The Perfect Run

Snow. Snow, everywhere.

Antarctica was a land of ice without end, a white expanse of glaciers, frozen mountains, and plains so white that sunlight made them almost blinding to look at. It was utterly silent too. The few penguins and wildlife living on the continent nested along the coasts, and left the continent’s interior utterly lifeless.

Clad in the Saturn Armor, Ryan flew above the frozen wasteland with only Leo Hargraves for company. The courier remembered making a stop in Scandinavia and later Greenland during one of his lengthiest fetch quests, but the south pole remained a mystery to him.

“Have you found anything?” Len asked him through the telecom.

“Winter is coming,” Ryan replied ominously, as he and Sunshine flew over a tall glacier.

“Riri, you have been repeating that each time I call you.”

“Because people must know!” Ryan replied playfully. “I mostly see snow, but on the plus side, I haven’t seen any mosquitoes. Well, except the one we keep in storage.”

No wonder he never visited this place, there was nothing to do!

“I am highly disappointed.” The courier shrugged off a layer of frost forming on his armored arms. “I expected an ancient civilization buried beneath the snow, or maybe a mad scientist’s base.”

“What about the armor’s readings?”

“It actually picked up a spatial anomaly, but the signals are faint.” Truth be told, the entire region reeked of them. Whatever happened here had permanently damaged the space-time continuum in the area. “Sunshine and I are trying to narrow down the source.”

“I… finally.” It had been three days since they reached the continent, and quite a few members of the expedition had grown irritated with the lack of progress. “Don’t do anything rash.”

“Shortie, Rash is my middle name,” Ryan replied happily, “between Dashing and Immortal!”

Sunshine must have heard him, because the living sun looked over his shoulder. “Witty comes to mind too,“ he said.

“Witty is my son, Amusing my daughter,” Ryan replied, as he turned left after his armor picked up a stronger signal. Leo Hargraves quickly followed. “By the way, Sunshine, how is it you’re not melting the whole place with your mere presence?”

“I can control my own gravity and heat.” The superhero observed Ryan closely, his shining gaze both warm and intimidating.

“Do you want to shed light on some unresolved issues, my stargazing friend?” Though they had traveled together for a few days, the Carnival leader had remained surprisingly quiet so far. The courier had seen him gazing at Len while she didn’t notice, and his best friend had done her best to avoid the Living Sun. “Bloody issues?”

The Living Sun looked away, glancing at frozen mountains in the distance. “Is Len Sabino listening?”

Ryan had guessed right. “Shortie, the sun wants to dial you.”

“I’m listening,” she replied after a brief and tense silence, with Ryan putting on the loudspeaker.

“I wish to apologize on my team’s behalf,” Sunshine said. “To the both of you. What happened four years ago…”

“Wasn’t your brightest day?” Ryan sighed. “Believe me, it could have gone a lot worse, and you apologized already. At least to me.”

“In a previous loop?” Hargraves asked.

“So you believe us?” Ryan asked. The Living Sun hadn’t broached the subject since they set off from Monaco.

“I admit I find Shroud’s story difficult to believe, but I have seen many things in my life that I once thought impossible.” Leo Hargraves’ light seemed to dim for a brief instant. “You are within your right to hate us, and I would perfectly understand. I want to say that my teammates only followed my directions, and that I made the call that day. If you wish to blame someone, it is I.”

Len let the words sink in for a moment before answering. “Did you know who he used to be? That we were with him?”

“Yes,” Sunshine admitted. “I know Freddie Sabino was a good man, and that he traveled with his children.”

“Then why?” she asked, though her voice didn’t break. Ryan could tell that the subject remained painful for her, but not as much as it used to be. “Why did you come after him? Why didn’t you try to heal him? Your Genius… your Genius could have helped. Or at least tried.”

“We didn’t think curing him was even possible,” Sunshine admitted. “And time was not in our favor.”

