251 Signs of the End [Nicole]
251 Signs of the End [Nicole]
[POV: Nicole]
“Increase the security measures around Designation: Little King,” I ordered. “I permit you to leave my side and delegate in person. Phasecrash will be sufficient as my bodyguard.”
It left a bitter taste in my mouth to refer to my son by a designation. Little King. A code in a database. A redacted entry in encrypted files. But necessity overruled sentiment. Ron would become Nick’s most obvious weakness, and in time, the world would realize it. No matter how miraculous a psychic infant he was, he remained a baby taken prematurely from my womb, fragile in ways power ratings could not compensate for.
A sufficiently dedicated high-rated cape could do irreparable harm if we faltered for even a moment.
That was why I had tasked Abner with disseminating false intelligence about various “designations,” muddying the waters with fabricated heirs, phantom projects, and ghost assets. If someone went hunting for Little King, I wanted them drowning in contradictions.
“Copy, boss,” Two-D replied.
“You are dismissed.”
She phased through the reinforced door, leaving Phasecrash and me alone in the command chamber.
“Ma’am, if you don’t mind,” Phasecrash began carefully, “what’s the reason for increasing security again? We already escalated protocols after the attack from that strange faction.”
Among our people, very few even knew Ron existed. The Godslayers did. Griffin, Guesswork, and George certainly did. My two bodyguards did. That alone was too many.
I did not trust Griffin or Guesswork on principle anymore. They were aligned with another organization now, regardless of personal loyalties. As for George, his situation unsettled me most. His so-called disappearance—his “death”—had always been anomalous. If any cape approached functional immortality, it was him. An information-based lifeform did not die in conventional ways.
His AI framework, the one he left under my ownership, now operated in the background of our systems. I had built an entire department around it. Even so, I could not fully determine how much of George persisted within the code.
I exhaled slowly and answered Phasecrash honestly.
“There’s a pattern emerging,” I said. “Bizarre killings. Pregnant women. Children. Individuals with no obvious enemies. A garbage collector. A middle-schooler. A part-time worker. A recent graduate. At first glance, none of it connects.”
Phasecrash’s posture stiffened.
“I assigned Spoiler and Abner to investigate. With Guesswork’s assistance, they uncovered something deeply disturbing. These killings are targeted. Not at present threats, but at future ones.”
I turned to face the panoramic display of our city.
“Individuals statistically likely to manifest high-tier abilities are being eliminated. Some before their powers awaken. Some before they are even conceived. It is an attempt to neuter the future.”
The words felt heavy even as I spoke them.
“The enemy,” I continued, “is pruning destiny.”
Phasecrash’s jaw tightened. “You think they’ll come for Ron.”
“I know they will,” I said quietly. “The data projection around his potential is obscene. Even if someone cannot see the specifics, they can feel the anomaly around him.”
I clasped my hands behind my back to steady them.
“The attackers demonstrated intangibility ratings on par with Eclipse. Nick can now casually ignore most nullification technologies on this planet. That means there are others approaching similar thresholds. Of course, Nick had unique training, but still…”
For all my resources, for all my exotic psychic constructs and layered contingencies, I felt the limits of my reach pressing inward.
“I’m scared, Phasecrash,” I admitted.
The words tasted unfamiliar.
“I command armies. I manipulate information flows. I can rewrite perception on a citywide scale. Yet in the face of forces capable of editing the future itself, I am small. If they breach our perimeter with someone comparable to Nick at his current level, conventional security becomes theater.”
Phasecrash did not interrupt.
“I will not allow Ron to become a statistic in someone else’s cosmic calculation,” I said. “So we escalate. Redundant psychic cloaking. Rotational decoy designations. Independent kill-switch protocols on any staff with access to his location. I want layered realities around his chamber if necessary.”
“Surely it’s not that bad, right?” Phasecrash asked.
There was an earnestness in her tone that almost made me smile.
