CHAPTER 3: "The End That Wasn't"
Sarah Chen - Base Omega-3, Siberia
The underground bunker shook as if the world was dying. Sarah Chen looked up from the control panel, her fingers still dancing over the holograms while coordinating the defense of the last eight hundred forty-seven survivors under her command.
—Commander, we detect a massive explosion in the New York sector —Lieutenant Walsh reported, his voice barely audible above the roar of the power generators—. The radiation is... beyond our instruments.
Sarah turned toward the main screen, where satellite data showed a column of light extending from Manhattan to the stratosphere. The numbers made no sense. The energy released was equivalent to five hundred nuclear bombs detonating simultaneously.
(Bruce... you were always a heroic idiot.)
She had met Bruce Morrison during the first days of the invasion, when they still believed they could win with conventional tactics. He had saved her platoon from a Zephyrian ambush using nothing more than EMP grenades and pure stubbornness. Since then, she had followed his meteoric career from common soldier to the man who would lead humanity's last resistance.
—Visual confirmation from remaining satellites —Walsh continued—. The mothership has been... completely destroyed. But ma'am, there are fifteen smaller ships approaching our coordinates. ETA: forty-seven minutes.
Sarah closed her eyes for a moment. Long-range radar showed the truth she didn't want to face: the alien ships were heading toward all remaining bases simultaneously. Without the mothership to coordinate their efforts, the Zephyrians had decided to end everything at once.
—Status of other bases? —she asked, though she already knew the answer.
—Base Alpha in the Alps... silent for twenty minutes. Base Delta in the Andes reported hostile contact and then... nothing. Base Gamma in the Sahara is resisting, but their transmissions are weak.
(Forty-seven thousand people. That's all that's left of eight billion.)
Sarah activated the base's general communicator. Her voice resonated through all levels of the underground complex, reaching every soul still breathing in that piece of hope buried under the Siberian ice.
—Attention, Base Omega-3 personnel. As you all know, Colonel Morrison has managed to destroy the enemy mothership over New York. His sacrifice has given us one last chance. Remaining enemy forces are approaching our position. We have forty-five minutes to prepare.
She paused, observing the tense faces on the security monitors. Civilians, soldiers, scientists, children... all looking toward the cameras with that mixture of terror and determination that had kept humanity alive during three years of hell.
—I won't lie to you. The odds are against us. But Bruce Morrison taught us something important: that as long as one of us keeps breathing, humanity hasn't lost. Today we'll die with honor. Today we'll show these bastards that humans don't surrender.
The cheers that followed were weak but genuine. Sarah deactivated the communicator and turned to Walsh.
—Activate all defense systems. Arm the tactical nuclear warheads. And Walsh... open the Phoenix Operation files.
Walsh paled. Phoenix Operation was the final protocol: a quantum transmission that would send all of human history, their science, their art, their culture, toward any civilization that could receive it in the future. It was their final testament.
—At least we'll die with dignity. And maybe, somewhere in the universe, someone will remember we existed.
Sarah looked one last time toward the screen showing New York's coordinates. A solitary tear rolled down her cheek as she whispered the words Bruce had told her the last time they spoke:
—See you on the other side, soldier.
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Oberón the Innovator - Divine Kingdom of Murim
Five hundred thousand years of divine existence had taught Oberón the Innovator that truly interesting moments were rare. He watched thousands of realities simultaneously through floating crystal spheres that filled his dimensional sanctum, each showing a different world, a different story, infinite possibilities of entertainment.
But none had captivated him as much as the small blue sphere showing the technological world on the brink of extinction.
—Fascinating —he murmured, his golden eyes fixed on the explosion consuming Manhattan—. Absolutely fascinating.
Most mortals in desperate situations opted for survival. They fled, hid, negotiated. But Bruce Morrison had chosen something different. He had chosen heroic sacrifice, final glory, death with purpose.
(Exactly the type of mentality my world needs.)
Oberón extended his consciousness toward the exact moment of detonation, observing how Bruce's essence dispersed into pure energy. The human soul was surprisingly resilient, maintaining cohesion even as his body disintegrated at the atomic level. He quickly evaluated its fundamental components:
Military courage: Exceptional. Natural leadership: Superior. Adaptability: Notable. Resistance to corruption: Admirable. Cultivation potential: Unknown, but promising.
—Perfect —Oberón smiled, his fingers dancing over the ethereal controls of his domain—. My cultivators have been repeating the same routines for millennia. They need... fresh inspiration.
