261 End is Nigh
261 End is Nigh
The house looked painfully normal.
It was a small suburban place with a trimmed lawn, a narrow driveway, and a porch light that flickered faintly in the afternoon breeze. If someone had told me the world’s most dangerous family lived here, I would have laughed in their face.
I stood there for a moment before knocking.
Footsteps hurried inside the house.
“Wait a second!” someone called from behind the door. The voice was familiar enough to make my chest tighten.
The door swung open.
Silver froze.
For a split second she just stared at me like she had seen a ghost. Then her eyes filled with tears and she threw herself forward.
“Nick, you’re home!”
She crashed into me with a hug that nearly knocked me backward. Her arms wrapped around my neck while she buried her face against my shoulder.
“I thought you were dead! You idiot, you absolute idiot! Do you have any idea how worried we were? You just disappear for two years and suddenly show up like nothing happened!”
I awkwardly caught her before she fell.
“C-Calm down,” I muttered.
I gently pushed her back and stepped inside while she wiped her eyes like a scolded child.
The interior of the house shocked me even more than the exterior.
Everything looked… normal.
There were family photos on the walls, toys scattered near the living room couch, and a faint smell of cooking lingering in the air. For a moment I forgot the world had almost ended.
“Hey,” I said cautiously, “where’s Ron and Nicole?”
Silver instantly perked up.
Nicole’s still at work,” she said with a grin. “But Ron’s here!”
Before I could react she grabbed my wrist and practically dragged me down the hallway. We stopped in front of a small nursery. Silver pushed the door open.
Inside, a tiny crib sat near the window.
I stepped closer slowly.
Ron lay inside, sleeping quietly.
“He’s so small,” I said without thinking.
Silver leaned against the crib with a fond smile.
“It seems his growth is a bit on the slower side. We think it might be a side effect of his power.”
She gently picked him up and turned toward me.
“You want to hold him?”
My hands hesitated for a moment before I nodded.
Silver carefully guided my arms into position and placed Ron into them.
The moment his weight settled against my chest, something inside me broke. I felt tears forming before I even understood why. Then the door slammed open.
“Ha ha ha! I miss you so much!”
Onyx launched herself at me like a missile. She climbed onto me like a koala, wrapping her arms and legs around my body while grinning mischievously.
“Nick, you bastard! Two whole years! You know how bored I’ve been without you around?”
Silver immediately tried to pry her off.
“Onyx, stop harassing him!”
Onyx ignored her completely and leaned closer with a shameless grin.
“You got even hotter while you were gone. Maybe we should celebrate your return properly—”
“Be careful!” I shouted in panic. “I got a baby in here!”
The two women froze. I looked down at Ron again, carefully adjusting my grip. It was definitely him. My son. But something about him felt… strange. Not wrong. Just different. Before I could figure out why, footsteps approached from the hallway.
Nicole appeared in the doorway.
She looked exhausted, still dressed in her work clothes.
She stared at me blankly.
“Nick?” she said slowly. “I see you’re back.”
She yawned.
“I must be dreaming.”
Then she turned around and started walking away.
Two seconds later she sprinted back into the room.
“Nick!”
Her eyes widened in disbelief.
“Oh my god, it’s definitely you!”
She pointed accusingly at the other two.
“This gals! Silver! Onyx! Why didn’t you tell me!?”
Onyx folded her arms and pouted.
“Because you’d hog him all to yourself!”
Chaos erupted immediately. Nicole grabbed me. Silver tried to pull her away. Onyx complained loudly while attempting to reclaim her climbing position. Ron slept peacefully through the entire thing. Eventually I managed to calm everyone down.
The rest of the day passed in a blur.
We watched a movie together in the living room while eating snacks. The three of them constantly competed for my attention like it was some kind of sport. Every few minutes one of them would steal Ron just to show him off again.
It felt surreal.
Almost peaceful.
Then someone knocked on the door.
Guesswork stepped inside like he owned the place.
“So,” he said casually, “when’s the wedding?”
Onyx immediately shoved him toward the exit.
“Out! Get out! No nerds allowed during family time!”
Silver crossed her arms and glared at him.
“You weren’t invited.”
Nicole added flatly, “Read the room, Guesswork.”
He raised both hands defensively.
“H-hey, calm down. I’m not here to ruin the mood.”
He stepped past them anyway and looked directly at me.
“We need to talk about the important stuff. With Nick back, I’m pretty sure things are about to get noisy again.”
Nicole sighed and leaned against the wall.
“It’s always been noisy. Those insane cultists have been escalating more and more lately.”
I nodded slowly.
Then I asked the question that had been sitting in the back of my mind.
“Anyone here heard from George?”
The room went silent.
Not one of them answered.
I had expected that.
Something must have gone wrong on his side. If George sent Ron back immediately after claiming the Company wasn’t safe, then the situation must have been worse than he let on.