I laughed instead, though there was no humor in it. “You of all people are saying that? You have access to our classified files. You’ve personally used the multiverse technology as part of your arrangement with Eclipse. You’ve seen other realities. You know how vast this all is. And you’re telling me it might not be that bad?”
She did not flinch.
“It’s because we have Eclipse,” she replied carefully. “I don’t mean any disrespect, nor do I intend to sound weak. But I believe I’ve glimpsed what kind of monster ‘Eclipse’ truly is.”
I raised a brow slightly.
“Of course,” she added quickly, “I don’t claim to understand your husband better than you do. But I can see you look at him through a tinted lens. You see his vulnerabilities. You see the parts that bleed. Perhaps that’s part of why he cherishes you so deeply. That affection turned into something like Little King.”
She hesitated only briefly before continuing.
“Respectfully, ma’am, your husband has something immense sealed within him. During my training sessions with him and Two-D, I saw flashes of it. Not cruelty, exactly. Not madness in the conventional sense. It felt like… emptiness that gained a personality. An absence that cultivated willpower so strong it defied what a self is supposed to be.”
That was an impressively poetic way to call Nick insane and inhuman.
She pressed on, almost awkwardly. “If I had to phrase it bluntly, I’d say he doesn’t have a soul in the traditional sense. And yet he formed attachments. He cultivated love. That contradiction is terrifying. Sorry, that was a tangent. I was raised in a religious household. Well, technically by the mafia. A religious mafia, which sounds absurd when I say it out loud.”
Despite the situation, I felt a flicker of amusement.
More than that, I felt something warmer. Hearing someone articulate Nick’s scale, his danger, his anomaly, and still conclude that he was our shield… it was gratifying.
I cleared my throat lightly. “I will add another quota to your multiverse travel ticket.”
She blinked. “Ma’am?”
“You are currently granted passage once a month, correct? We will make it twice.”
Her eyes widened slightly, though she remained composed.
“Of course,” I continued evenly, “you will be doing something for me in return.”
Nothing in the Company was free. Not even kindness.
Multiverse access was Phasecrash’s primary motivation for joining us. Her obsession with locating alternate versions of her little brother, observing his life paths across realities, was strange and deeply human at the same time. People were built from peculiar fixations. That was what made them human. Irrational, emotional, yet internally coherent.
“But ma’am,” she said carefully, “if I leave, you would be without a bodyguard.”
“I will relocate my office to Little King’s chamber,” I replied. “It is the most secure room in this facility. Operational control can be handled remotely. Two-D will serve as my mouthpiece when required.”
She straightened. “Then what do you need from me?”
“I need you to investigate the faction behind the fake Eclipse and his accomplices.”
Her expression sharpened instantly.
“We need a name,” I said. “We need to understand their organizational structure, their hierarchy, their reach within our world. How deeply they’ve infiltrated. I am authorizing you to assemble a task force under my authority.”
I stepped closer, lowering my voice slightly.
“I chose you because of survivability. You are intangible-class. You can enter warp state and disengage if necessary. We have already lost George. Nick has suffered setbacks and is still compensating. Griffin is entangled with NSD and GDF political fallout. Spoiler is too valuable and too marked; the fake Eclipse already demonstrated interest in her. Abner is overloaded and cannot provide you with consistent strategic oversight.”
I let the weight of it settle.
“This is not reconnaissance for the sake of curiosity. This is preemptive survival. If this faction is pruning future capes, then Little King is already on their list.”
Phasecrash’s jaw tightened, but her eyes did not waver.
“This is a tremendous responsibility,” I said quietly. “Can you do it?”
“Yes, ma’am,” she replied without hesitation. “I will do my utmost to see this through.”
I held her gaze for a moment longer, measuring conviction, then nodded.
“Good,” I said. “Go.”
I relocated my office into the most secure room in the facility.
