Arc 14: Invasion

  Chapter 1

  Interlude: The Manberg Principle

  The underground labs of the Bronson Atomic Industries shook. Dust spilled from the cracks in the ceiling. A clean cut short blonde hair man paced restlessly, his chin gleaming in the light. The usual bright green eyes had dimmed a little, tired from a few sleepless nights as of late. He apprehensively watched all hell breaking loose above on the surface as the Heroes and Villains destroyed the city around them. The ground level of the BAI Head Quarters had been utterly demolished, thankfully the rubble keeping the deeper facility out of the eyes of the reckless supers above.

  “Mr. Johnson, we really need to evacuate.” His head secretary, pushed her glasses up as they jiggled from a nearby explosion. Her dark green hair glinted in the lights. Her navy blue business suit was wrinkled, stained, and much worse for wear.

  His ruffled suit creased and ripped along one of the sleeves. “How many times must I tell you I am not leaving. If you want to leave, then leave, I understand.”

  “Sir. Please we need to go, it has been free fire zone for days now. Everything up there is escalating at this rate the city is going to be destroyed.”

  “Good thing this facility is Super resistant.” Johnson smiled wryly, his usual confidence and over-the-top exaggeration all but gone from his demeanor. “We can’t leave until the test that Morty has been doing is finished.”

  “It is still not done yet? It started over a week ago.” She said reviewing the cracked glowing tablet in her hands, “Why not, we could just cut the power and bail?”

  Johnson grimaced, “Can’t do that Feb. I would if we could, but for one the nuclear geothermal reactor is hooked right into the testing labs and for two we have no idea what will happen if the test is disrupted and for three, we are very close to a break through a decade of research about to bear fruit.”

  Her voice turned from concern to fear. “Do we have any estimate on when it will conclude?”

  “No because it is unstable. If we get hit by a jolt that is strong enough then… I don’t even want to think about what might happen.”

  Feb replied, her glasses glinting in the flickering lights of the room. “All the more reason we need to get the hell out of here already. The city is getting torn apart, we should have left the day after the Hammer Strike. We knew that things would go south without the Hero League keeping the peace. We can always make a new facility somewhere else.”

  “That will take years Feb. We should at least get the last bit of data from the test to verify that the equipment even works. It will save us a lot of RND down the road.”

  “What is so important about this test? I know it is top secret and only you and Mr. Manberg even know what is going on.”

  Johnson’s back straightened as he stood crossing his arms. “You ever make a mistake that you wanted to take back no matter what?”

  She squinted at him, “Can’t say I have.”

  “Well I have. A mistake that ruined half of this city and to this day continues to destroy people’s lives.”

  “Wait the Melt Down? That wasn’t your fault it got sabotaged. Hell we lost our head nuclear engineer in there when she stopped it from blowing up.”

  He slammed his fist on the desk, “You mean my wife.”

  She shrunk away a bit from his outburst, “Sorry, Mr. Johnson.”

  He rubbed his face, letting out a long sigh, “It is fine. Anyway not a day goes by that I don’t regret those events and the horrors that they created. It is why I am still here in this city instead of out in some desert where the research base wouldn’t have to worry about villains. The Power Plant was my responsibility and I will make it right.”

  The secretary glanced over a chart on the tablet in her hands, “I get that Mr. Johnson, it is why a quarter of BAI’s profits are directly donated to orphanages and school grants. But what does that have to do with the current testing?”

  He paced slowly making his way behind his desk. He sat heavily leaning back in it, his hands over his eyes. “Remind me again, how long have you worked for me?”

  She thought for a long moment… adjusting her cracked glasses. How long had it been? “About eleven years, a few months before the Melt Down I was hired on as an intern. If memory serves.”

  “Then you were here when my wife was still the vice president.”

  Feb dredged up memories of that time, fresh out of college, with no idea what she was doing scampering out like a chicken with her head cut off stressing over every little thing. “Honestly, I don’t think I ever met her Sir.”

  He frowned a little, “That is unfortunate. She was brilliant a literal genius. Why it was her designs that made half the tech we have in here. If she was still here we would probably be on mars already.” His face broke into a little smile, “She was kind, caring, brave and so fucking unorganized… but her heart was always in the right place. Truly one of a kind.”

  She tilted her head to the side. He might go on another tangent, he tended to do that when thinking about his dead wife. “I have certainly heard a lot about her. I have seen the specials. Jolivette Johnson the woman who would end power scarcity forever.”

  He waved his hand dismissively, “Those are only accurate up to the Melt Down, the rest of it is bullshit.”

