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!”

raised his cane at Leonard, gritting his

hadn’t been for you…” He hit the ground with his cane, his hands shaking. “If it hadn’t been for people like

Leo replied angrily, trying to break free of the battle-beast’s gravitational field. “You didn’t save the world, you killed it! You’re living among

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! They

flesh melted away, leaving only mechanical implants and seared bones. Yet

the blue sphere started expanding inside the energy pillar, turning into some kind of energy lens. A spatial anomaly leading into a 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 came from

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 and Alice founded the

Leonard asked, mesmerized by the portal and the images it sent him. Even

Records…” Mechron muttered, his eyes widening in triumph. “The universal compendium. All data, all information, all knowledge, all intent, and

cane at the portal,

that can fix it! It’s all here!” He turned his back on the

they shifted to stranger sights. Of alien worlds

again!” Mechron boasted. “Fix everything! Once I

fascination, until he spotted a tiny

the facility turned red,

Black spots slowly grew from within the blue portal, tainting it entirely. The room seemed to freeze over,

was happening. “It’s…

from which no light could escape. It wasn’t a door

all black,” Mechron muttered, gazing into

And then...

The abyss gazed back.

and most of the room. Mechron

disappear, only to have his own overwhelmed by darkness too. An alien force threatened

them from

working its ways

keeping his 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

in reality, a living darkness that devoured light instead of being banished by it.

it was trying to

slowly widened, the radius of the baleful gaze increasing. The entity behind the gate kept looking, unaware, or perhaps

somehow kill everyone

immediately unleashed a stream of plasma

quickly stopped

nor smoke behind. The dark force on the other side of the portal hadn’t even noticedLeonard’s counterattack; its mere

the living sun looked

this thing would erase him from existing within minutes, and

The particle accelerator’s destruction…

fortress, he could collapse the portal before it could grow larger. But the explosion needed… it

difference in this bleak, devastated

Leonard didn’t hesitate.

whatever power fueled his heart-core, and caused his heart-core to implode on itself. His body turned white, his radiance incinerating the room. The black hole absorbed most of the heat, but not all

beyond. “Better to

his comrades outside, the Living

the world in a cataclysmic explosion, and

Darkness.

darkness. A pitch-black nothingness. He couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t smell, couldn’t taste.

He felt cold.

He felt numb.

anything,

Had the darkness beyond that portal been the afterlife? Or maybe it was all a hallucination, his brain’s last hurrah before the final

thought he would just vanish, cease to

he could remember. He might have looked like the sun, but he never felt warm when alone. So he had filled

alone with his thoughts.

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.

many things left

But…

was okay

He had tried.

done

though he couldn’t see what was beyond the exit.

whatever awaited him beyond… he could

He entered the light.

Leonard opened his eyes.

facing angels, he could only see a

form, though 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

down on her friend. “You

strange Genome always wore a plague doctor outfit, to the point Leonard had never seen how

sun’s eyes acclimated enough to allow him to see. He seemed to be in some

hadn’t claimed

few dozen kilometers from Sarajevo. We evacuated here

Ace beamed with happiness. “We

His throat felt dry and sore. “How long was

“Three days,” Stitch answered.

“And Mechron’s fortress…”

and glass.” Ace smiled at him, happy