“You predicted that he would cause a disaster,” Ryan said, remembering his conversation with Shroud at the loop’s beginning.

“Yes.” Sunshine seemed to hesitate about saying something, but eventually mustered the courage to. “And we had reason to think that he would kill you both, if we didn’t take action quickly.”

Ryan could almost see Len meditating on these words, reading between the lines. If let loose, Bloodstream would have killed his own daughter no matter what, and the Carnival saved her life.

On some level, she probably knew all along.

“I… I don’t know.” Len took a long deep breath. “I… I understand why you... why you tried to kill Dad. I do not support it, but… I understand. I’m… I’m not sure my father is even there anymore.”

“If we can cure him, we will,” Sunshine swore. “We made a decision based on the information we had available, but now… now I doubt we made the right one.”

“Hindsight is twenty-twenty,” Ryan replied. If anything, after seeing Bloodstream destroy New Rome in the previous loop, the courier thought that the Carnival hadn’t been thorough enough in stamping him out.

His armor suddenly picked up an electromagnetic reading near an icy rift below them. Bingo.

“I…” Len cleared her throat on the other end of the line. “Whatever happens, it will be my decision. Let me make it.”

“I understand,” Leo Hargraves said, as he and Ryan landed near the rift. Snow melted beneath the Living Sun’s heels, forcing him to float above the ground not to fall. “However, you must understand that if there is a risk that Bloodstream might escape and threaten millions, I will have to make a call.”

Len didn’t say anything.

“But if there is a way to cure your father, then we will find it,” Leo Hargraves swore, ever the shining knight. “What Dynamis did was… inhuman. If we had known, we would have stopped it. You have my word on that.”

“It’s okay,” Len replied. “I… I don’t want to talk about it. Not right now.”

“I understand. I am sorry to have opened old wounds.”

“Trust me, you haven’t even scratched the surface.” Ryan glanced into the rift, dark and foreboding. The crack spread on for miles, an ice canyon so deep that he needed to put on the armor’s lights to see the bottom. But most importantly, his systems picked up traces of Violet Flux in the area. “Well well well, what have we here...”

“Have you found something, Riri?”

“A Thin Place, but not a natural one,” Ryan replied, as he analyzed the energy readings. “And not the welcoming kind either.”

“What do you mean?” Sunshine asked, arms crossed.

“This kind of pocket dimension doesn’t just prevent intruders from moving in,” Ryan explained. Natural Thin Places, like the one where he had his fateful date with Livia, often opened during rare cosmic or electromagnetic conjunctions. But not this one. “It also prevents what's already inside from escaping.”

In short, it was a second Monaco.

The Living Sun quickly caught on to the implications. “She is keeping prisoners,” he guessed. “I can’t see any other reason to complicate evacuation otherwise.”

Neither did Ryan. Bacchus had told him that the Alchemist often set up illegal labs to test Elixirs. The courier guessed she probably did the same in her center of power.

“Can you get us inside?” Len asked, worried.

“I can open the way with my armor, and then keep it open with the Resonators.” Ryan always brought these devices with him on a trip, in case he ever found a way to commit Clown genocide. “This will create a pathway in and out of the pocket dimension, and allow us to communicate with the outside world while we’re inside.”

“In that case, Stitch and Atom Cat will remain behind on the other side of the portal, just in case,” Leo Hargraves said, immediately making plans. “The rest of us can look at what’s inside. If the Alchemist is smart, she will have defenses in place to repel intruders.”

“You don’t want to try talking it out first?” Len asked.

“I would,” the superhero asked. “But I have the feeling it won’t be an option.”

A sentiment that Ryan shared. “That woman has killed or driven mad everyone who tried to track her,” the courier said. “And she didn’t mind ending the world as an experiment. I doubt she’s going to cooperate with us.”

“I will tell everyone to prepare,” Len said.