The chamber that housed my son had originally been designed as a containment-grade vault layered with nullification composites, psychic dampeners, spatial anchors, and redundancies upon redundancies. I dragged in a desk myself despite protests from staff, positioned it near the reinforced glass of Ron’s incubation unit, and installed a cluster of terminals wired directly into George’s AI framework.
The AI system—Designation: Bunny—came online with a soft cascade of status lights.
The entire sector remained on lockdown. Access was stripped to the bare minimum. Only Two-D could enter and exit freely, courtesy of the peculiar nature of her intangibility. Even then, I monitored her transitions.
Two-D became my courier and my mouthpiece. She phased in and out at irregular intervals, delivering reports, collecting instructions, projecting my presence in meetings where I could not afford to appear physically. Through her and Bunny, I operated just shy of micromanaging every artery of the Company.
It was necessary.
The organization backing the fake Eclipse, Paleman’s faction, had been relentless. Resource hubs were struck. Supply chains sabotaged. Informants erased. Their operations were surgical and evasive. Every time we attempted to trace their structure, we were led into dead ends, shell entities, or carefully staged misdirection.
The GDF assisted us more often than they realized. Most of their members likely believed they were countering independent threats, unaware they were indirectly reinforcing the Company’s defenses. That arrangement was only possible because Griffin kept the line open.
I tried repeatedly to probe Paleman’s network deeper. Each attempt dissolved into smoke.
It was infuriating.
Hopefully, Phasecrash would find something tangible.
“This just fucking sucks,” I muttered under my breath as Bunny pinged a live broadcast onto the central display.
A humanoid tree stood before a camera.
Its bark-like skin was textured and intricate, branches forming a crown around its head. Behind it loomed a massive tree whose trunk had been torn open by a circular portal. Through that rift, enormous tree-like xenoforms emerged in orderly formation, securing a perimeter in what appeared to be a devastated urban zone.
“My people seek peace with your world,” the tree figure declared. “The Divine Forest King has decreed that I spread the word of peaceful coexistence.”
I leaned back slowly in my chair.
“Unlike the barbaric people of the NSD,” the emissary continued smoothly, “my people know grace. We may appear alien to you, but our intentions are sincere. Our desire for mutual cooperation has never been stronger.”
I had already been briefed that the tree xenoforms reached some form of agreement with the SRC behind closed doors. Nick had informed me personally. The NSD had been excluded intentionally on the decision as far as I was concerned.
This, however, was public theater.
I picked up my secure line and dialed Guesswork directly.
“This isn’t what we discussed,” I said as soon as he answered. “We agreed to stage this next week.”
“Sorry,” he replied without preamble. “Emergency shift in variables. I’ll send coordinates. Come here. Let’s talk.”
The line cut.
I frowned and signaled Two-D. She phased into the room moments later.
The chamber housed a compact portal generator reserved for emergency evacuation and high-priority movement. I turned to Bunny.
“Punch it.”
The AI complied instantly. Space distorted, then peeled open into a stabilized gateway.
Two-D followed half a step behind me as I crossed through.
The environment on the other side was surreal.
It resembled an ocean floor transplanted into open air. Coral structures spiraled upward from sand-like terrain. Schools of fish drifted lazily through nothingness as though water still held them. Bioluminescent flora pulsed in soft gradients of blue and violet.
In the distance stood two familiar figures.
Guesswork looked battered. His clothing was torn in places, posture slightly uneven. Beside him towered the Führer.
I walked toward them, heels pressing into sand that did not behave like sand.
“Care to explain?” I demanded.
Then I noticed it.
The Führer’s arm was gone.
Not severed cleanly. Not bandaged. Simply absent beyond the shoulder.
It was a curious development to see in an otherwise seemingly unkillable cape.
Guesswork looked worse for wear the closer I got.
“What happened to you?” I asked sharply. “Weren’t you supposed to be with Eclipse?”
