The Perfect Run

Where could Mechron be hiding?

Smashing through blast doors and steel walls, Leonard Hargraves felt something wrong in the atmosphere. Space itself bending and twisting. Something created powerful magnetic fields inside the base, tearing apart the very fabric of reality.

As he had thought, Mechron’s fortress also counted as a particle accelerator. Did the Genius activate it? For what purpose? How could it help repel the army at his door?

“Pythia, where do I go?” Leonard asked, but he only ‘heard’ psychic static. Whatever happened inside the fortress interfered with the telepathic contact.

He was on his own.

Leonard eventually made his way into the fortress’ collider, a closed circuit of steel inside which particles moved at an astonishing speed. A stream of unknown, blue energy raced through the superstructure, the Red Genome entering it like a fish swimming inside a river. He didn’t identify the particles inside the collider; perhaps they were undiscovered by modern science, or not native to Earth’s reality.

Much to his surprise, Leo started to see things inside the stream. Bluish phantoms of strange, inhuman figures composed of raw data, blinking in and out of existence. These mirages never settled in one shape, constantly changing.

What was going on?

The living sun could tell the ambient energy focused in one place at the facility’s center; the point where the two loops making up the infinity symbol joined. He followed the blue stream towards its endpoint, eventually crashing through more steel walls. The blue stream leaked out behind him, dispersing into fine particles.

Leo’s crash course ended at the very core of the fortress, a command center straight out of H. R. Giger’s nightmares. The entire room looked like a gothic cathedral of steel, whose walls were alive; veins of metal coursed through them, pumping the building with thick black oil. The structure seemed capable of breathing, while coiled tin spines formed the pillars keeping the roof. Eye-like screens projected images of the battle outside, while loudspeakers screamed warnings.

Six giant, biomechanical brains the size of elephants formed a circle around a tiny blue spot floating in the midst of an energy pillar; the focal point of the entire superstructure. Each of the brains were protected from the outside world by reinforced glass tanks, and connected by thick wires. Leo guessed they were biomechanical supercomputers, housing the AIs piloting their master’s entire war effort.

Mechron was there, standing on a platform below the blue spot. The wizened old man wore nothing but simple white clothes and needed a black cane to walk. He was the only creature of flesh in this ghastly iron heart, giving orders to his AI servants in Bosnian.

“Transfer all data to the back-up base.” Mechron’s voice sounded so calm, so small. So human. “Activate all remaining units outside, and open the gate.”

“Data transfer initiated.” A robotic voice answered through loudspeakers. “Warning: dimensional coordinates incomplete. High-degree of instability expec—”

“Don’t care if we destroy Sarajevo! Open the gate!”

Mechron suddenly noticed Leonard, who had his palm raised at the man.

Now that he could take a good look at the Genius’ face, the living sun realized that the battle had taken its toll on him too. Already past his seventies, Mechron seemed like he hadn’t slept in days. His eyes were blackened by fatigue, his hands shaking with stress.

He looked so… so normal. He didn’t wear a costume, nor was he a larger-than-life, charismatic dark lord. Mechron was a mere man, straight out of a retirement home; one who had killed millions, perhaps billions.

And yet... he looked so very tired of it all. Broken by a decade of endless warfare.

The living sun’s hand wavered.

“Make your shot count,” Mechron said, glaring bitterly at Leonard. “You won’t get another.”

Instead of blasting him, Leonard Hargraves stared at the hateful dictator straight in the eyes. “Are you happy, Mechron?” he asked in Bosnian.

The question took the Genius aback.

“Are you happy living like this?” Leonard asked. While he didn’t unleash any plasma blast, he kept his hand raised. Pythia would flay him alive if she knew. “Alone in a bunker, surrounded by machines, killing people left and right? Was that your wish? Are you happy living like this?”

The fortress shook, while the Genius mulled the question over. He looked away, before focusing back on Leonard.

“No,” Mechron admitted, sounding exhausted. “No, I’m not.”

“Then why won’t you stop?”

“Why do you care?” the Genius snapped back.

“Because… because I want to believe human life should be cherished. Even yours. I will kill you if I must, but call me naive… if there is the slightest chance of ending this by the book, I want to try it.” Leonard paused, trying to find his words. “I don’t know what made you what you are, but you must realize deep down that hurting other people won’t help.”

He did. Leonard could see it painted all over his face.

“Please surrender peacefully,” the living sun asked. “Tell your machines to stand down, and we will give you a fair hearing. Nobody else has to die; not even you. You started this, and you can end it.”

Mechron’s expression suddenly morphed from sadness to wrath.

“I didn’t start anything,” the man snarled, his voice dripping with venom. Anger bottled up for years roared to the surface. “You did. The Serbians murdered my sons at Srebrenica and you people… you people just watched! If you want this war to end, then stop getting in my way!”

Leonard got his answer in the man’s intense, hateful gaze.

He would never stop. It didn’t matter how many had to die to fuel the fire burning within him; it was an inferno that could never be extinguished. This bitter, hateful man would never stop until he had brought the whole world to its knees.

A demon born of war.

Leonard regretfully opened fire.

A crimson force field activated around the rogue Genius, deflecting a stream of plasma. Metal and electrical devices around Mechron melted, but the warlord remained completely unharmed. Similar fields protected the giant brains, protecting them from danger. Leonard flew towards the Genius, intending to smash through the forcefield and end Mechron’s life.

