko landed on the big balcony at the top of the tower.

It felt truly strange and kinda scary to be here, even though yesterday had been yesterday. Mark didn’t feel worthy of being here. From Isoko’s vector and wide-eyed expression, she was having similar emotions. But Aleph One had told Quark to tell Mark to come through this way, and so this was their destination.

Mark gazed inward, past the archway at the end of the balcony, to the big hallway they had walked down yesterday, to the round room and the Innards of Crystal Tower. The ice-white crystal, blue/gold coloring, and soft lighting all spoke of superheroing in a fundamental way that made Mark feel giddy. And then there were the superheroes. Today was a day of mourning and cheering, for they had won the battle and defended the city, but people had died.

Mark did not know who had died, yet, but while everyone had on their dress uniforms, some had little black ribbons pinned to that webweave—

Aeri came out from inside, relief coloring her features as she spotted Isoko. She looked at her granddaughter and took her hand into her own, softly saying, “I was about to be worried.”

“Sorry, Grandmother,” Isoko said.

No other words needed to be said; Aeri was just glad Isoko was here now, and that’s all that mattered.

“I needed to organize Powers from yesterday,” Mark explained, because other people were listening and he needed to get the ball rolling on that and also to show that the delay was not Isoko’s fault.

Aeri nodded and moved on, “There’s breakfast, and then the Overview, by Justicar. Timeweaver asked to give the Overview, so maybe they’ll let him.”

Mark asked the dreadful question, “Who died?”

“Seraph and Synapse are the big names, but it was a devastation to any and all Chosen of Freyala, which was a lot of our younger crowd,” Aeri said, walking inward.

Mark nodded a little. He had guessed that a lot had happened to the Chosen of Freyala, but to hear big names like Seraph and Synapse died, too… It had been a bad day.

Isoko hadn’t heard any of that, though. She gasped.

Aeri gripped Isoko’s hand tighter. “I’m glad Platinum Princess was not among their number.”

“Oh Freyala… Oh Grandma,” Isoko softly said, holding Aeri—

Timeweaver stepped into the air, saying, “Battle’s over for now. We have some time to prepare for what comes next, but not a whole lot of time.”

Aeri muttered small curses. She was not alone in her thoughts. Timeweaver’s words had carried to everyone within earshot, which happened to be most of the superheroes of Crystal Tower and quite a few interns.

Mark tensed. “How much time?”

“As much as we can get. Months, maybe. These things are very difficult to gauge since the first battle to happen is one of prognostication and information. Boots on the ground is a failure of one side or another to properly counter the other, but since this morning we’ve been countering Okuana hard, as long as we don’t actually encroach on their territory…” Timeweaver paused, looked to the side, and said, “And that’s all I’m going to say on that.” He told Mark, “Aleph One has your orichalcum. I’m eager to see if you can actually do whatever you want with it.”

Mark paused. Timeweaver didn’t actually blip anywhere, so… Mark guessed that Timeweaver didn’t look himself? Mark asked, “… You don’t know yourself?”

Timeweaver grinned and then ignored Mark’s question as he continued, “I have promised that I will stop the ‘Resurrection Ghost’ from befalling any traps, but I haven’t seen any traps yet, because this is the end-game timeline right now. That’s the only thing I’m caring about for the next week. Congrats for getting us here, Mark. Couldn’t have done it without you.”

Mark asked Timeweaver, “How long were you in that battle?”

Timeweaver shrugged and played it off like a man who just hit retirement, saying, “Long enough.” He walked into Crystal Tower proper, under the shadow of the archway overhead. “Come on! Let’s get you that orichalcum!”

Mark looked to Isoko, who was holding hands with her grandmother and who didn’t want to leave her, and Mark didn’t want to leave Isoko. But Isoko knew that teammates stuck together—

“I need to talk to you about some small things, Isoko,” Aeri said.

And so Mark said, “I’ll be back.”

Isoko nodded a little and held Aeri’s hand tighter.