“We’ll come back to pick you up,” Ryan said, taking flight again alongside Sunshine. “Perhaps we should have brought a robot army. They make everything easy.”

“And that’s the problem,” Sunshine replied. “When you make battles costless for those who order them, the results are always terrible. War should not be a computer game.”

Indeed. But Ryan still regretted condemning the bunker on their way out. Lightning Butt entered his full paranoia mode and sent soldiers to investigate the Junkyard soon after ordering the hit on Felix, trying to figure out what happened to the Meta-Gang. The risk of the Augusti finding out about Mechron’s armory had been too great, especially since they had the resources to take it over.

As for the other bases, Leo Hargraves had cleared out two of them by the time Shroudy Matty called him for reinforcements. With half of the Carnival deployed in Antarctica, the other members of the group remained in warmer places to destroy the remaining armories.

From what Ryan had understood, only the bunker in New Rome had been focusing on R&D. The others were standard armed robot production facilities, and capable of churning out armies in weeks. Sunshine was right, nothing good could come out of such installations.

With them gone, then Mechron’s legacy would be buried for good.

“Gotta admit, I’m a bit surprised you agreed to join this side-quest,” Ryan told his companion.

“A quest? Like a medieval one?” Leo asked, before shrugging. “A cure for Psychos would make the world a better place, and to be honest, if the Alchemist truly lives here… I want to ask her a question.”

“The Pink Elixir’s release date?”

“No,” Sunshine replied. “I want to ask her why.”

Ryan suspected that Sarin intended to ask the same question, but with far more violence involved.

The short flight ended half an hour south of the rift’s location, where a steel facility waited half-buried amidst a desert of ice and snow. The modular base consisted of two dozen cubes of metal joined together in an ‘L’ fashion, some of them breached.

Thanks to Bacchus and Simon’s information, it hadn’t taken long for Ryan’s group to find the lost Station Orpheon. The French government had stripped the research station clean after abandoning it, but left enough stuff for the team’s Geniuses to restore it to half capacity. Ryan guessed the military intended to reactivate the site at one point, but never got around to doing so before the world ended. For safety, the group had left Alchemo and the Doll with the submarine a few hours away in the south, moving in only with the group’s fighters.

Mr. Wave and the the only members of the team capable of surviving the terribly low temperature without special equipment, had made a campfire outside. And even then, Mr. Wave had to trade his fabulous cashmere suit for a trendy seal-fur garment. Ryan’s pandawan hadn’t changed outfit, though he remained constantly in beast form.

As it turned out, superpowered pandas were powerful enough to survive in Antarctica without power armor. Their indestructible fur and fat shielded them from the cold, alongside radiation, rainwater, and cupcakes.

Ryan had checked.

“Once, Mr. Wave turned up the heat,” the superhero told the as the manbear gorged himself on warm seal milk. “That was the start of global warming.”

“Is, is it true?” The asked naively. Though his power had given him a great deal of insight, he still had the adorable tendency of believing everything his heroes said.

“Mr. Wave never lies, he enlightens,” the superhero replied, as Ryan and his sunny friend landed near them.

“While Sunshine lights the way,” Ryan joked.

“Only in the dark,” Mr. Wave added.

Leo Hargraves chuckled, before glancing at the “How is the milk?”

“H-he’s noticing me!” The lowered his head to avoid meeting Sunshine’s gaze, all but putting his nose in his milk. Unfortunately, the frost was such that the boiling liquid quickly started to freeze on his fur. “He’s talking to me!”

“I…” Leo Hargraves looked a bit uncomfortable. “Yes, I do.”

“You can go blind if you stare at the sun too long,” Ryan said. “My pandawan is only taking care of his health.”

“Sifu, is he still looking?” The asked, too afraid to raise his head.

“Don’t worry, his vision is based on movement,” Ryan added. “You should be safe.”

“I’m… I’m flattered, but this reaction is uncalled for,” Leo argued, highly embarrassed.