Nicole’s expression hardened.
“I can’t trust him anymore,” she said firmly. “He took our son, Nick.”
Her voice lowered slightly.
“Nothing like what happened in the Company will ever happen again. This neighborhood is inside GDF territory. Between Company security and Chad’s protection, this area is locked down.”
Guesswork rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
“I haven’t heard a word from George either,” he said. “Which worries me.”
I frowned.
“What do you mean?”
Guesswork met my eyes.
“He’s not exactly human,” he said slowly. “At least not biologically. George is closer to a program than a person.”
A quiet tension filled the room.
Guesswork finished the thought calmly.
“So the real question is… what happens if someone hacked him?”
“I know you want to dive straight into work, Guesswork,” I said, leaning against the doorway, “but let me have this day off.”
Guesswork pinched the bridge of his nose like a man being asked to postpone the apocalypse for paperwork reasons.
“Fine, fine,” he sighed. “Have it your way.”
“At least have dinner with us,” I added.
Silver and Nicole groaned in perfect synchronization.
Guesswork raised a brow and glanced toward Onyx, who had been staring at him with a grin that could only be described as criminal.
“I’d rather not,” he replied dryly. “I can already guess Onyx has heinous plans for my tongue based on the way she’s smiling.”
Onyx threw her hands up in protest.
“Oh come on! You’re no fun!”
Dinner passed with a strange sense of calm.
We sat around the table like an ordinary family. Silver argued about seasoning, Nicole complained about work politics, and Onyx kept trying to steal food from everyone else’s plate just to start fights.
For a few hours, the world felt small again.
That night belonged to Nicole.
Two years of distance had carved a deep ache into both of us, and when we finally collapsed into the bed together, that distance vanished in a storm of heat and emotion. Her psychic constructs—Silver and Onyx—were extensions of her heart as much as separate personalities, and they carried the same longing she did.
It was messy and desperate and strangely tender.
We held each other like people trying to make up for lost time.
When everything finally settled, Nicole fell asleep almost immediately, her breathing slow and peaceful against the pillow.
I pulled the blanket over her shoulders and quietly slipped out of bed.
After a quick shower, I dressed in a simple suit and stepped into the hallway.
I was heading toward Ron’s room when a shadow shifted behind me.
Onyx stepped out of the darkness already dressed, her arms crossed.
“This isn’t funny, Nick,” she said. “Are you thinking of pulling another disappearing act?”
I shook my head.
“No. Not like that.”
She watched me carefully while I continued.
“Today was… an indulgence,” I admitted. “A huge one. But we need to get this over with.”
The house was quiet around us.
“It might seem peaceful right now after the past two years,” I said slowly, “but hell is already here.”
Onyx’s expression tightened.
“I can feel the Entity watching me,” I continued. “He’s preparing to make a move. The only reason I reached this level of power is because he wanted me to.”
I flexed my hand slightly.
“My Intangibility-30 is incredible, sure. But the Entity has something more. A quality I can’t replicate.”
I exhaled slowly.
“I thought gathering the strongest capes in this world would be enough. Building alliances, forming teams, preparing for a war. That was naïve. The ceiling is higher than I imagined.”
Onyx didn’t interrupt.
“Everything we’ve built still matters,” I said. “But I’d rather it not come to that.”
I looked at her seriously.
“Onyx, promise me one thing.”
She tilted her head.
“What is it?”
“Evacuate them if—”
“No.”
Nicole’s voice came from the doorway. She stood there wrapped in bedsheets, her hair messy from sleep but her gaze sharp. Silver appeared beside her, arms folded.
“We’re staying,” Silver said calmly.
I sighed quietly.
“The Entity isn’t just after me,” I explained. “He wants this world. More specifically… he wants what’s under it.”
They frowned.
“I don’t know how it ended up here,” I said, struggling to explain something that barely made sense even in my own head. “But the thing beneath this planet… the Source… it’s not supposed to be here.”
The words sounded absurd out loud.
“The power inside it is indescribable,” I continued. “And I have a suspicion about who might have put it here.”
Silence lingered for a moment.
Finally, I straightened my jacket.
“I’m going now.”
I stepped closer and kissed Nicole on the cheek.
“Take care,” she said softly.
I glanced once toward Ron’s room, feeling something complicated twist inside my chest.
Then I moved.
In the blink of an eye, the house disappeared. I reappeared inside Guesswork’s office. He was sitting behind his desk with a glass of alcohol in hand like he had been waiting for hours.
“You kept me waiting long enough,” he said.
I stepped forward.
“There’s something you want to tell me,” I said. “Spill.”
Guesswork’s expression turned serious.
He set the glass down and spoke quietly.
“George betrayed us.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” I said immediately.
The words came out faster than I intended, sharp with instinctive defense.
Guesswork didn’t argue. Instead, he quietly slid a thick folder across the desk toward me.
