Chương 64: 63: The Twelve Prototypes VII

The moment Prism's presence disappeared from the battlefield, the mathematical effect ceased to exist. Victor's sluggish body lurched violently. SHKKK! His stolen speed returned in an instant. The cuts covering his body sealed just as quickly. He staggered upright with a sharp gasp, instinctively clutching his chest before looking down at himself.

"I'm whole again." Over a mile away, Roman's body jolted upright with a desperate gasp. His shattered skull knitted together as muscle and bone reformed beneath his skin. Within seconds, he lay whole once more upon the glacier.

"Finally," he muttered. He planted a hand beneath himself and pushed to his feet. SHRRRK! The crimson line across his abdomen burst open again. Roman folded over with a strangled grunt as blood splashed across the ice.

"Dammit!" He went perfectly still. The bleeding eased. Linh landed beside him.

"…Don't move." Roman clenched his teeth.

"That bloody integral." He cautiously shifted one foot. SHRRRK! The wound split wider.

"Yep." He remained frozen where he was until the lingering mathematics finally unraveled. Only then did he stand without reopening the injury. — The team slowly gathered together again. Prism's equations faded one by one. The glowing symbols suspended across the battlefield dissolved into drifting motes before disappearing into the Antarctic wind. Blue-white lightning erupted beneath Roman's skin.

"... It's back." Arcs danced between his fingers once more. Across the battlefield, emerald fire flickered around Miriam's palms. Black ice answered Naomi's thoughts. Frost curled around Freya's boots while gravity subtly distorted around Linh before settling. Conflict Drop had returned. A collective sigh escaped the surviving prototypes.

"Finally," Mateo muttered, flexing his hands. Victor rolled his shoulders before blinking a short distance away.

"My speed's back."

"That's more like it," Atlas said with a faint smile. Nearby, Roman frowned.

"Not all of it." Everyone looked toward him. He raised a hand. Lightning gathered. Weaker. Naomi's ice lacked its former darkness. Freya's control felt sluggish. Victor's bursts of speed had dulled. Linh compressed gravity between her palms, only for the distortion to collapse almost immediately.

"We're missing something." Cass folded her arms.

"His suppression."

"It ended," Linh said.

"Mostly," Freya corrected. She closed her eyes, replaying the battle.

"The first equation reduced every enhancement to its base state." Naomi frowned.

"But our powers came back."

"Only partially." Victor's expression shifted.

"The Plane Division." Roman looked down at the fading scar crossing his abdomen.

"It kept us apart, because the equation was still active."

"It was obeying mathematics." Freya nodded.

"And the instant he dismissed Plane Division..."

"... our bodies reassembled," Roman finished. Understanding settled over the group.

"So every equation has..." Naomi began.

"... a persistence threshold," Linh completed.

"The longer he maintains one, the more reality accepts it." Elias nodded quietly.

"It stops behaving like a technique."

"It becomes a fact." Roman's smile disappeared.

"Meaning if he'd held Plane Division long enough..." Victor finished the thought.

"... we might never have come back together." Even Atlas looked unsettled.

"So we weren't just healing slower."

"No," Linh replied.

"We were running out of time." The wind swept across the shattered continent before Miriam finally exhaled.

"Well." She glanced around the battlefield.

"I vote we never fight those two again." A few exhausted chuckles broke the tension.

"I vote food," Mateo said.

"I vote sleep," Gideon replied immediately.

"I vote a hospital," Roman muttered. Cass smirked.

"You'll complain the whole way."

"I've earned the right." Victor rubbed the back of his neck.

"Honestly..." He looked toward the empty sky where Lucien had disappeared.

"I think I've had enough excitement for one day." Atlas nodded.

"Go home." Freya glanced toward the abandoned observation platforms.

"The scientists are gone."

"We report what happened," Naomi said.

"If anyone believes us."

"They won't," Gideon replied.

"They absolutely won't."

"They'll have to," Cass shrugged.

"Half the continent's missing mountains." Roman rubbed dried blood from his jaw.

"…Something's been bothering me."

"What?" Victor asked.

"The kids." Naomi glanced over.

"Their blood."

"…Yeah," Freya murmured.

"It wasn't human."

"It wasn't Abomination either," Atlas added.