A roar echoed at his left, a wormhole opening. The biomechanical dragon from last time emerged from it, claws raised at the living sun.

A powerful gravitational force pushed Leonard against a steel wall, sending him crashing against mechanical panels. The dragon kept the gravitational force active, attempting to break the Red Genome’s heart-core apart.

“It could have been beautiful! A new Eden!” Mechron’s face twitched in anger. “I could have eradicated diseases, solved world hunger, brought peace! Increased life expectancy, everything automated! Everything would have been perfect!”

his cane at

his hands shaking. “If it hadn’t been for people like you,

free of the battle-beast’s gravitational field. “You didn’t save the world, you killed it! You’re living

his fingers clenching around his cane. By now, he was so furious he couldn't make coherent sentences. “If politicians had any imagination, I wouldn’t have... I wouldn't have fed all the killing data! Had to make them stop!

scales and flesh melted away, leaving only mechanical implants and seared

place of bright blue light. When Leonard looked at this reality tear, he felt something brush against his mind. He thought it was Pythia for a second, before realizing the telepathic signal

sun’s mind, like in the blue stream. Vivid pictures of his childhood in Hackney, surrounded by criminality; of his first day in the London Fire Department, helping a family evacuate from a burning building; of finding the strange box in the mail, and the crimson potion within; of the day he

portal and the images it sent him. Even the burned dragon stopped attacking, entranced by whatever power came from beyond this

intent, and emotions, it all comes from

his cane at the portal, his fury replaced with

world’s secrets, everything that can fix it! It’s all here!” He turned his back on the Red Genome, chuckling to himself. “Even you

own life, they shifted to stranger sights. Of alien worlds covered in massive oceans, ruled

I can begin again!” Mechron boasted. “Fix

divine fascination, until he spotted a tiny taint of

the pictures turning black. The screens in the facility turned red, and the loudspeakers changed their tune. “Warning: anomaly detected. Warning: anomaly detected. Warning: unknown dimension

consumed from within by darkness. Black spots slowly grew from within the blue portal, tainting it entirely. The

was happening. “It’s…

into a black hole, a sphere of darkness from which no light could escape. It wasn’t a door to a

Mechron muttered, gazing into the

And then...

The abyss gazed back.

the room. Mechron barely had the time to scream as his forcefield vanished, and the void

felt the dragon’s gravitational field disappear, only to have his own overwhelmed by darkness too. An alien force threatened to consume him, the way a black hole ate a

them from the other

Mechron layer by layer, like an onion. Skin, flesh, bones, and then working its ways down. Within the seconds, the Genius had been erased

body whole through a powerful gravitational field, Leonard would have suffered the same fate. Even now he felt the outer layers of his solar body disintegrating, its molecules annihilated into nothingness. The sustained gaze of this thing would tear him apart in

couldn’t comprehend what he was looking at. A shape vaguely reminding Leo of an eye, surrounded by a cloud of dark, empty space; a sentient hole in reality, a living darkness that devoured light instead of being banished by it. A colossal entity, so powerful, so almighty, that it destroyed their reality simply

trying to get

gaze increasing. The entity behind the gate kept looking, unaware, or perhaps uncaring, of the damage it caused. If the

kill

immediately unleashed a stream of plasma at the portal. Flames as searing as

stopped

extinguished. They disappeared, leaving neither heat nor smoke behind. The dark force on the

to this entity, the living sun looked like an ant trying to attack an

nothing, this thing would erase him from existing within minutes, and then do the same with the fortress. The particle accelerator’s destruction would

The particle accelerator’s destruction…

he could collapse the portal before it could

fighting to make a difference in this bleak, devastated world. Friends like Pythia, with families at home; soldiers trying to

Leonard didn’t hesitate.

his remaining energy, calling upon whatever power fueled his heart-core, and caused his heart-core to implode on itself. His body turned white,

beyond. “Better to

thought towards his comrades

world in a cataclysmic explosion, and the darkness returned from whence it

Darkness.

A pitch-black nothingness. He couldn’t see,

He felt cold.

He felt numb.

than anything, he

Had the darkness beyond that portal been the afterlife? Or maybe it was all a hallucination,

vanish, cease to exist. Compared to an eternity

like the sun, but he never felt warm when alone. So he had

with his thoughts. Alone with his

he would. He would never return to London and see the people he left behind. He would never get to make up with certain friends, whom he had parted with on bad terms; he would never avenge the Costas or bring Augustus to justice. He would never know if

many things

But…

was okay with

He had tried.

had done

was beyond the exit. Was it Heaven? Was it the last door?

know, but whatever awaited him beyond… he could live

He entered the light.

Leonard opened his eyes.

could only see a

with some changes. His black skin was somehow hairless now, and all his muscles felt sore. His dark eyes struggled to adapt to the light, though he noticed two people looking over

on her friend. “You

Genome always wore a plague doctor outfit, to the

seemed to be in some kind of hospital,

death hadn’t

few dozen kilometers from Sarajevo. We evacuated

with happiness.

form words. His throat felt dry and

“Three days,” Stitch answered.

“And Mechron’s fortress…”

Ace smiled at him, happy to see her friend alive. “You blew up