Mark followed Timeweaver to a hallway, thinking about his time at Citadel Freyala, and how Isoko had talked about ‘Wandering Sage’ with love, and how she had never mentioned her parents aside from small comments. At the time, Mark had assumed that was because Isoko didn’t want to rub the fact that her parents were alive in Mark’s face, but now… Now, Mark had a very different opinion. Aeri Kanno had visited Isoko Kanno at Citadel Freyala, at a party of Freyalan nobility with the Cybersongs and with Justicar there, too. Sure, Aeri had visited because Isoko had been moving in on Mark, and they all wanted what Mark had, butAeri had been the only one to visit Isoko. That was the important part.

Isoko’s mother, Chimiko, had a deep pain in her heart and soul since the loss of Riku, their eldest child, only a few years ago.

… It was perhaps selfish of Mark to think this next thought, but he thought it anyway: Maybe if Healthy Body helped Chimiko heal her heart, then maybe it would help Lola, too… if Lola would ever consent to being Healthy Body’d— Wait. Was Lola in one of those groups for survivors of Resurrection—

Oh gods.

Mark maintained his composure as much as he could, until he had gotten out of direct sight of Isoko, because… because… Had Isoko been in Freyala’s heaven? Like Lola had been with Freyala? Had Mark ripped her out of it? Freyala had handed Mark the Bindings for Platinum Body and Union, and neither of those were common at all—

Oh gods.

Mark had ended up in some kinda side room, far enough from the main party. He almost stumbled, a massive guilt slamming into him like a kaiju stomp. He righted himself, though everyone had seen. Mark tried not to look at everyone, at Glorious Man over there, or at Justicar, or at Specter and Tempest and Melanie Moore— Mark tried, saying, “Uh… It’s just… It never gets easier? Even if…” Mark looked to Timeweaver. “Even if Jessie might be coming?”

A lot of sudden hopeful emotions swirled around the room as eyes turned toward Timeweaver, while a few truly empathic people, like Justicar over there, looked upon Mark with sympathy and real understanding.

Moore looked to Timeweaver, and said, “Well?”

Timeweaver sighed greatly, and then he said, “FIIIIIINE. I’ll fucking check—” Timeweaver blinked, and then came back, and he stood a bit straighter. He lied, “Well that was a relaxing few days.” He told Mark, “You’re gonna call me ‘Zaid’ and we’re gonna be best work friends, and then we’re going to go get you that orichalcum.”

“… Uh? Yeah sure, Zaid.”

Zaid nodded. “Good!” He pointed to a hallway. “Down that way. Aleph Two is over there and— And you can figure out the rest.” Zaid ‘confided’ with a stage whisper, “There is no end to the work at a certain level, and so boundaries are necessary. I’m going golfing.”

And then Zaid flickered and vanished.

Moore stepped in line with Mark, walking with him wherever he was supposed to go, saying, “So? Orichalcum?”

Mark got to walking, and soon he was down a hallway and around a few corners—

A shipment of orichalcum sat in the middle of a normal room, on a metal hovertray on the ground, like someone had robbed a bank and decided to use their ill gotten gains as a centerpiece. The ‘robber’ might have been Aleph Two, standing to the side, looking like a happy blue person with an extra set of arms. Aleph One’s son seemed to be doing okay with the Powers Mark had given him, of Web Control, Technopath, and Technosis Body. Mark would get to him in a moment, though, because this was a lot of orichalcum, and he needed it.

The shipment was a stack of reddish-gold bars, each one weighing 25 kilos. At 5 across, 2 deep, and 5 tall, that meant 2,500 kilos. Bands of steel strapped it to the hovercart. A few more bars sat on top of the main shipment, bringing the total size up to 3,000 kilos.

Mark said, “Aleph One said you guys had 3 extra tons laying around. I guess this is it?”

A screen flickered on to the side, and Aleph One materialized on that screen looking like an old Japanese guy with blue lines on his face. Aleph One said, “This is nothing compared to the gift of the adamantium you left in the bay, but unlike your capabilities, orichalcum production is rather limited. We have an extra 2,000 kilos beyond this measure, but 1,000 of it is slated for the rebuild of New Tokyo.”

“I doubt I’ll need any more than this so I won’t ask for more, yet,” Mark said, thinking...

Mark did some quick math.

