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.

think he wants

seizing the cat in his armored arms. “He’ll improve the

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

far-fetched plan, even a risky one, but they had exhausted all other options. Since they had lost the necessary tech for a consciousness transfer and Europe would soon erupt

chances were slim, but one could always

might die, why are you going along with it?” Ryan asked Jasmine as she began hitting buttons on her control panel, fine-tuning the armor’s

me,” Jasmine replied, pulling a lever on her control panel. Words and numbers started to appear on Ryan’s lenses, the suit’s systems activating. “Roughly 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

to keep his brain in storage in an old loop, to prevent the courier from reloading. “That’s why I tried to keep my secret under wraps

at

Ryan said nothing.

your Len girl is doing, though she doesn’t get it yet. I

Ryan

replied, stopping her work to look at him through the window. “Make sure this disaster never happens again, okay? Kill that

loop from now on, I promise,” Ryan said, frowning. “If I told the

be damned. At worst… I don’t want to think about it.” Vulcan clenched her fists, scowling. “If I don’t make it, go

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

the Genius snapped, interrupting her boyfriend. “Because she’s so

so much in her bitter rivalry with her former teammate, that she had no idea what to do now that Wyvern had thrown in the towel. Maybe with

If she had time.

bunker,

meant to be a compliment or an insult. Knowing Jasmine, probably both. “Do you regret joining

I don’t regret it,” Vulcan finally said. “It wasn’t the best choice,

courier accepted it

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

do all I

or don’t. There

believe they even shared the same love for pop culture. Truly, they had been a match made in

his breath and holding Schrodinger in his arms, Ryan activated his time stop.

Instead of freezing in time, Vulcan’s armor kept working inside the temporal anomaly. Even if the experiment

seconds within the time-stop, the courier immediately noticed something unusual. Bright violet particles began to appear inside the interrogation room, swirling points of light coming off from his person. They

armor was meant to focus Ryan’s power, to fully harvest the theoretical ‘violet flux radiation’ that powered spacetime manipulators. Could this

only increased at an exponential rate; from a few dozens to thousands, shrouding everything around him. Their color turned from

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

genome hastily cancelled

world remained

drowned his sight entirely. Schrodinger, Jasmine, the entire room vanished behind a veil of colored

follow his movement, keeping his limbs encased in steel. He couldn’t even sense Schrodinger

No one answered.

through the armor’s lenses. But instead of the

would fit the stars’ positions in

the bubbles remained at the edge of his vision and the armor refused to move, Ryan saw snow move with the wind. It

a research station or something similar. His vision glitched out, showing a mahogany desk in a darkened room. Three figures spoke around a table, although Ryan couldn’t see them

dimensions defy physics and our understanding.” A woman’s voice. “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

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,

that will crumble to dust, or they will adapt. The chaos

well within our

that? A vision of

this time he could only hear broken voices; purple particles obscured his vision, like a VHS tape suffering from

no place for Black… out of all the colors, it alone can’t be safely harnessed. The creatures within the black dimension do not

only understand lower universes through the prism of