“But you are the Living Sun, Earth’s greatest hero!” said the as he took a deep, chilly breath. “I have a poster of you in my bedroom!”

“Heroism is not a popularity contest,” Sunshine argued. “And you have proven your worth when you fought the Meta-Gang, Timmy. Mathias spoke highly of you. In fact, I would like to invite you to the Carnival. We need people like you, with their hearts in the right place. Of course, this is a dangerous work, and I would perfectly understand if you refu-”

The dropped his cup in shock, the milk turning to ice within seconds. The poor manbear began to hyperventilate, falling to his back and rolling in the snow. Then he let out a squeal so powerful, that Ryan wondered if penguins could hear it from across the wasteland.

“Mr. Wave believes you just committed pandacide,” Mr. Wave told his confused teammate.

“This is the first time I’ve gotten such a reaction,” Sunshine replied as the station’s doors opened. Len walked out first alongside Sarin, both wearing their evolved power armors. Atom Cat and Shroud followed. The former wore a white second skin of Stitch’s conception which covered his entire body, even the eyes; somehow it allowed him to see anyway. From what Ryan understood, the protection was made of trillions of bacteria adapted to the cold. Shroud, meanwhile, had thickened his suit with additional layers of reinforced glass to keep the heat inside, turning his costume into a heavy and nigh-impenetrable armor. Stitch closed the march, carrying heavy insulation clothing over his plague doctor outfit.

“Are you sure you wish to come with us, Atom Cat?” Sunshine asked upon seeing Felix. “We are about to face great danger. If the Alchemist truly makes her lair in this region, then she is certainly not defenseless.”

“I owe you one,” the young man replied while glancing at Ryan and Mathias. “And I have questions I want answers for.”

“Me too,” Sarin snickered. “I can tell there’s stuff you’re keeping for yourselves. Like a secret nerd conspiracy.”

“The orange is in the henhouse,” Ryan replied ominously.

The lovely Sarin stared at him. “I didn’t get it.”

“Exactly.” Ryan whistled, even as the Psycho raised her gauntlet in his direction.

“I still can’t believe it,” Felix said, crossing his arms. “Livia would never cooperate with the Carnival. Something isn’t right.”

“Things change,” Shroud replied with a shrug.

“And you’re dating my sister,” Felix added. “Somehow, I find that to be the strangest part.”

Ryan decided to hold off on telling him about time travel.

One shock at a time.

When the team reached the rift on foot with the Resonator devices, Ryan froze time, purple and black particles swirling around his body. Much like when he opened a path to the Black World in the previous loop, he quickly found the pocket dimension’s entrance, and forcefully opened it with his bare hands.

After tossing a Resonator inside and keeping the other in the snow, a stream of particles formed between the two ends of the portals and slowly opened it. When time resumed, a purple portal ominously floated above the icy rift.

“So?” Ryan asked. “Who goes in—”

“First!” Mr. Wave said while immediately jumping through.

“Damn it!” Not to be outdone, Ryan immediately followed his idol and the world around him brightened in a bright flash of purple particles. The transport lasted an instant, but the contrast between the two sides couldn’t be starker.

While it had been daylight in Antarctica, the other side of the portal had a black, starless sky overseeing it. Streaks of purple lightning thundered above the group’s heads, while Ryan almost mistook the howling wind for screams. A foreboding structure stood alone surrounded by a vast expanse of ice which seemed to go on without end.

Yeah, such a warm, welcoming place.

Ryan had received a brief vision of the Alchemist’s base when he tried to open the path to the Purple World a few loops ago, and he immediately recognized the structure. A colossal dome of black metal emerged from the snow, with reinforced blast doors large enough to let a plane through serving as the entrance. All in all, the structure was among the largest Ryan had ever seen, and gave the Egyptian pyramids a run for their money.

Here it was. The place where it all began.

Ryan might have felt a sense of wonder at the sight, but a few worrying details immediately caught his attention.