Each 5 kilo orb of orichalcum he absorbed, which took about 2 days each to absorb, gave him about 2-3 points of Utilized. He was now at a Utilized cap of 199. A thousand new kilos of orichalcum would give him 500 Utilized. So this stuff here represented 1,500 Utilized. If his Union of Dream and Reality method of absorption worked, then he’d shoot up to something like 1,700 Utilized.

Mark said, “I can’t imagine needing more than this for a little while. Thank you… Crystal Tower?”

Melanie Moore stepped forward, saying, “New Tokyo has granted you this request, but Crystal Tower has added their own reserves to this request, and we are all delighted to assist you as you ask. Would you like privacy?”

Mark smiled a little. There was no real privacy to be had here, but he was thankful for the ‘fig leaf’ of propriety because Moore truly meant it when she offered it. And sure, she was the Commander of Crystal Tower, and she surely had some great political abilities of her own, but her offer seemed genuine.

Mark said, “That’s not necessary. Thank you, though.”

Mark lifted a hand and adamantium spilled out in ribbons, allowing Mark to grab the first bar and hold it aloft. It was comparably soft as it whined in Mark’s grip, as he tested its strength. Orichalcum came from orichalcum-mana-possessing entities crystallizing their orichalcum around seed crystals of gold, platinum, and osmium inside of the entities’ bodies. Mostly gold, though. Adamantium, by contrast, was focused on osmium. Mithril was focused on platinum.

Orichalcum was more malleable than gold, for it was the stuff of dreams manifested into reality, so Mark knew that this stuff was absolutely orichalcum.

Mark completely wrapped the bar in adamantium, in a part of himself, and then he focused on that wrapped piece of god metal, Unioning softly with Dream and Reality—

Black veins pulsed out of Mark’s chest, into the air, down the ribbons, to the enveloped bar, where black veins beat in time to Mark’s heart around the enclosed metal. The dream lay beyond those black veins, in the colors leaking into reality from the dream. With every beat of Mark’s heart he gently closed his grip around the orichalcum bar, feeling it crumble and melt inward, into Mark’s soulhouse, like drops of water into a puddle, making the puddle larger.

Soon, Mark released the space where the orichalcum had been, and it was gone.

“It really worked. I was worried it was going to spill over everywhere.” Mark asked the people in the room, “Figure anything out about soulhouses yet?”

Moore had no response, for she was trying to pretend they weren’t spying on him just as much as everyone else.

Aleph One kept his mouth shut, too.

Aleph Two, however, said, “You’re piercing into a demiplane that we can’t fully see, but we do recognize that it’s a divine demiplane.”

“That’s about all I know about it, too.” Mark started absorbing the next brick. “How much information do you guys share with Aluatha?”

Moore explained, “Information on top global threats, various international warnings, kaiju kill information that allows us to better train people. And yet, when it comes down to it, we share almost nothing at all. Our cultures and governments are almost inherently incompatible, for they’re monarchists and we’re a democracy, and they attempt to subvert our democracy now and again to better suit their needs. A year ago, I would have said Aluatha and Okuana have that in common, but things have changed. We still don’t trust Aluatha as we would an ally, but they’re certainly no enemy.”

Mark nodded a little, feeling a deep kinship with all of New Tokyo in that moment.

And then he half-lidded his eyes as he checked on his Status. With two bricks absorbed —and they did absorb, so this was actually working— his Utilized had gone from 199 max to 227. Ah… this was awesome.

Mark came back to reality and began absorbing the third brick, asking, “I have a lot of Powers from the people of the blockade. Walaria said she is going to send me a list of things that she requires, and that she will try to get Jessie Stills here tomorrow, or as soon as possible. Maybe today? So I’m going to help you guys make some more big powers, if you got people who you trust to handle that.”

Aleph Two breathed out, whispering, “Fractal.”

‘Fractal’ seemed like slang, and like a good thing.

Aleph One bowed on the screen.

Melanie Moore seriously asked, “Has anyone figured out how to counteract the memory loss of resurrection?”

“Not to my knowledge,” Mark said.

Aleph Two said, “We expect months of lost memories, if Jessie can get here and actually do a real Resurrection Day within the next hour.”