"Those things bleed differently. Way denser." Cass frowned.

"So what were they?"

"Gene-users?" Mateo suggested. Roman shook his head.

"No animal or insect transformation, so no."

"They were also too weak to be true Abominations," Gideon said.

"Skilled, absolutely. Powerful too. Still nowhere near the real ones." Naomi folded her arms.

"Maybe Lucien was testing a new strain."

"A prototype Gene," Victor muttered. Conversation gradually replaced adrenaline. —"... Who's that?" Every head turned. Far across the white expanse stood a lone figure. Too distant for details. Tall. Unnaturally so. Its proportions were wrong, all elongated limbs and a narrow silhouette swaying almost imperceptibly in the wind. As their enhanced vision sharpened, details emerged. Green skin stretched tightly over an imposing frame. Moss-like fur covered its body.

Its head resembled a twisted knot of ancient bark, elongated and angular, with rough wooden ridges forming a natural crown. Two gnarled, branch-like horns curved back from either side, their bark cracked with age as tiny vines and pale blossoms clung to them. Jagged thorns erupted from its forearms, shoulders, and spine. Its legs bent backwards like a predator's, ending in clawed feet resting lightly upon the ice. Long fingers tipped with black thorn-like talons nearly brushed its knees. Yellow eyes. Unblinking.

A grin of narrow white teeth. Thin roots slithered across the glacier around it. Tiny flowers bloomed wherever they passed, opening like watching eyes before withering moments later.

"... That wasn't here before," Naomi whispered. Freya's expression hardened.

"No." The vegetation surrounding it looked... Hungry. Victor stepped forward.

"Oi!" No reply. The creature simply watched. Roman's lightning crackled.

"Friend of theirs?"

"I don't think so," Linh said quietly. It stood nearly a kilometre away. The creature tilted its head. Victor's voice tore across the battlefield.

"GUYS, WATCH OUT!" It slipped beneath perception. THNK. A dull impact echoed behind them. They turned. Elias hung suspended above the ice, a thorn-covered limb driven cleanly through his chest, his body dangling weightlessly before the creature. Before anyone could react... SHRRRK.

Thin crimson lines opened across Roman's shoulder, Victor's chest, Naomi's arm, Freya's cheek, Cass's side, Linh's thigh and Atlas's neck, each cut appearing as though the blade had passed long before the wounds chose to reveal themselves. Pain arrived a heartbeat later.

"AGH!" Roman clutched his shoulder. Freya hissed through clenched teeth, Cass staggered sideways, and Atlas instinctively reached for the line across his throat. Blood spilled onto the glacier. Victor skidded to a stop several metres away, breathing hard.

"…It was aiming to cut you apart," he growled.

"I barely got you out of the way." The others glanced between the shallow wounds covering their bodies and the glacier behind them. Dozens of perfectly straight trenches stretched for miles across the ice, as though something unimaginably sharp had tried to carve straight through the space they had occupied. The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement. A chill settled over the group.

"…You saved us," Naomi said quietly. Roman exhaled shakily.

"Thanks." Freya gave a silent nod. Conflict Drop surged instinctively. The injuries remained. Instead, the flesh bordering every slash turned grey, shrivelling as entire patches of cells withered into lifeless tissue, the decay slowly spreading from each wound. Its attack arrived before perception itself. By the time any of them discovered they had been struck… …the creature had already finished.

"ELIAS! GET HIM DOWN!" The creature regarded them with luminous yellow eyes. Its jaws slowly parted into a grin filled with narrow white teeth.

"Fall." Every word sounded like tree trunks grinding together beneath the earth. The wind reclaimed the battlefield. The creature took one slow step forward.

"Return... to the soil." Its gaze swept across them all.

"As all things do."

"It can talk?" Naomi's expression tightened.

"I was not expecting that." Victor stared at the towering thing in disbelief. BOOM! Gideon exploded forward. His fist crashed squarely into its face. CRAAACK! The impact echoed across Antarctica. The creature's head turned a fraction. Gideon's arm folded the wrong way. Bone burst through skin as his forearm twisted grotesquely before hanging limp at his side.

"My... arm..." he rasped. Naomi stared in disbelief.

"You... broke your own arm?"

