Sion stood outside the glass box and watched the man inside adjust to the weight of the phantasm settling into his eye. The glass was thin, a surgical lens that caught the fluorescent light and scattered it into rainbows across the walls of the containment chamber.
The man blinked, once, twice, three times, and when his eye opened again, the iris had changed. It was the color of old gold now, the pupil a vertical slit that contracted and expanded in response to frequencies of light that no human eye was meant to see.
The man's name was Theon. He had been a researcher at the Temporal Division before the suicides, one of the few who had survived the mass death of his colleagues by being elsewhere when the decision to end was made.
He had watched Nulls win in every timeline where the two of them intersected. And now he was here, in the bottom of the Osiris desert, in a facility that should not exist, wearing chains that had been forged in the heart of a dying hyper matter reactor.
The straitjacket was a newer addition, a precaution after Theon had tried to claw out his own eyes during his third day of containment.
The chains were connected to anchors embedded in the walls, floor, and ceiling, each anchor rated to hold the weight of a collapsing island. It was almost certainly overkill. Theon was not a fighter. His talents lay elsewhere.
A robotic arm descended from the ceiling, its manipulators clicking and whirring as it positioned itself in front of Theon's face.
A second phantasm waited in its grip, this one shaped like a small disc, its surface etched with sigils that glowed with the faint light of stored Aetherion.
The arm pressed the disc against Theon's temple, and the flesh there parted to receive it, flowing around the edges of the phantasm as if the skin had been waiting for this moment its entire existence.
Sion spoke into the microphone embedded in the console before him. "The second phantasm is a cognitive transmitter and receiver. It will allow me to communicate with you telepathically, and you with me, at any distance. There is no range limitation nor there is privacy. I will hear everything you think, and you will hear everything I think, unless I choose to block the connection."
Theon's eye, the one that had been modified, twitched. "That sounds unpleasant."
"It is." Sion's finger hovered over the third phantasm, a small sphere of black metal that pulsed with a light that was not quite light. "The third one will let me see what you see. will be there with you watching every moment of every possibility that passes before your eyes."
Theon's hands curled into fists inside the straitjacket. "You want to use me as a sensor"
"I want you to be the early warning system for this facility." Sion pressed a button, and the robotic arm moved the third phantasm toward Theon's chest. "Nulls is coming. We have eleven hours before he reaches the shore of this continent. We have no idea how long after that before he finds us, you will tell me where he is, what he is doing, and where he is going next long before he knew it himself."
Theon leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. The phantasms settled into his flesh, their presence a constant pressure at the edges of his consciousness. "And if I lie to you?"
"You will not lie. Lying would guarantee the death of everyone in this facility, including yourself. Given what we have done to Nulls I think we can assume that our deaths will not be swift." Sion's voice was flat, matter-of-fact. "He will make us suffer like his levyathan have. We would beg, even I as the site director is not diverging from that. Then he will make us wish we had never been born, we would cursed to our parents for bringing us to this world. And then and only then he will kill us. In that order, probably."
Theon was silent for several seconds. The only sounds in the chamber were the hum of the life support systems and the distant vibration of the facility's power core.
"Better than living blind for the rest of my life," Theon said.
Sion nodded, though Theon could not see him. "If you do not provide me with actionable intelligence at intervals of no more than five minutes, I will terminate you. Specifically, I will release a Morbus into this chamber. A juvenile asfalis, small enough to fit through the door. It would take its time savoring your every bone, should it devour you ravenously, we've put Aetherion depressant in its blood stream, I could activated it to devour you slowly should the situation ever happen."
Theon's eye opened. The gold iris caught the light, and for a moment, Sion saw something in that gaze that looked almost like gratitude.
"I understand," Theon said.
Sion walked out of the containment chamber, the door sealing behind him with a hiss of pressurized air.
The corridor beyond was narrow and white, the walls lined with conduits and data cables, the floor grated to allow the circulation of coolant.
He walked quickly, his boots echoing off the metal, his mind already shifting from the interrogation to the larger crisis.
The data from the satellites was unequivocal. Nulls and his two remaining leviathans were converging on this continent. The serpent, Faust, was cutting a path through the ocean at speeds that should have been impossible for a creature of its mass.
The mountain was following behind, its thousand eyes scanning the depths for threats that did not exist. They would reach the shore of Psamathe in eleven hours, give or take a few minutes depending on currents and the whims of the leviathans.
However finding this facility would be another matter entirely. The Osiris desert covered ten percent of Gaia's surface, a vast expanse of sand that stretched from the equator to the southern polar circle.
The dunes here were taller than mountains, deeper than the Zamharir trench, and the sands themselves shifted constantly, burying and uncovering ruins that had been lost for millennia.
The facility was buried beneath the sands, deeper than the deepest point of Ocean Scylla, its spherical shell camouflaged to blend with the surrounding sediment. It was coated with sigils and talismans to prevent the massive amount of sands from crushing the facility.
The thermal signature of the facility matched the temperature of the desert at this depth, making infrared scans useless. The dielectric constant of the shell was identical to that of the sand, rendering ground-penetrating radar blind.
They were invisible but hey were also immobile. The mass of the facility was enormous, the energy required to move it equivalent to the output of numerous dying stars.
There would be no flight. If Nulls found them only a miracle from the Almighty could save them.
Sion stepped into the ground station, the chaos instantly washed over him, several voices shouting data at each other, high-speed humming was coming from each of the computers there, as internal cooling system work overtime to cool the components.
But buried beneath all of that chaos, satisfying sound of typing could be heard. It was still chaotic but atleast it was the closest thing in this room to a harmony.