First of all, the dome had been breached, with a hole more than fifty meters in diameter blown open on its left side. And from the way the metal bent, whatever explosion caused the structural damage came from the inside. Second, though Ryan noticed reinforced, stained portholes here and there, he couldn’t see any light within. Third, the building’s blast doors leaned on the left, as if the whole dome was sinking into the snow.

And fourth…

“What is this?” Len said as she crossed the portal, immediately noticing it.

The dead husk of a colossal monster more than eight meters tall laid in the snow. Ice and frost had preserved the creature’s flesh, even though half its body was made of cybernetic implants. The left arm was a cannon, the right a technological blade large enough to cleave a tank in half. The creature had scales red as blood, curved horns like a bull, three rows of fangs, and eight spidery eyes. A large gash had split its black armor from shoulder to the waist, letting brown alien organs spill out on the ice.

When everyone except Stitch and Atom Kitten crossed the portal, the group carefully surrounded the husk, with Sarin pointing her gauntlets at its face in case it would wake up. It didn’t. By all measures, the monster had been dead for a while, though Ryan couldn’t tell how long due to the ice.

“It looks like one of Mechron’s warbeasts,” Sunshine said.

His teammate was less certain. “Mr. Wave never killed that model, and he slaughtered them all.”

“At least it’s dead,” Sarin said before wiping away snow covering the monster’s shoulder. “Look, on the shoulder.”

Leo approached the husk to provide light. A mark similar to a cross between the ‘M’ letter and the omega symbol was engraved on the monster’s armor. Somehow, looking at it unsettled Ryan for a reason he couldn’t explain.

“What’s that?” Mr. Wave asked. “A reversed ‘W’?”

“I have mastered linguistics, Sifu,” the informed Ryan, trying to help. “If I have more information, I could figure it out.”

“Perhaps we could hack into the implants and find out more from them,” Shroud suggested. “They must have recorded what happened.”

“That technology is…” Len shook her head. “I don’t even know where to begin. But it’s not…”

“It’s not Mechron tech,” Ryan said. His own armor couldn’t connect to the monster’s cybernetic implants.

“Mmm…” Sarin glanced at the hole in the dome. “Do you think it blew its way out? Could be a failed lab experiment. Don’t you Geniuses love them, eh?”

“Too early to say,” Sunshine replied, before taking flight. “Shroud, with me. The rest of you, try to secure the perimeter. If the Alchemist still lives there, she probably noticed us. ”

The group spread around the portal to secure it, finding the remains of old defensive turrets either broken or buried in the ice. Ryan himself had his armor’s systems run an analysis of the structure, the various sensors slowly providing a larger view of the full thing. And the more the courier saw, the more he squinted. Sunshine and Mr. See-Through flew around the dome while maintaining a respectable distance.

“First of all, the portholes aren’t made of glass,” Shroud said upon returning to the portal. “I cannot control them. And on a closer look, I do not think they are portholes at all. They look like lenses or cameras.”

“They appear to be inactive,” Sunshine added. “As for the wasteland, it loops on itself past a certain point.”

“The defenses haven’t been maintained in years,” Len declared while examining a broken turret.

“Whole place looks empty,” Sarin replied grimly. “And to be honest, it gives me the chills.”

Ryan glanced at the cyborg’s husk. The cuts weren’t clean enough for blades or lasers.

Claws.

Claws killed this thing.

The base had been active when Ryan saw it in his visions, but not anymore. At one point, something went wrong.

“Why are the doors leaning?” The asked with worry, the whole place intimidating him.

“Because it’s not a bunker,” Ryan said, as his armor’s readings came back with a simulation of the building.

The dome was just the tip of the iceberg; a submarine’s tower, hiding a larger structure buried beneath the ice. The full base was a colossal, kilometers long war machine with great metal wings and reactors larger than most skyscrapers.

“It’s a spaceship.”