"That thing just treated Gideon's skeleton like glass!" Mateo shouted. The creature answered with a shriek. The sound rolled across the frozen continent. Its free arm lashed sideways. Elias disappeared into the distance before anyone realised he'd been struck. The glacier convulsed. KRRRRRRAAAAAAAK! Black-green thorns erupted beneath Antarctica, bursting upward by the thousands. They speared through glaciers, mountains and ice shelves until an endless forest of jagged spikes covered the horizon.

"UP!" Linh shouted. Everyone launched skyward. The forest answered immediately. Entire sections of thorn snapped free, transforming into spear-like projectiles that curved after them with terrifying precision.

"They're tracking us!" Yuna corkscrewed between three incoming spikes. Victor slipped beneath another before it blasted through the cloud he'd occupied a heartbeat earlier.

"What kind of plants even do this?!" Cass yelled.

"They're hunting," Freya replied, freezing one projectile before it shattered against another. Roman glanced toward the creature sprinting below on all fours.

"Wait... It uses roots... flowers..." Naomi frowned.

"Is this one of Mango's?" Mateo stared across the endless white wilderness.

"How's something like that even alive out here? It's below freezing!" Freya watched it carve effortlessly through another glacier.

"It stopped behaving like biology a long time ago." The space it occupied was suddenly empty.

"Where did-" Victor was the only one who reacted. He blurred forward in a crack of displaced air.

"MOVE!" THOOOM! A thorn-covered fist caught him across the face. Victor became a distant speck in the sky before vanishing beyond the horizon, the shockwave splitting glaciers in his wake. WHUMP. The creature appeared in mid-air. Its clawed hand closed around Miriam's face.

"MIRIAM!" Before anyone could react... SKSKSKSKSKSK! Thorns erupted through her body from every direction. They burst from her shoulders, abdomen, thighs and back as living vines punched through flesh before blooming into crimson flowers. Miriam screamed.

"AAAAAAAH!" Emerald fire exploded outward. BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM! Green light swallowed the Antarctic sky. Mountains liquefied. Glaciers evaporated. Clouds disappeared beneath the inferno. The explosion hurled both figures back toward the continent. Steam and molten rock engulfed them.

"Miriam...?" Yuna whispered. Smoke drifted apart. The creature stood alone. Fresh bark-like flesh crawled across every burn until its body looked untouched. It raised its head. Several hundred metres away, Miriam lay motionless.

"Get her!" Naomi, Cass and Gideon lunged at once. The creature moved first. WHAM! A backhand caught Gideon across the face before anyone could blink, shattering his jaw and launching him through ridge after ridge in an avalanche of shattered ice. Naomi threw herself into its path. Black ice raced across her body, layering over her skin like armour just as the creature's claw crashed into her guard. KRAAAK!

The impact hurled her backwards, boots gouging twin trenches through the glacier, but a sheath of black frost exploded across the creature's hand. The unnatural ice bit deep, freezing its fingers together for the briefest instant.

"That's it!" It was all Cass needed. Her fist slammed into its jaw. CRAAACK! Her hand never buckled. Never fractured. Her ability held every bone, tendon and joint in the exact state she willed, refusing change itself. The creature's impossible durability rebounded through her arm, yet her fist remained perfectly intact.

"STAY!" THOOM-THOOM-THOOM! Punches rained across its face and chest before it could recover its footing, each blow driving the towering monster farther across the glacier as Cass screamed through gritted teeth.

"LINH!" Invisible force detonated across the battlefield. WHOOOOM! Gravity slammed into the creature before it reached her, folding the glacier beneath its feet and hurling the towering thing sideways. It crashed through ridge after ridge, each impact blasting apart kilometres of ancient ice before finally disappearing inside a mountain-sized glacier. Linh gritted her teeth, both arms trembling as she held her hands out.

"It's pushing back!" The glacier bulged. Long cracks raced across its surface while the invisible pressure between them screamed.

"Help me!" Roman's lightning erupted. Naomi buried the entire mountainside beneath layer after layer of black ice. Freya added another glacier on top of it. The imprisoned mass shuddered.

"Keep it there!" Linh gasped, veins standing out across her neck as the thing slowly forced itself against the crushing gravity.

