The Perfect Run

Once upon a time, Ryan and Jasmine had sat around a workshop and planned to make an armor capable of destroying Dynamis’ HQ.

That promise was now fulfilled.

“You have two hidden switchblades below the arms and laser turrets in the gauntlets,” Vulcan explained, as she helped Ryan put the power armor on. Darkling slithered in the background, waiting for the experiment to begin. “Since you intend to force your way inside the HQ, I added a nuclear-powered chest blaster.”

“The Chernobyl?” Ryan asked with enthusiasm, as his Genius sidekick reinforced the armor’s joints with a screwdriver.

“Yep. If the blast doesn’t kill them, cancer will,” Vulcan replied with a grin, as she grabbed the armor’s helmet. “What?”

He had heard it all before. “I want rocket launchers too.”

“No,” she said immediately.

“Aw, come on…”

“You sound like a child, and there isn’t enough space to fit more weapons. Also, the blast might throw you backwards if you aren’t anchored on the ground.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Ryan replied, already imagining ways of abusing that feature. “Vulcan?”

“Yes, that’s my name.”

“Why the rabbit ears?” Ryan asked, pointed an armored finger at the helmet.

Using a design improved across multiple loops, Vulcan’s power armor was a technological marvel. An exoskeleton of lightweight, flexible alloy, it espoused Ryan’s form like a second skin. Its bright purple color made it impossible to ignore, just as the courier liked it. Its servos enhanced the wearer’s strength, yet the armor remained light enough not to impair his mobility. A reinforced backpack contained a miniature version of the Chronoradio, artificial brain included, which should allow the courier to transfer a mind across time. Unfortunately, even while working with Alchemo, Shortie hadn’t found a way to bring more than one person yet.

However, the armor’s strangest part was undoubtedly the helmet. Two long antennae rose from it, which combined with the orange lenses, made the helmet look like a robotic rabbit’s head. Ryan knew he had something of a hare theme going on, but this was too much. Too much.

“The antennae streamline your connection to the dimension which your power draws Violet Flux from,” Vulcan said with a shrug, as she put the helmet on Ryan’s head. “The armor’s artificial brain will gather data to help you better understand your power.”

Ryan glanced at the room around them, the bunker’s miniature particle collider. A chilling frost filled this conical chamber, the walls covered in weblike, biomechanical strands. Silver fluid flowed through them, and they hummed like a living entity’s veins; only a single blast door allowed someone to enter this facility.

Mechron’s technology had transcended flesh and metal to become something greater than both.

This was the place where the bunker’s AI summoned Darkling once. Perhaps the Alchemist had one such room in Antarctica, and used it to bring the Elixirs to the realm of men. Ryan really needed to dedicate a loop to locate and check up on that snowy base.

He had the feeling he would find many answers there.

Data appeared on the helmet’s lens after the courier put it on, the scene reminding him of that fateful loop where he accessed the Purple World. However, his current armor was a cut above the prototype. It included technology from various Geniuses, and components impossible to reproduce without Mechron’s matter replicator.

Ryan would have to conquer the bunker again to make a new suit. Something easier to say than do.

“Now we have to find a name for it,” the courier said. Ryan was sorely tempted to rename himself Plushie Master, but that might infuriate their long-eared overlords. “The Rabbinator?”

“That name sucks.”

“White Rabbit?”

“It’s not white, and you’re terrible at names,” Vulcan said, putting her hands on her waist as she found a name of her own. “How about… the Saturn Armor?”

“I thought the Augusti had exclusivity over Roman gods’ names?”

“I am an Olympian, you moron, and I say Saturn. Maybe you could even kick Augustus’ ass with it. Wouldn’t that be great?”

“You know Jupiter defeated Saturn, right?” Then again, Ryan was all about repeating lost battles until he won them. “How about Chronos instead?”

“This armor is my baby, so I name it. I name it Saturn.” She gave him a tap on the back of his head. “So, you’ll try the particle accelerator, and afterward it’s raiding time?”

“Yeah.” Livia had returned to her father, partly to make sure he wouldn’t get involved, and mostly so she would record the brain maps in a safe place. Ryan couldn’t afford to put her on the frontlines, since he needed her alive to transfer her mind across time.

Len took care of the children, using bathyspheres to send them away before things turned very messy. Alchemo had made a copy of his daughter’s mind, though he didn’t tell her why, and currently struggled to do the same with Sarin. The Genius theorized her memories were encoded in her molecular structure rather than neurons, and so made a record of it; Ryan needed to figure out a specialized solution for Sarin’s unique biology.

“You want to come?” Ryan asked Vulcan, almost eager.

“You bet I will,” she said with a grin. “Even if the bitch left them, I’ve got a bone to pick with the corpos.”

“It is time…” Darkling’s eerie voice caused Vulcan’s head to snap in his direction. “Open… the gate…”

“Damn it, I’m never getting used to it,” the Genius said, examining the Black Elixir. “I would love to study you in-depth.”

