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.”

Vulcan said with a shrug, before exiting the

you… ready?” the Black Elixir asked

see why you need me in the room,” the courier said. “The portal worked fine without me

will need… your help… to stabilize...” The alien entity seemed to struggle to find the right words in the human

armored hands. “All of space

are illusions.

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

make them cry,” Ryan

walls rotated around Ryan and Darkling, faster and faster, until they started to blur. Gravity became

lightning coursed through the silver fluid, and surged all across the room. Bolts bounced off Ryan’s armor, or hit Darkling’s viscous surface. The electricity changed coloration in a strange pattern, from red to orange, from

Flux.

lightning became blinding white for a brief instant, and then turned black as the darkest night. Instead of surging in all directions, the bolts concentrated on a single point at the center

many eyes focusing on the

a hard time hearing the giant slime

are the key… open

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

His armor kept providing data even as the universe turned purple and violet particles floated all around him. Black lightning coursed through the

of Ryan’s power, and his hold on the portal became firmer. The courier extended his arms, and the gate widened. The sphere slowly grew from a

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

World, converging towards his timeline. Always trying to catch up to the present. The armor enhanced his

up to Ryan, he would create a new

Darkling said, its voice brimming with an all-too-human emotion: hope. “Do it…

a final push, Ryan opened the gate to

diameter, a rift in spacetime itself. Colored streams of light formed a halo at its edge, like a black hole’s event horizon; a gate to a

his other self from catching up. Time itself grew unstable, and it frightened the courier. The Black World existed beyond time itself, beyond

yet… it drew him in like a moth

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

each colored dimension, and

“Follow me.”

glanced at Darkling, who impatiently slithered towards the portal.

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. I will show you

the purple phantom, getting closer by the

the Black World… nothing is forbidden.

Jasmine?

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

first time in centuries, and he needed to save New Rome from annihilation. He had made too many promises he couldn’t break. “No,

out of the

a

darkness beyond it. It spoke with another

a reason,” a man beckoned from the other side. “One day, you will realize the boulder isn’t your enemy. It’s

asked, remembering a fateful conversation centuries

an echo stirred up by the Black World, a lure to draw

and yet, this dimension existed beyond time and space. Could something other than an echo remain on the other side?

that you have erased…” Darkling whispered. “You can

time, Ryan, I’ll forget that. I’ll be angry and bitter at her, all over again.

could bring them all back, if he crossed the threshold. Maybe find a Len with whom things went right, or some of the countless men and women he left in his dust.

to leave that painful reality behind for a better one. One where

But…

promises he made, all the people who trusted him. There were fewer than

black and the purple pulled him

spoke again, sinking its claws

promise you won’t forget

courier followed Darkling into the Black

dimension vanished, replaced with an

Black World was darker than the darkest abyss, and yet Ryan could see things moving inside. Living equations that had gained a life of their own; an ouroboros devouring its own tail, never running out of mass; stillborn realities neither time nor depth

great darkness of unfathomable size. A black hole that made the one at the center of the Milky

The Black Ultimate One.

communicate with Ryan, the way a human might attempt to mimic an ant’s language. The entity

form changed, from that of a slime to… something else. Something that gave Ryan a headache when he looked at it. A sphere with triangular ends and recursive eyes,

changed Ryan too. His hands seemed to flicker in and out of existence, turning into eldritch darkness one moment, and

logic, no rules to constrain him. The Saturn armor maintained his form for now, a shell protecting

Something free.

“Don’t go, Ryan.”

voice was the

portal nothing more than a lone star surrounded by the dark void of space. A figure of violet light had stopped running, and instead