  “I get that, but what does that have to do with what is going on right now?”

  He leaned forward, his hands cupping over one another. “That is simple, at least in concept. If Manberg is right then using the tachyon particle cannon we can punch a hole in space time and create a stable rift to travel back in time. We are going to stop the events of that day. Doing so we will wipe out all the suffering and pain that it has caused, no mad dogs or scalies, no radioactive sewers, no feral disease, no blood moons, half of Bronson city won’t be lost in the war with the subhumans. And most importantly of all, I will save my wife from becoming that monster, Slither.”

  Feb’s glasses slid forward as she hastily pushed them back up, “That was a lot to unpack. Wait, wait, wait, I thought your wife was dead? Slither? That giant snake monster we kept throwing teams at to capture? If I recall it has eaten over two hundred security personal. I mean I am glad we stopped trying to catch it since after a while it just felt like we were feeding her.”

  He grimaced, “Part of me wishes she was dead, but yes she turned into that man-eating serpent. She is the entire reason we have been trying to find a way to reverse the effects of subhuman mutation down there in the mutation prevention division. But if Manberg figures out time travel, then we don’t need a cure, we just stop it from happening to begin with. After all, prevention is the best cure for a disease.”

  She took all that in. “You think it will work?”

  He put his hands up in exasperation, “I don’t know, but I fucking hope it does. That is why this test is so damned important and why I am not leaving.”

  The alarm blared, a little louder than usual, changing pitch. That was the animal containment alarm, something had gotten loose. Both of them shifted their gazes tiredly to the monitors. It was those goddamned baboons again.

  Johnson tapped on his intercom, and let out a long tired groan, “Security, the fucking baboons are loose again, deal with them.”

  The com crackled, but there was no reply. He tapped the controls switching cameras, the security station was empty. For that matter everywhere was empty save the Tachyon Research room. Morty suited up with a large shoulder cannon-like device. Beyond him the particle accelerating array was a long tube like oval. It looped around, a bright orb of sorts was rapidly moving within it, faster than the eye could see, so fast that it appeared to be a solid beam in the middle of the accelerator.

  “How many security teams do we still have?”

  A sour look crossed February’s face, “None sir. It appears Dickinson and his crew all bailed…”

  He lamented, “Damn… I wish Mecha Fairy didn’t get blown up in the hammer strike. Good kid. It is hard to find good employees.”

  Her voice grew to a frantic shriek. “Mr. Johnson, they are breaking containment!”

  “Oh fuck-” Johnson started before he slammed his hand on the desk, hitting a big red button.

  Alarms blared dying the room red as the feeds of the animal containment floor lit up, solid metal securely slid into place sealing the entire floor off, even the vents after that squirrel had escaped last time. He let out a sigh, wiping a sheen of sweat off of his forehead, none of them had escaped the floor. All the animals screaming and raging about in there, the baboons freeing them from their cages. Those things were entirely too damned smart. Johnson’s finger hovered over the purge button. He didn’t particularly like killing things, which was why most of their gear was nonlethal. However, this was different, those creatures could break free at any moment.

  The feed filled with the leader of the beasts, a large scarred baboon with an eye patch, he had no idea where it got the eye patch. For that matter, all the baboons had makeshift guns? He did a double take, they had made their own weapons and some of them were even armored. The only questions filling his mind were, where had that stuff been hidden and how the hell did they even make guns?

  Its fanged mouth opening and closing it growled, the noises mimicking human speech. At first, the words were garbled and unclear but repeated over and over mouthing the words. “Let us out. Johnson. We think, we feel.” It held up a bloody human skull, “We Are!”

  That explained the lack of security without notice, they had not bailed they had been killed. Johnson had always known those things were smart, for an animal, but this, this was beyond unnerving. He didn’t have to think or wrestle with some sort of moral quandary of whether or not they were sentient. He knew damned well how dangerous those monkeys were. They were going to rip him to shreds if they got loose. He firmly pressed the button, not an ounce of hesitation or remorse. The room ignited as all of the mutated abominations burst into flames. They screamed and flailed about as the cameras melted in the heat cutting off the feeds.

  He sat in silence for a moment, he shook his head, “I am sure Dr. Arbor will understand. This happens all the time from what I hear from her.”

  Feb nodded in agreement, “Surely she will. Well without having to worry about the mutants, we can focus on the tests.”

  He clapped clearing the air and pointing to her, “Yes. We should probably get to it.”

  “What can we do?”

  Johnson got up. “That is simple, a man has gotta eat. We take care of Morty and he gets the project done and then, well then we fix this god forsaken city.”