"It's still moving." A sonic boom rolled across the battlefield. Victor skidded across the glacier before digging his heels into the ice, finally stopping beside the others. His breathing was ragged. One hand hung limp at his side, swollen, split open and trembling violently. He grimaced.

"I blocked it." Their eyes drifted to Victor's mangled hand.

"You blocked that?" Roman asked. Victor let out a humourless laugh.

"Yeah." He flexed his fingers, wincing.

"Barely." Naomi looked from his ruined hand to the creature.

"Just how fast is that thing?" Victor kept his eyes on the creature.

"We were already hundreds to thousands of times faster than light, depending on who you asked. Then I evolved." Naomi's brow furrowed.

"You flew to the Sun and back in under a tenth of a second before your evolution. That puts you at... at least fifty thousand times faster than the rest of us." Victor blinked.

"... Seriously?"

"At least." He looked back at the monster.

"…It's still faster than me." Victor flexed his battered hand and grimaced.

"You do the math, 'cause I sure as hell ain't." His expression hardened.

"It's gone." Their eyes snapped back toward the glacier imprisoning it. The mountainside had fallen silent. The black ice remained. The crushed ridges were still there. The creature wasn't.

"The hell?" Victor breathed. Freya's eyes narrowed.

"How did it get out?"

"The ice isn't broken," Naomi said, staring at the prison. Linh's face drained of colour.

"I never felt it break free." A cold silence settled over them. Then instinct took over. They launched skyward, fanning across Antarctica as their senses swept the continent.

"Find it!"

"Keep your distance!"

"There!" — Far below, a lone figure stood motionless on the glacier, yellow eyes fixed on them. It had found them first. Freya drew a sharp breath. Frost raced across the continent beneath them.

"Keep it unstable!" She slammed both palms together. The glacier began to hum. Fine, relentless tremors rippled through the Antarctic ice, vibrating the surface thousands of times each second. The endless carpet of roots and thorns quivered with it, their footing thrown into constant instability. Sweat beaded across Freya's brow despite the freezing air. Beside her, Linh swept both hands outward. Gravity lurched. Up. Sideways. Down. It refused to settle, shifting in erratic pulses across the battlefield.

Invisible currents tugged at everything below, changing direction before they could be anticipated.

"Keep scrambling it!" Linh shouted through gritted teeth. Far beneath them, the creature's charge faltered. Its clawed feet gouged trenches through vibrating ice as the world itself refused to stay still beneath it. It bent its legs. WHOOOOM! The creature abandoned the ground entirely. A black-green blur ripped through the sky straight toward them.

"It's coming!" Roman shouted. They broke formation instantly. The creature twisted mid-flight, adjusted its course with impossible precision, then streaked past the group instead of into it, disappearing across the horizon in a shrinking blur.

"It's leaving?" Mateo breathed. Naomi never lowered her guard. She kept watching the distant streak carve across the Antarctic sky.

"It's hunting." The creature landed on all fours. The glacier collapsed beneath the impact. It immediately broke into a sprint. Every stride blasted apart the frozen ground, leaving exploding craters and shattered ice in its wake as it accelerated across Antarctica. Roman's breath caught.

"Jesus Christ…"

"That thing is fast!" It crossed another impossible stretch of ice, the continent erupting behind every stride. Its voice rolled across Antarctica like ancient timber grinding beneath the weight of a mountain, reverberating through the air and the glacier alike.

"For what purpose do you seek escape?" The words seemed to come from everywhere at once.

"You flee only toward the end already promised." Another stride shattered the ice.

"Embrace death…" Its yellow eyes never left them.

"…for it is the only gift you shall receive this day." It accelerated again.

"Flight is futile." Roman thrust both hands forward. KRAAAAAK! Twin lances of blue-white lightning tore across the battlefield. The creature threaded between them, each missed strike erasing another mountain. Freya and Naomi answered together, hundreds of ice spears materialising overhead. The frozen barrage descended. The creature caught one out of the air.

"What?!" With a savage twist, it hurled the spear back. BOOOOM! The frozen lance punched straight through Roman's lightning and slammed into him, blasting him off his feet.