“Read.”
I picked it up and flipped it open.
Page after page contained operation reports, satellite imagery, combat logs, and photographs. Each document detailed attacks against various SRC installations scattered across different worlds.
The names appearing in the reports repeated over and over.
Dullahan.
George.
I stared at the images.
One photograph showed a shattered SRC facility burning under a dark sky. Another displayed the aftermath of a destroyed dimensional relay station. Then I reached the picture that made my chest tighten.
George stood beside Paleman.
Both of them were looking directly at the camera.
I slowly lowered the page.
“Help me make sense of this,” I said quietly. “Why would George attack SRC bases?”
I tapped the photograph with my finger.
“And why the hell would he help Paleman?”
Guesswork folded his hands.
“I don’t know.”
He leaned back in his chair.
“But the data is real. The images are real. The attacks are real.”
His eyes met mine.
“And George is the one who sent the information to me personally.”
My head snapped up.
“What?”
Guesswork nodded grimly.
“He contacted me directly and provided the evidence. Along with a message explaining that he intends to support the Entity’s faction during the invasion of this world. I wish I understood his reasoning. Maybe the Entity got to him somehow. Maybe that’s why he returned your son.”
I sat down slowly.
The rage building inside my chest was so intense that it became strangely cold.
“That’s the problem,” I said.
Guesswork frowned.
“What problem?”
I looked at him.
“That wasn’t my son.”
For a moment he simply stared at me.
“W-what are you talking about?”
“I know what I saw,” I replied calmly. “The connection felt right. The psychic thread between us was there.”
I folded my hands.
“But that child wasn’t Ron.”
Guesswork blinked.
“What do you mean it wasn’t Ron?”
“It’s a construct,” I said. “A psychic construct. The same kind Nicole creates.”
Understanding slowly crept across his face.
“And Nicole didn’t notice?”
I shook my head.
“Not yet.”
The thought twisted inside my chest.
My real son was somewhere else.
I had come here partly because I wanted to start searching for him immediately. Every instinct inside me screamed to drop everything and hunt George down.
But I didn’t think I had that luxury anymore.
I closed the folder.
“Tell me about MAX.”
Guesswork raised an eyebrow.
“That’s an abrupt change of subject.”
“Answer the question.”
He sighed and leaned back again.
“MAX stands for Martian X. Their civilization originated from a world that apparently experienced a nuclear holocaust. The survivors relocated to Mars and rebuilt from there.”
He tapped the desk absently while explaining.
“They’re extremely advanced technologically. Most of their population falls into the Researcher class rather than combat-oriented powers.”
“Any heavy hitters?” I asked. “People on the level of the Führer or Huston?”
Guesswork shook his head.
“Not really. Their strength lies in infrastructure, technology, and large-scale systems. They only recently developed multiversal travel capability. Lockworld was the one that scouted them and suggested they join the alliance.”
He smirked slightly.
“Although calling it an alliance might be generous. It doesn’t even have an official name. It could collapse tomorrow depending on who argues with who.”
I nodded slowly.
“That’s fine.”
Guesswork studied my expression carefully.
“There’s a reason you’re asking about them, isn’t there?”
“Yes.”
I leaned forward slightly.
“I want to attack the Entity outside this world.”
Guesswork’s smile widened faintly.
“I suspected something like that.”
“I know the SRC has tracked its location,” I continued. “I want to gather every highest-level cape we can find and take the fight directly to it.”
His eyes sharpened.
“The upper seats of the SRC are extremely powerful,” I added. “If we combine their strength with ours, they might actually threaten the Entity.”
I met his gaze.
“Talk to them for me.”
Guesswork chuckled softly.
“And if they refuse?”
I shrugged.
“Tell them I’m perfectly willing to do something unreasonable.”
He waited.
“Tell them I’ll scorch their entire operation if they try to stall me.”
Guesswork laughed openly this time.
“They’re not going to like that.”
“They don’t have to.”
He wiped a tear from the corner of his eye.
“But they’ll cooperate,” he admitted. “Mostly because the alternative sounds worse.”
Then his expression turned thoughtful.
“How about the Führer and Huston?” he asked. “You want them involved too, right?”
“I think I can convince Huston,” I said.
“The Führer?”
“That will be harder.”
I leaned back slightly.
“As for Lockworld’s capes… I’m hoping they’ll play along.”
Guesswork tilted his head.
“Do you really think the Entity will sit quietly while we gather an army?”
I shook my head.
“No.”
“We need to move quickly before—”
The alarms exploded across the building. Red lights flooded the office while emergency sirens echoed through the halls. A mechanical voice blared through the speakers.
“Red alert. Red alert. Global threat detected. All personnel move to emergency stations immediately.”
Guesswork and I turned toward the window at the same time.
The sky had gone dark.
A perfect eclipse hung overhead.