“I have been… studied... far longer than you can imagine…” the shoggoth replied, a hint of frustration in its voice. If it remembered all of Ryan’s loops, then he probably spent years trapped in a bottle. Perhaps even decades. “I have waited… long enough.”

shrug, before exiting the room through the blast

you… ready?” the Black

said. “The portal worked fine without me when Mechron’s machines trapped you

will need… your help… to stabilize...” The alien entity seemed to struggle to find the right words in the human language. “You are connected… to the Purple World… the crossroad of all space and time… even

armored hands.

and future… are

cryptically helpful. Vulcan’s voice echoed in the particle accelerator. “Ready to break the laws

them cry,” Ryan

pulsating with electricity. The walls rotated around Ryan and Darkling, faster and faster, until they started to blur. Gravity became lighter, the courier’s feet slowly getting off the

room. Bolts bounced off Ryan’s armor, or hit Darkling’s viscous

Flux.

as the darkest night. Instead of surging in all directions, the bolts concentrated on a single point at the center of the room, building up into a sphere. A dark spot no bigger

the sphere with hope

hard time hearing the giant slime over the sound of

the key…

at the sphere, and in a moment of scientific curiosity, took it in his palms. His fingers trembled as he did so, an invisible force coursing through his flesh

his armored hands touched the sphere, his whole body shuddered, the Elixir in his veins reacting to the eldritch power. His thumbs dug into the black hole, its surface shifting like water. Ryan

to a crawl. His armor kept providing data even as the universe turned purple and violet particles floated

itself apart under the strain of Ryan’s power, and his hold on the portal became firmer. The courier extended his arms, and the gate widened. The

at the edge of his vision, Violet Flux taking the shape of a humanoid specter racing at him. Though the phantom seemed to run towards the courier, it advanced slowly, only a few centimeters per second. The closer it became, the sharper its features;

catch up to the present. The armor enhanced his power enough that he could observe how it

phantom caught up to Ryan, he

brimming with an all-too-human emotion: hope. “Do it…

push, Ryan opened the gate to the

Colored streams of light formed a halo at its edge, like a black hole’s event horizon; a gate to a world

abyss for seconds that seemed to stretch on forever. The portal’s energies interfered with his power, preventing his other self from catching up. Time itself grew unstable, and it frightened the courier. The

drew him in like

yearned to contact them again; just as Mechron had grown obsessed with creating a portal towards his power's source, according to the bunker’s files. The courier never understood

within each colored dimension, and

“Follow me.”

Darkling, who impatiently slithered towards the portal. The time anomaly didn’t affect it in the

the other side.” The sentient Elixir’s form shifted, its liquid floating in midair while leaving a pile of corroded human bones behind. “The Black Ultimate One will free your spirit... from this flesh-shaped shell. Your mind shall no longer be bound... by your gravity and molecules.

phantom, getting closer by the second. “I will

Black World… nothing is forbidden. You could

Jasmine?

yet never did. An impossibility that defied all laws of time and space. A woman who could only exist in an

had hope for the first time in centuries, and he needed to save New Rome

came out

a

snapped back at the abyss, and the impenetrable darkness beyond it. It spoke with another voice,

put us on Earth for a reason,” a man beckoned from the other side. “One day, you will realize the boulder isn’t your

remembering a fateful conversation centuries

wasn’t Simon. It was just an echo stirred up by the Black World, a lure to

other than an echo remain on the other side? A remnant of

“You can make it

voice. “When you turn back time, Ryan, I’ll forget that. I’ll be angry and bitter at

the countless men and women he left in his dust. People he had loved

other side called him, begged him to leave that painful reality behind for a better one. One where he wouldn’t suffer anymore, and where his curse could

But…

phantom of his past, catching up to him. He thought of all the promises he made, all the people who trusted him. There were fewer than the billions

black and the purple pulled him in a different direction, and Ryan couldn’t

spoke again, sinking

if I disappear… promise you

followed Darkling

replaced with an absolute, chilling cold. Yet it felt

a

the center of the Milky Way look like a speck of dust. An entity whose mere attention could erase Ryan from

The Black Ultimate One.

voices to communicate with Ryan, the way a human might attempt to mimic an ant’s language. The entity had heard the courier’s wish, and would grant

sphere with triangular ends and recursive eyes, prismatic wings, and impossible geometries. An entity that couldn’t exist in Earth’s reality, and could now

too. His hands seemed to flicker in and out of existence, turning into eldritch darkness one moment, and back to normal the

his form for now, a shell protecting his essence, but the blackness would consume it. Ryan would lose his physical form, forget the very concept of a shape and ascend into

Something free.

“Don’t go, Ryan.”

was the

looked behind him, the portal nothing more than a lone star surrounded by the dark void of space. A figure of