"ROMAN!" Before he could disappear beyond the horizon, Gideon intercepted him, catching him mid-flight despite his shattered jaw still knitting itself back together. The impact carried both of them through three glaciers before they skidded to a halt. High above, Cass frowned.

"I can't track it!" None of them could. She thrust both hands downward. Dozens of golden points blinked into existence at seemingly random locations across the battlefield.

"Fixed points!" she shouted.

"They'll only hold for a second! Anything that touches one locks in place!" Linh understood instantly.

"There!" She slammed both palms together. Gravity folded around the creature as it strained forward against the crushing force. A golden point flared beneath one claw. The limb froze.

"NOW!" The first spears struck. CRACK! CRACK! CRAAACK! Ice shattered across its body. Some ricocheted. Others disintegrated into glittering frost. Almost none penetrated.

"It's still standing!" Freya shouted. Linh gritted her teeth.

"I've... got it!" Invisible force wrapped tighter around the creature. Gravity seized it from every direction, dragging against every movement. Its claws carved deep trenches through the vibrating ice as it strained forward anyway, muscles swelling beneath bark-like flesh. Linh's whole body shook. Blood trickled from both nostrils. She grunted, forcing even more weight onto it.

"It's... pushing..." The pressure surged back through the link. A fresh stream of blood spilled over Linh's lips. She dropped out of the sky.

"LINH!" WHAM! She slammed into the glacier hard enough to crater the ice, bounced once, then forced herself upright on trembling legs before throwing both hands back toward the creature. Gravity crashed down again. Cass reached her a heartbeat later, catching her around the waist before the backlash could hurl her away a second time.

"I've got you!" Cass shouted, digging her heels into the ice. Golden points flashed into existence around the creature as she fired Fix Points one after another, pinning brief anchors through the air at unpredictable angles.

"Keep forcing it into them!" Each anchor would only hold for a heartbeat, but anything that touched one locked into place for that instant.

"Don't let go!" Linh strained, another ribbon of blood spilling from her nose as the invisible pressure bore down once more. Yuna became a streak of cyan. She flashed around the creature at impossible speed, dozens of ghostly afterimages scattering through the air in every direction. Each phantom darted in from a different angle, drawing its attention again and again as the monster's yellow eyes flicked between them, trying to separate the real Yuna from the countless false signatures.

"NOW!" Linh screamed. Every surviving prototype attacked. Roman drowned the battlefield in lightning. Naomi unleashed torrents of black ice. Freya buried the creature beneath glaciers the size of mountain ranges. Victor hurled shattered peaks while Gideon poured everything he had into the bombardment. The frozen continent disappeared beneath converging destruction.

"KEEP GOING!"

"DON'T LET UP!"

"FINISH IT!" When the barrage finally ceased, nothing remained except a colossal mountain of black ice threaded with fading lightning. Inside, the creature hung perfectly still.

"... Is it over?" Mateo breathed. A thorn-covered arm burst through the glacier. Roman answered instinctively. Blue-white lightning erupted from both palms. KRRRRAAAAAK! The creature caught it, and hurled the bolt back before anyone could follow the movement. BOOOOOM! Roman folded around the impact as his own lightning detonated into his stomach, launching him through the glacier in a storm of shattered ice. Nobody had even seen the throw. They only saw Roman disappear. Atlas surged forward.

"OUT OF MY WAY!" The others scattered instinctively.

"There!" He accelerated until even Victor lost sight of him. BOOOOOOOOOM! His fists smashed into the frozen prison. The glacier detonated. Both disappeared beneath the continent. Deep impacts rolled through the earth. THOOM! THOOM! THOOOOM!

"They're still fighting..." Mateo murmured. Another presence returned. Selene rose from the glacier, fully regenerated, sapphire veins glowing beneath her skin.

"Selene!" Naomi shouted.

"You're alive!" Selene looked toward the distant tremors.

"I understand." She launched upward, past the clouds, past the atmosphere, straight toward the stars. Mateo closed his eyes, listening to the vibrations racing through the bedrock.

"There." He inhaled.

"AAAAAAAAAAAH!" A sonic wave erupted from his lungs. The atmosphere rippled as the invisible blast punched through miles of stone before detonating beneath the glacier. Moments later... The creature burst back into the open. Atlas followed immediately behind.