I deliberately avoided using Nick’s given name in front of the Führer.
Guesswork merely smiled faintly, choosing not to answer in that company.
The massive leader of the NSD turned his gaze on me.
“Where is Eclipse?” he asked.
“I will be acting as his representative for the Company,” I replied evenly.
Guesswork sighed, the tension palpable.
“Explain,” I demanded.
Guesswork rubbed his temple as though warding off a headache. “As you can see, an entire ocean vanished overnight. We had to redirect global attention. Panic on that scale would’ve destabilized multiple governments.”
I stared at the impossible landscape around us. Coral towers, drifting fish, seabed sediment suspended under open sky.
He continued, “Our recent… interview with the Divine Forest King gave us insight into the Entity’s tactics. Eclipse likely filled you in. Psychological warfare. Grand, incomprehensible events. Inspire fear. Erode stability. Make the world question its own physical laws.”
I lifted an eyebrow subtly toward the Führer, silently asking why he was present.
He did not miss it.
“I was informed of this Entity only recently,” the Führer said evenly. “It influenced my decision to accept the Divine Forest King’s forces into a temporary alliance structure. My internal investigations uncovered infiltration. The Entity’s pawns have embedded themselves within my government. They are accelerating rebellion within my territories.”
I did not soften my expression. “That still does not explain why you are here.”
He scoffed faintly. “The ocean vanished. Where did you think it went?”
Guesswork answered before I could. “The moon. Specifically, the NSD’s lunar base. A tidal cascade of supercooled ocean mass manifested directly onto the installation. The impact triggered atmospheric anomalies across Earth. Super typhoons. Hailstorms the size of artillery shells. Tornado clusters. Cascading catastrophes.”
His voice carried exhaustion.
“It’s apocalyptic optics,” he added. “The SRC redeployed capes from multiple sectors to mitigate damage. The GDF stepped in heavily as well. None of it is natural, obviously. As for the tree emissary broadcast, that was Griffin’s suggestion. Distract the public with a controlled narrative while we contain the fallout.”
“And why am I here?” I asked again.
“Because of her,” Guesswork said.
He pointed toward a mound of coral and fractured seabed.
I followed his gesture.
Partially buried beneath layered growth was a familiar figure.
Phasecrash.
“We detected remnants of what appears to have been an underwater facility here,” Guesswork continued. “The Führer arrived to investigate the origin point of the lunar strike. But the more pressing issue is your subordinate. Do you know how to wake her?”
I moved immediately, kneeling beside her.
She was not dead.
Her body existed in a peculiar stasis, edges blurred, faintly translucent, as if reality had paused around her. I recognized the condition. She had described it once as a final contingency: a self-induced spectral freeze achieved by pushing her intangibility into a defensive lock.
A last resort at the brink of death.
“I left a trigger embedded in her cognition,” I said quietly. “With her consent. Something only I could activate.”
I reached out psychically, threading carefully through the suspended state until I found the anchor I had placed months ago.
“Wake up, Phasecrash.”
The command resonated along the trigger.
Her body snapped back into solidity, coral fragments phasing harmlessly through her as she lurched forward. She heaved violently, retching though there was nothing in her stomach to expel.
I caught her shoulders and stabilized her neural activity with a gentle psychic field.
“It’s alright,” I murmured. “You’re safe.”
Her eyes were bloodshot, pupils dilated.
“Those cultists,” she rasped. “No, nothing is fine. They’re planning something catastrophic. I saw it.”
Her breathing quickened erratically.
“God is real,” she whispered hoarsely. “That means the devil is real too. We’re… we’re…”
Her body slackened abruptly.
She fainted.
I caught her before she hit the coral-littered ground.
Slowly, I looked up at Guesswork and the Führer.
“Please tell me,” I said evenly despite the chill creeping up my spine, “that we have a lead on these cultists.”
It didn’t bring me any comfort that we could now put a ‘name’ on our enemies.