  ***

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Morty gazed into the bright pulsing light of the particle accelerator. The protective suit and goggles under the domed glass helmet keep the brightness to a tolerable level. If he squinted glimpses of something could be seen. He wasn’t exactly sure what it was but, whatever it was… it was big. He shook his head the visions fading for a moment, that mask like face that haunted his dreams evaporating in the stream. Was it premonitions of the future?

  He rubbed his eyes, tired, exhausted. He was close. The visions he could see the plans and details, all the spects of the equipment were right, and yet… something was missing. Images of himself overlapping, he squinted making them layered over one another. All at once it all made sense, the calibration was off… Of course! The frequency of this earth was different than the others.

  The specters, the distorted versions of himself all seemed to come to the same conclusion at the same time. Each of them frantically dialed in their devices, making notes of their dimension’s frequency. Their haste became justified moments later as some were assailed by some sort of monster. That ever increasingly familiar white bone mask of a face that mocked humanity as it split open, mandibles snapping shut and sucking out their brains. Only one that was attacked fended off the monster, shooting it over and over since it kept trying to get back up until finally its head exploded and it fell for good.

  He looked over his shoulder to make sure that wasn’t about to happen to him. Nothing, the door sealed shut. The foreboding he felt only increased. It was uncanny seeing himself dying in different ways. Perhaps it was good that he couldn’t hear what they were saying. Though it didn’t appear that many of him were attacked, still it was concerning the same creature was the one attacking in every instance that it did occur.

  Oddly he could see their notes, some more coherent than others. Some merely the jabberings of madmen, others eloquent and precise equations. Some simple diaries, some artistic with drawings and scribbles. Some even consulted conspiracy boards with strings connecting varied pictures. Oddly that creepy face kept appearing in pictures or drawings. It was almost like some of them were obsessed with it. Morty ignored the pictures looking for something of actual use. The entire equation appeared in one of them. He quickly jotted it down, making sure to get every number and letter exactly right. He would need to review and make sure that the equation was correct later.

  A realization crystallized. This wasn’t time travel… it was alternate dimensions. Using that line of thought it wasn’t much different than pocket dimension tech from Dr. Tesla. He nodded as did a lot of his alternate selves. Morty began to theorize where he is currently must be some sort of nexus point that connects all the dimensions, that would be why he could see them and they could see him. He rubbed his head tiredly. That made sense, it would explain the variants and their alternate appareled.

  One of the variants, looked older, battle-hardened… he was the one who killed the monster that tried to get him. He was writing something and lifted it for all the others to see. Turning it slowly so that all the alternate selves could see.

  Morty squinted, it was written in blood. “Prepare yourself, the Vespidian are coming.”

  He scribbled on his paper holding it up, “What is a Vespidian?”

  An exasperated look crossed the grizzled man’s face. He quickly wrote more. “Vesper Walda Vasska. Kill before-”

  He abruptly stopped writing, throwing down the notebook and raising his weapon, he fired it moving away as more of the figures chased him out of sight.

  Morty held his head, it hurt for some reason. Vesper… so Mecha Fairy… but she was already dead. She died in the hammer strike along with most of the local hero league. That didn’t make much sense… perhaps she didn’t die in those dimensions. He shut his eyes and looked away, he needed to rest his eyes a bit they were burning from gazing into the abyss too long.

  He sunk heavily into the chair, setting the tachyon particle cannon to the side and as he did the visions faded, the distortions returning to normal. Just holding the thing while it was on was distorting the space around him. He dozed for a moment, stirred by the blast door jarring.

  The thick blast doors opened, the air-tight seal broken as some dust filtered into the white room. In walked Mr. Johnson and his secretary… he couldn’t remember her name they had not talked much. They wore the same protective suits that he did. It was form-fitting, but a little loose on the arms, the head a domed clear glass. These suits had a specialized field around them. The purpose of the field was to stabilize distortions and anchor them here. At least that is what the designs he copied from a variant were supposed to do. He wasn’t entirely sure if they worked or not.

  Mr. Johnson personally handed him a plate of processed food. It looked like slop but it tasted pretty good surprisingly. He wasn't complaining, given the circustances what with the city being over run by villains theyy pretty lucky to have a stable supply of food.

  Morty paused for a long moment. When did he last eat? At the thought, he realized how hungry and thirsty he was eagerly taking the supplies. He raised the spoon, taking bites of the protein paste. Mango, how about that? It was sweet.

  “I knew you would be hungry.” The man smiled, though his eyes were exhausted.