Quettabytes of data exchanged between servers every second, each machine running millions of simulations in parallel, each simulation testing a different outcome for a different variable, one slight change in the variable.
Often times even if the variable is offset by only a trillionth of a planck length, that is the difference between extinction by plague. And extinction by his beasts.
"Chaos theory is a fucking bitch!" One of the researcher yelled before getting slapped. She quickly resumed her work.
The screens on the walls displayed real-time maps of the continent, the ocean, the desert, each one overlaid with the predicted paths of the leviathans and the estimated locations of the facility's defenses.
Researchers moved between the terminals, their faces pale, their hands shaking, their voices raised in arguments that had no resolution.
"T minus 10 hours and 53 minutes," someone called out.
"Update the trajectory models. The serpent changed course three degrees to port."
"Thermal readings are nominal. No sign of detection."
"Has anyone heard from the surface team?"
Sion walked to the central console and placed his hands on the railing. The screens showed him everything. The desert, endless and empty, waiting for something to disturb its peace.
The facility, buried and hidden, waiting for something to find it. The man in the glass box, his eyes closed, his mind already reaching into the future, searching for the moment when Nulls would look in their direction.
He was stressed. More stressed than Valerius, probably, though he would never admit it. The weight of command pressed down on him like the sand above, and the knowledge that a single mistake would cost thousands of lives was a constant presence at the back of his mind.
Theon's voice spoke directly into his thoughts.
"He is thinking about one if his levyathans, he calls it Walpurgis. He mourn its death and is currently in a fetal position, motionless while staring at the same place for the last 7 minutes without blinking."
Sion closed his eyes. "Keep watching. Tell me when he decides where to go next."
"He has already decided. He is going to the desert to find this facility."
"How?"
"I do not know. I only see what he sees." Theon's mental voice was tired, strained. "But he is very smart, and he is very patient, and he has already survived everything you have thrown at him. Do you really think a few kilometers of sand will stop him?"
Sion opened his eyes and looked at the screens, at the desert, at the facility that was supposed to be invincible.
"Keep watching," he said again.
Theon was silent. The simulations ran. The researchers argued. The clock counted down.
The screens flickered. Sion watched the trajectory lines shift, the leviathans moving faster than any model predicted.
Tsunamis rose in their wake, walls of water that swallowed islands and reshaped coastlines.
The numbers on the display climbed, fell, climbed again. Faust's speed had doubled in the past hour. Regie had tripled.
"They are converging," a researcher said. "The serpent and the mountain. They are moving in sync."
Sion said nothing. His finger tapped the railing of the console, a slow rhythm that matched the pulse of the facility's core.
Theon's voice came through the connection, thin and strained. "My vision is blurring."
Sion straightened. "Explain."
"Something is in the way. Blue particles. A higher dimensional temporal manifold." Theon's breath quickened. "It is folding the futures. I cannot see past it."
The screens continued to show the leviathans' progress. Eleven hours became ten. Ten became nine.
"I hear something," Theon said.
"What?"
"A clicking. Low. Coming from inside my head."
Sion glanced at the containment chamber feed. Theon was still chained to the wall, his body rigid, his eyes open. The gold iris of his modified eye was contracting and expanding rapidly, the vertical slit flickering.
"It is looking at me," Theon whispered. "The thing. The beast is staring at me!"
Sion's hand moved to the console. His finger hovered over the release button for the Morbus containment. "You are compromised."
"It is blocking me!" Theon's voice rose, cracking. "It knows I am watching. It knows where I am. It knows—"
The scream that followed was not human. Theon's back arched, his spine bending backward until his head touched his heels.
His alveoli burst, the sound of popping balloons echoing through the containment chamber.
Blood sprayed from his mouth, his nose, his ears. His eyes, both of them, ruptured in their sockets, the vitreous humor spraying across the glass wall of the box.
His tongue shot forward, stretching, elongating, reaching past his chin, past his chest, until it hung like a pink rope from the ruins of his face.
The gold iris of his modified eye stared at nothing. The phantasms glowed faintly, their sigils pulsing in rhythm with the heartbeat that had stopped.
Sion looked at the containment chamber feed for a long moment. Then he looked at the screens, at the leviathans, at the countdown that had reached eight hours.
"Seal the chamber," he said. "Initiate decontamination protocols."
A researcher nodded, her hands shaking as she typed. "Theon is dead."
"I know."
The console beeped. A new trajectory line appeared on the map. Faust had changed course again, turning toward the continent's interior, toward the desert, toward the facility buried beneath the sand.
Sion watched the line advance and said nothing. The screens showed Faust's trajectory, the serpent cutting across the ocean toward the continent's interior. Eight hours became seven. The facility's sensors tracked the leviathan's passage, the shockwaves of its movement registering on seismographs buried in the desert bedrock.
Sion took a long sigh and straightened his shoulders and turned away from the consoles.
"Initiate the second plan," he said.
A young officer stepped forward, her hands clasped behind her back, her face pale in the glow of the displays. "Director, that protocol requires authorization from the Galland City council. Without their approval, the religious authorities will not—"
"I am the director of this facility." Sion's voice cut through the room like a blade. The researchers stopped typing. The officers stopped whispering. Every eye turned to him. "I have the highest authority on this continent. The Galland City council answers to me, not the other way around."
The officer nodded, her throat working as she swallowed. "Yes, Director."
Sion looked at the map, at the coastline, at the beaches where the waves were already rising in response to the leviathans' passage. "Contact every religious figure in this continent, anyone who has ever performed a blessing in the name of any god. Tell them to gather on their local beaches."
He turned back to the room, and the corner of his mouth curved upward, just slightly, just enough to be seen.
"We will bless the sea."