The Perfect Run

Standing in the middle of a white, underground experimentation room, Ryan let out a groan. “I need to go to the bathroom.”

“Too late, asshole,” Jasmine replied, as she used a screwdriver to close the armor’s lightweight alloy chest plate, leaving only the courier’s head exposed. Eugène-Henry Schrodinger meowed at her side, looking at his master with curiosity. “But I added a urine-recycling system if you want to drink your own piss.”

“Charming.” Ryan’s body didn’t feel so heavy, even if he wore a twenty-five kilogram suit of armor. The weight was evenly distributed to lessen the strain on his muscles, and the servos provided additional strength. While the courier wouldn’t be able to move as fast as in his glamorous suit, he could probably punch through concrete.

As per his demand, Jasmine had painted the armor purple, with orange lenses for the helmet’s eyes. Though Ryan looked like an oversized humanoid bug in it, he would remain outrageously flashy, and that was all that mattered.

Hell, his armor’s design matched Vulcan’s own. Wasn’t that adorable? Ryan had also memorized its schematics, so he could rebuild it in a future loop if needed.

Separated from a control area by a door and Plexiglas window, the place used to be an underground police interrogation room before the Wars. Jasmine had repurposed it into a lab, even managing to complete the armor in a matter of days using available material. The makeshift workshop was a far cry from Vulcan’s previous foundry, but it was sufficient.

They didn’t even have to lie about that project, not completely at least. Vulcan had promised Augustus that she would work on a new type of armor capable of enhancing Ryan’s power, and the would-be emperor had given his seal of approval. It seemed the courier’s power had left a good impression on Lightning Butt, or he just didn’t care anymore after his daughter’s demise.

Say what you wanted about the Augusti, but they got things done.

“Should have figured it out sooner,” Jasmine grumbled, as she grabbed the last part of the armor she hadn’t put on Ryan yet: the helmet. “You were just too fucking perfect. Was it a repeat performance? Did you fine-tune your sweet-talking until it worked?”

“No.” Though Ryan had centuries of experience with women, so he knew what made people tick. “You tried to kill me in a previous loop.”

“Did I succeed?” she asked, almost hopeful.

“Nope. Not even close.”

“A shame. Guess I might succeed this time.”

“It’s fine, half my girlfriends tried to kill me at one point or another,” Ryan replied with a smirk. “I’m a masochist.”

“I know you are,” Jasmine replied with a chuckle, though her mood quickly soured. “I’ve got a request, Ryan.”

“A request from you?” Ryan asked, quite surprised. Vulcan didn’t do requests, she gave orders. “How can I refuse?”

“If this fails… and it won’t fail, because I’m a genius…” Jasmine gathered her breath, as if admitting the mere possibility of failure took a colossal effort on her part. “But let’s assume that if it fails...”

“I won’t be able to transfer your mind.” In Ryan’s experience, failure would be the rule, and a potential success the exception.

“Yeah, right Sherlock,” she snapped, clenching her teeth. “If I don’t make it, it means I will cease to exist. The me right now.”

“You will just lose your memories,” Ryan argued. “Don’t be so pessimistic. It’s amnesia, not death.”

“I will lose memories of things I haven’t done. Stop kidding yourself, Ryan. I’ll be erased, end of the story.” She let out a sigh as if bracing herself for death. “So, if I don’t make it… I want you to leave my other self alone. Make sure she lives and doesn’t go to corpo-jail, but don’t pull off your summer fling crap on her. Don’t replace me with another Jasmine.”

“I understand,” Ryan said.

“Before, I said you wouldn’t forget me, and I mean it now. Even if I disappear… promise you won’t forget me.”

“I promise.”

He had made that oath before and always kept it.

The helmet in her hands, Jasmine pushed her lips against Ryan’s. The courier put his hands behind her waist, the armor clinking as it moved, and held her tight. It was a passionate, intense kiss; he felt as if Vulcan wanted to eat him on the spot.