  “Thanks Mr. Johnson, I needed this.”

  Johnson seemed as eager as always, enthusiastic. It was understandable, he wanted to go back in time and stop a major disaster and save his wife. In terms of goals that was a rather noble one. That is the main reason that Morty agreed and threw himself wholeheartedly into the work and research. But as he had just learned the tech wasn’t time travel, it was reality hopping.

  He wasn’t sure how to break the news. He would need more time to figure things out. If time and space were punched through to get to another dimension, then rather than the space aspect he needed to focus on the time element… then, if he could isolate it and then amplify it. If he could vibrate reality at the right frequency then… that might work. The dimension breach was a horizontal movement so if a vertical movement was done then it might create a temporal distortion, but to do that he would need a tachyon collision.

  Morty’s eyes fell on the pulsing accelerator. “I think I figured it out.”

  Johnson’s eyes gleamed. “You figured it out? What do we need to do?”

  “Well, theoretically. We need to cause a precise tachyon collision at an exact vibration that will create a temporal flux reaction. This reaction will rip a hole in reality allow us to move outside of the normal flow of time and space. Which would allow unilaterally movement on the temporal scale…. But how would one control that? I would need precise and exact computations at lightning speed to direct it. I would need an AI more powerful than the Overseer that the league had to do that. Even then it would need to be mobile and a part of my suit to keep relaying the coordinates. Otherwise I would be stranded after one jump.”

  “Well, we don’t got an AI so what would happen without it?” asked Johnson, still rather hopeful.

  Morty thought about it, he paused and started several times, trying to rationalize. “Could be a few things. Best case, very astronomically unlikely, we arrive where and when we wanted. Most likely good case thrown randomly somewhere, somewhen. Most likely bad case we get spaghetti-fifed or we appear inside of something and die instantly. Worst case… who knows maybe the whole universe collapses in on itself. Point is, it is too fucking dangerous without the proper computations.”

  Morty had expected Johnson to be upset, contrary to the thought though he just breathed deeply. “So it is possible, it is just not ready yet. Oh thank god we can pack up and get out of here before any crazier stuff happens up there.”

  “Speaking of, what the hell is even going on up there? I have been down here for two weeks straight.” Morty sat down, relaxing a bit.

  “Well, Morty my boy, we to need get out of here and relocate the lab to somewhere that isn’t likely to become a war zone. Things are getting rough.”

  “We can’t just leave it like this.” Morty motioned to the particle accelerator. “I will need to start the shut down process and deceleration.”

  Since he had figured it out he didn’t need the dimension distortion that the machine was creating anymore. Morty lowered the switch, powering it. The built-up energy would dissipate in time, but the sphere continued rotating the length of the tunnel just as fast as it had been, time would diminish its momentum. Until then-

  The room rumbled. Shaking violently. Something really big had just exploded somewhere. The tube shifted, misaligned from the very earth moving. All eyes fell on the swirling light as its path deviated and slammed into the barrier between them and it. The tachyon particle sling shotted bouncing and ricocheting it smashed through the barrier hurtling into Morty’s chest. It moved so fast that none of them could react.

  Time stood still as it shot through him, reverberating, the ebb and flow of reality distorting as it pulled and yanked. His body was torn and grown as it was ripped into a cascade of worlds. A flurry of dimensions until it all went quiet.

  ***

  Morty’s eyes opened, coughing as he rolled over, retching, too lightheaded to notice that his helmet was gone. He stagged to his feet, his hands shaking as they faded in and out of physical space. He held his head as his eyes kept spinning. The world, the world looked wrong, colors inverted.

  The eyes closed, helping to center and ground him. The city was quiet, wary. There was no movement, cars, people, laughter, gossip… those were all absent. There wasn’t even the noise of fighting. It was creepy, unnerving. A sound rose the heavy beating, flapping of wings. A buzzing of insects.

  Morty turned, looking up, the sky dyed red, above the Spore loomed as though to swallow the world. Some of its tentacles draped down, gripping the earth like the roots of a titanic tree. The city around him was ruins, buildings abandoned. A war zone forgotten. Further, higher the clouds broke as masses of black and gleaming blue few in formations. Orange wings spread wide. They were too high up to make out what they were.

  Something shifted about, scuttling along the rooftops. He was not alone as a little pink child-like figure appeared. Not just one there were a lot of them. It took a moment to realize why they looked familiar. They were smaller versions of the monster that attacked his alternate selves. They seemed to be immature, soft almost.