Moore seemed cautiously optimistic.

Mark wasn’t about to ruin whatever Witchery Aluatha was probably doing to make Jessie Stills the Resurrection Ghost, for real, so he just told them all, “Don’t plan on that happening. Have him prioritize people.”

“Gods, that’s a political nightmare,” Moore muttered, but she seemed reassured, almost, that Mark had cut her hopes down to nothing.

“Have you guys cracked the memory loss numbers?” Mark admitted, “Isoko was only out for something like 20 minutes. She lost maybe 3 hours.”

Aleph Two said, “Based on records from the Battle For Memphi, we believe there’s several levels to memory loss. A death of 5 minutes or less means almost no memory loss at all for most people. Anything past 5 minutes means 10 to 20 minutes lost per minute dead. Anything over an hour dead means 30 to 48 hours lost per hour gone.”

Mark nodded a little.

He was on his 6th bar and so far he had gotten no popups from System Prime. Mark began absorbing 3 at a time. It was barely slower than doing 1 at a time, as he said, “The ‘prime’ goblins —if you want to call them that— die and are reborn all the time, though they fully lose their memory between deaths. Grax, the Light Titan, leaves for hundreds of years and comes back completely different each time, but he reads books in his library that remind him who he is, and his memories resurface from those books, in his dreams. The Grax out there today is closer to the one from the history books than the one he originally was when he was born again. All of the goblins do that.”

Aleph Two asked, “Where did you hear that?”

Mark said, “Goofy Goblin talked about it in his interviews—”

For one horrific moment, Mark flinched.

Oh gods.

Goofy Goblin wore that Glorious Man costume all the time, and Mark had even had one printed up for him to wear better. Oh gods. Was the real Glorious Man going to say something about that? Oh fuck… Oh fuc—

No no!

Play it cool.

Move on, Mark.

Mark, uh, shrugged. “I don’t think reading about oneself works for humans, uh, otherwise I would have, uh, heard about it.”

Moore, Aleph One, and Aleph Two both gave Mark a small Look.

They ignored Mark’s moment.

Aleph Two nodded a little, his eyes suddenly flickering with blue light, and then going back to normal blue. “I haven’t found anything that would suggest humans reading memories of themselves would regain themselves.”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Aleph One said, “It is an experiment we can attempt.”

Mark shrugged. With a shearing flick of adamantium, Mark clipped off the metal strap holding down the rest of the orichalcum and then he grabbed up ten bricks and started absorbing them into his soulhouse. Dream and Reality pulsed, and reality became a part of the dream.

Mark continued to absorb the bricks as he asked Aleph Two, “How did your Powers work out there?”

“I was able to take command of the nuclear weapons, strike Chiba with them, and empower them enough to kill the hole between the Two Worlds and a majority of the infiltration,” Aleph Two said, “My actions resulted in the elimination of 2 dragons and 1 Living Kill spell, before they adapted.”

Mark hadn’t known that AIs were the ones responsible for making high-Power-Level nukes, but that made a lot of sense… They didn’t sacrifice themselves, though?

Mark asked, “I’m suddenly reminded of how they used to put people into city walls to empower them against kaiju. You guys don’t do that with AIs and bombs, do you?”

Aleph One was quiet. Moore said nothing. If either of them were surprised that Mark knew that secret, they didn’t show it.

Aleph Two grinned a little, saying, “Un-awakened AIs can do bombs just fine, but we didn’t need that; I did it myself.”

“Neat.” Mark asked, “Were you in the big blue cubes, too?”

“Nah,” Aleph Two said, shaking his head.

Aleph One said, “Each cube is a world for our kind, with United Sapients’ main offices split between two of them, though the individual cubes are all contracted out to larger groups. Those groups fired those weapons.”

“Oh wow!” Mark said, surprised. “I didn’t know that there were AI worlds in there? Virtual, I assume?” He added, “But who really knows, actually.”

“They don’t feel virtual when you’re in them,” Aleph Two said. “If you want to send Quark to visit, we’d welcome him anytime. He can just pop in. Youwould have to use a headset if you want to visit. There are any number of places that can do that.”

“I’ll have to consider—”

Mark crossed a threshold.

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