This may be their last.

“Don’t forget that,” Jasmine said upon breaking the embrace and putting the helmet on Ryan’s face. The courier started to breathe with a respirator and see the world through lenses. Vulcan then tried to grab Schrodinger, but the cat stubbornly refused to get caught.

wants to stay,” Jasmine

cat,” Ryan replied, easily seizing the cat in his armored arms.

replied, closing the room’s door behind her. The Genius sat next to a control panel beyond the window,

should allow for physical time-travel, at least in theory. It was a far-fetched plan, even a risky one, but they had exhausted all other options. Since they had lost the necessary tech

but one could always

Ryan asked Jasmine as she began hitting buttons on her control panel, fine-tuning the armor’s functions. Schrodinger waited, strangely silent. “You could keep me chained

eight million people live in New Rome and its countryside. The Meta killed what, two, three million of them? No matter how I see it… one versus three million. You would have to be a huge dick to consider

have thought otherwise,” Ryan admitted. One Genius tried to keep his brain in storage in an old loop, to prevent

at the armor

Ryan said nothing.

to change the world. Make an impact. Like your Len girl is doing, though she doesn’t get it yet. I guess that’s why I

are,” Ryan

look at him through the window. “Make sure this disaster never happens again, okay? Kill

I promise,” Ryan said, frowning. “If I told the

now, casualties be damned. At worst… I don’t want to

sorry, have I misheard?” Ryan asked, astonished. “You want

jealous, alright!” the Genius snapped, interrupting her boyfriend. “Because she’s so fucking perfect!

had the feeling that the short Genius had invested so much in her bitter rivalry with her former teammate, that she had no idea what to do now that Wyvern had thrown in

If she had time.

know her better than anyone,” Jasmine grumbled in admission. “She’ll help getting rid of that bunker, if only because

an insult. Knowing Jasmine, probably both. “Do you regret joining the Augusti?” the courier asked

don’t regret it,” Vulcan finally

but the courier accepted

control panel and looked through the window. “Ryan, we’re ready. Open

do

don’t. There

couldn’t believe they even shared the same love for pop culture. Truly, they had

his arms, Ryan activated his time stop. Now was the moment of

Vulcan’s armor kept working inside the temporal anomaly. Even if the experiment failed, at least Ryan could upgrade his arsenal for

particles began to appear inside the interrogation room, swirling points of light

focus Ryan’s power, to fully harvest the theoretical ‘violet flux radiation’ that powered

an exponential rate; from a few dozens to thousands, shrouding

stop before he accidentally made a new save. This was a mere initial test to access more power from the Purple World, but it wasn’t worth setting New Rome’s

genome hastily cancelled his

world

number of particles around him only increased, until they drowned his sight entirely. Schrodinger, Jasmine,

his body refused to. Or rather, the armor didn’t follow his movement, keeping his limbs encased in steel. He couldn’t even sense Schrodinger in his

No one answered.

split open, finally allowing Ryan to see through the armor’s lenses. But instead of the interrogation room, the courier looked at an icy,

Antarctica? It would fit the stars’ positions

to move, Ryan saw snow move with the wind. It felt

dark metal dome emerging from the snow; perhaps a research station or something similar. His vision glitched out, showing a mahogany desk in a darkened room. Three figures spoke around a

“Yet, to master these alien worlds and conquer the stars is mankind’s destiny. To survive, even thrive, in this hostile universe, humanity must ascend to a higher

slightly different. Ryan couldn't explain it, but it seemed like the same actor voicing two characters. “But governments and institutions will try to stop us, to preserve the status quo. Those old fossils can’t see what’s up ahead; they live in the past, while the future came to us with this craft.

to dust, or they will adapt.

within

that? A vision of the

could only hear broken voices; purple particles obscured his vision,

the black dimension do not seem malicious, but their mere existence tears

only understand lower universes through the prism of their