  They peered at him, hiding, their elongated heads sticking out from behind most corners, doorways, and windows. One was a little bolder than the rest stepping out and pointing at him defiantly. She like the rest had four arms, the lower pair slightly smaller and crossed over her stomach. Her little wings buzzed unable to lift her off of the ground.

  The voice was high and pitched, it hurt his ears as she shrieked, “Bad human! Bad! Mother, Mother there is a Human!”

  To the ailing cries of the child, wings beat as much larger wasp women flew overhead. The largest of which slammed between him and the cowering nymph that scuttled away. The street quaked from its arrival, cratering in from her landing. The rest gracefully almost gingerly touched down all around a wall of midnight blue carapace and orange wings that encircled him. The largest rose to full height, towering over the buildings beside them. If he had to guess, she was over thirty feet tall.

  That cruel and menacing feminine face is etched in white bone. The four dark eyes gleamed with a slit of red. Her massive elongated head crested with large gem-like eyes. She bent low, squatting down, as one did when observing a small creature. The ground shook as her wasp abdomen cracked the street behind her. She was a lot to take in, even as she was, her shin dwarfed him, and he didn’t even reach the halfway point before her knee. She leaned in getting lower and lower yet she still loomed over him. Her tentacles wiggled through the air threateningly.

  Her voice was filled with malice and disdain. She admonished the little pink nymphs that were no bigger than the tip of one of her deadly talons and even the more grown wasp women. She wagged her titanic finger. “To think we missed a human so close to the Hive. Sisters, Children you are getting sloppy again. We all know how dangerous the animals known as humans are… treacherous, cunning, and vile.”

  Her voice hung, heavy and commanding before resuming. “They must all die or be thoroughly broken in and domesticated should they prove to be useful. Only then can they be brought back to the Hive to be bred. It won’t do to let the cattle run wild. Odd most of them run when they see us, hiding, cowering, crying, begging for mercy. Has this one frozen in terror to our superiority?” She squinted, all of her many eyes narrowing. “Children… did you hide this one? What have I told you about pets?”

  The little pink and milky white shelled offspring all chided in, “But Mother it appeared from thin air, look at it how it fades in and out like it isn’t really here. We didn't miss it, it must have teleported. Clearly it is a Super.”

  Her hand slid up to her face, rubbing her chin with the loud scraping of the carapace, despite the implication that he was a Super she didn’t seem threatened in the least. If anything she seemed amused and he had been upgraded from a worm beneath her feet to something worth toying with. “True… I have not seen one like this. I wonder what powers it has? I don’t think it is a hero those tend to spout hallow platitudes of justice and retribution. At least they used to. It is not monologuing at me so I don’t think it is one of those little villains. Mnn though those are very fun to break.”

  Morty remembered the words that his other self had written. These must be the Vespidian that he had been warned of and she must be… “Vesper?”

  “Vesper?” she repeated questionably. It was almost like the word was an insult. The menace and killing intent flared for a moment, before fading as she became even more inquisitive. Her interest had only been of one who found a new toy to break, now though all of her eyes were focused on him. “How do you know that name? Few know it. You are lucky that I, Xara, first born of the Mother Empress still remember her old name. She hasn't used that name in many years not since… my birth Mother, Xava died.”

  He nodded vaguely processing her words. “So you are Vesper’s child. I am her friend, do you know where she is?”

  “Friend?” her massive head tilted, not understanding the word. “What is a ‘friend’?”

  That was a bit worrisome. Despite the openness of the massive being before him, something was telling him he didn’t want to get off on the wrong foot. “It means similarly to an ally.”

  She tapped her head in thought, humming, her eyes closed. “Ally… ohh I know that. Odd you have not been assimilated like the others.”

  “Assimilated?”

  Her face pressed down almost squishing him into the concrete. “Yes, those that are not Vespidian must learn their place within the Hive. Mother blesses them, gifts them her loving embrace and makes them… whole. How else would inferior creatures like humans be of any use to us? How else could something as weak as a human be made in our likeness?”

  He was starting to realize he might have made a mistake. Though this creature before him spoke cordially it was becoming apparent that it couldn’t be reasoned with. It certainly wasn’t sounding like it had good intentions. But before he could voice any sort of discordance she rose to her full stature.

  “Friend… But of course,” Xara smiled, her face cracking in half, revealing her brutal mandibles as they clacked, her arms spread wide as she motioned behind and above herself, gesturing grandly to the Spore as a herald does for royalty. “Mother Empress is pleased to meet long lost friend… She whispers, bring this so called ‘friend.’ She has heard and seen for she watches over all her children. More so now than ever in these dark and bloody days as the War of the Wasp rages eternal.”