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.”

the data then,” Vulcan said with a shrug, before exiting the room

ready?” the

see why you need me in the room,” the courier said. “The portal worked fine without me when Mechron’s machines trapped you in

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…

armored hands. “All of

future… are illusions.

particle accelerator. “Ready

them cry,”

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 surface. The electricity changed coloration in a strange pattern, from red to orange, from yellow to green, from blue

Flux.

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 than a thumb, a black hole in the very

focusing on the sphere with

a hard time hearing the giant slime over the

key…

in a moment of scientific curiosity, took it in his palms. His fingers trembled as he did so, an invisible force coursing

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

the universe turned purple and violet particles floated all around him. Black lightning coursed through the

The courier extended his arms, and the gate widened. The sphere slowly

appearing 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

trying to catch

up to Ryan, he would create a new save

now…” Darkling said, its voice brimming with an

a final push, Ryan opened the gate to the Black

disk two meters in 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

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

yet… it drew him in like

just as Mechron had grown obsessed with creating a portal towards his power's

dwelt within each colored dimension, and beckoned humans to

“Follow me.”

the portal. The time anomaly didn’t affect it

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 places…

the second.

is forbidden. You

Jasmine?

An impossibility that defied all laws of time and space. A woman who could only exist in

and he needed to save New Rome from annihilation. He had made too many promises he couldn’t

voice came out of the

was a

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

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

asked, remembering a fateful

stirred up by the Black

time and space. Could something other than an echo remain on the other side? A remnant

erased…” Darkling whispered. “You can make

you bring me in for the ride too?” Felix’s voice. “When you turn back time, Ryan, I’ll forget

threshold. Maybe find a Len with whom things went right, or some of the countless men and women he left in his dust. People he had loved and

other side called him, begged him to leave that painful reality behind for a better one. One where he

But…

him. He thought of all the promises he made, all the people who trusted him. There were fewer than the billions he erased,

the purple pulled him in a different

again, sinking its claws

promise you

Darkling into

vanished, replaced with an absolute, chilling cold. Yet it

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

black hole that made the one at the center of the Milky Way look like a speck of dust. An entity whose mere attention could erase Ryan from existence, if it

The Black Ultimate One.

way a human might attempt to mimic an ant’s language. The entity had heard the courier’s wish,

gave Ryan a headache when he looked at it. A sphere with triangular ends and

in and out of

to constrain him. The Saturn armor maintained 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

a lone star surrounded by the dark void of space. A figure of violet