"COME HERE!" His fist crashed into its jaw. BOOOOOM! To everyone's surprise, the creature staggered. Atlas grinned through the blood running down his face.

"You're heavy." Muscles swelled across his body. Veins bulged. Every exchange forced another adaptation. Every heartbeat made him stronger.

"You just keep growing..." He laughed.

"So do I!" He swung again. The creature caught his fist.

"Atlas!" Roman shouted. Naomi, Gideon and Victor rushed in to help. SKSKSKSKSK! A storm of jagged thorns exploded from the creature's body like living artillery, forcing them to scatter as the spikes ripped through glaciers and mountains alike. Atlas answered with his other hand. It caught that one too. The creature slowly straightened, lifting Atlas from the ice until both hung locked together, fingers intertwined in a savage contest of strength.

Its voice rolled across Antarctica like ancient forests groaning beneath the weight of ages.

"Yes..."

"Fight."

"Satiate me. Reveal the deepest roots of your strength, so you may witness how effortlessly the wilderness swallows them." Atlas roared and drove forward. The creature answered by tightening its grip. Millimetre by millimetre, Atlas's arms folded inward.

"AAAAAGH!" His knuckles cracked. His wrists followed. The crushing force travelled up both arms, splintering bone beneath impossible pressure. Dark green light pulsed through the creature's hands. Thorns pierced Atlas's flesh. Crimson flowers burst through his shoulders, ribs and chest, blooming one after another as roots burrowed beneath his skin. He screamed through gritted teeth, refusing to release his grip while his adaptation fought desperately to outpace the agony.... Far above, the heavens ignited.

A second sun descended. Selene fell from orbit wrapped in incandescent sapphire plasma. The heat surrounding her eclipsed anything they had witnessed. Matter simply ceased to exist around her. She had flown through stellar cores, feeding upon impossible quantities of plasma before compressing every fragment inside a body evolved to contain it. She shone brighter than a dying star.

"CLEAR OUT!" Far across the battlefield, Mateo planted his feet and cupped both hands around his mouth, aiming directly at the creature's spine. He inhaled.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" A focused sonic wave erupted from his lungs, compressed into a single devastating beam. KRAAAAAAAAAAANG! The scream hammered into the creature's back, driving straight through its spine. Mountains split apart behind it as the shockwave tore across Antarctica. Its body lurched. Its grip loosened for a fraction of a second. Atlas ripped both shattered hands free and hurled himself clear just as Selene descended. Naomi and Freya reacted instantly.

Black ice and crystal-white glaciers erupted upward together, sealing the creature inside an impossible prison. Linh increased the pressure until the ice screamed beneath the strain. The glacier splintered. Tree-sized thorns burst through the ice in every direction. Naomi, Freya and Linh scattered, but the forest of spikes chased them, splintering apart mid-flight into smaller lances. Naomi took one across the shoulder. Another grazed Freya's ribs.

A third ripped through Linh's thigh, the impact almost shattering her concentration. The prison bulged. Cracks raced through the glacier.

"It's breaking free!" Freya shouted. Cass thrust both hands forward.

"Fix!" Golden points bloomed around the rupturing prison. For a single second, reality refused to change. The exploding thorns froze in place. The widening cracks halted. The glacier stopped collapsing as though time itself had seized around it.

"That's all I've got!" Cass yelled. Selene roared. She struck. Colour disappeared. The world became white. The glacier ceased to exist. Mountains dissolved into vapour. The creature melted. Its body collapsed into incandescent liquid that hissed across the Antarctic ice before evaporating into nothing. Steam drifted skyward. Selene rose slowly from the smoking crater, breathing heavily as the sapphire radiance beneath her skin dimmed, countless stellar reactions settling safely within her cells.

— Around her, exhausted cheers broke out.

"We did it!"

"It's gone!"

"Finally!" Atlas laughed somewhere inside the crater.

"I told you we'd get the bastard!" Nobody sounded convinced. Their voices trembled. Blood still dripped from torn uniforms. Shoulders hung low. Hands shook uncontrollably as adrenaline bled away, leaving only exhaustion and pain. Every one of them looked half a step from collapsing. Relief spread anyway. It had to.

"…We need to leave," Naomi said, her voice unsteady. Nobody argued.