The Murim he governed was a stagnant world. Four factions in perpetual balance, each too proud to innovate, too traditional to evolve. The orthodox clung to obsolete codes of honor. The heterodox rebelled for pure rebellion's sake. The demonic pursued power without purpose. The Empire controlled without vision.
(But a soldier from a dying world... someone who has seen the true cost of failure... he could change the rules of the game.)
Oberón activated dimensional salvage protocols. It was a complex procedure that required a considerable amount of divine energy, but the possibilities for future entertainment justified the investment. Besides, it had been centuries since he'd had such an interesting personal project.
Bruce's essence was captured at the exact moment of its dispersal, preserved as a pattern of pure information. Oberón began the reconstruction process, using his own domain's physical laws to give it material form again.
—Dimensional Salvage Protocol - Authorized —he declared formally, activating power seals that had remained dormant for eons—. Subject: Bruce Morrison, designated as 'Chosen' under the Unification Contract.
The crystal spheres resonated with his decision, each projecting different aspects of the worlds he observed. Some minor brother gods sent telepathic inquiries, curious about his sudden activity. Oberón ignored them. They had their own projects, their own worlds to mold.
The dimensional transfer process began, creating energy waves that extended across multiple realities. Bruce would be deposited in the Murim with all his memories intact, his personality preserved, but his body optimized for the new world's physical laws.
(Now comes the truly interesting part. Can a complete outsider do what my natives haven't accomplished in three millennia? Unify the factions under a single banner?)
Oberón leaned back in his crystallized energy throne, a genuinely amused smile crossing his immortal features. For the first time in centuries, he didn't know exactly how events would unfold. The uncertainty was delicious.
—My world needs exactly that mentality —he murmured, watching as the transfer completed—. Soldier Morrison, I hope you're prepared for a completely different challenge.
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Fragzion "Fragmented Voice" - Parasitic Dimension
Fragzion "Fragmented Voice's" fury resonated across multiple dimensions simultaneously, each fragment of his distributed consciousness howling with rage as he observed the destruction of three years of meticulous preparation.
—IMPOSSIBLE! INCONCEIVABLE! UNACCEPTABLE!
His true form was incomprehensible to mortal minds: an amorphous mass of psychic tentacles that existed partially in dozens of parallel realities. He had been feeding on human desperation during the war, each death, each moment of terror, each act of surrender feeding his parasitic power.
(Three years. Three years molding the conflict perfectly. And this... this INSECT ruins everything in a moment of heroic stupidity.)
Fragzion had orchestrated the Zephyrian invasion from the shadows, whispering in alien minds, amplifying their natural aggression, directing their attacks to maximize human suffering without causing complete extinction. Humans needed to be shepherded toward total desperation, not quickly annihilated.
The plan had been perfect: Bruce Morrison, the natural leader of the resistance, would gradually become something darker. The constant pressure, continuous losses, the crushing responsibility of being humanity's last hope... all designed to break his heroic spirit and turn him into something Fragzion could possess completely.
Bruce should have lived seventy-two more hours. In seventy-two hours, he would have made the decision Fragzion had been planting in his subconscious for months: use biological weapons against the Zephyrians, sacrificing human civilians as collateral damage. That first moral compromise would have opened a crack in his soul, a crack that Fragzion could have exploited to possess him completely.
And then... then he would have had access to all human military technology, all their industrial infrastructure, all their war potential. With Bruce as host, he would have turned humanity into his perfect instrument for invading other realities.
—BUT NO! THE IDIOT CHOSE USELESS GLORY OVER PRACTICAL SURVIVAL!
Fragzion's tentacles writhed through dimensional space, destroying entire asteroids in his fury. His fragmented voices screamed across hundreds of realities:
—OBERÓN! —The word resonated like the howl of a million tortured souls—. I KNOW IT WAS YOU! I DETECTED YOUR INTERFERENCE!
But it was too late. Bruce's essence had been torn from his reach, transported to a domain where Fragzion couldn't follow. The rules of the divine game were clear: once a soul was claimed by another god under legitimate contract, interfering would constitute an act of war between deities.
(Very well. If I can't have my perfect host, then I'll accelerate the conquest. No subtleties. No long-term plans. Pure extermination.)
Fragzion sent a telepathic order that crossed space toward the remaining Zephyrian fleet. No more careful shepherding. No more strategic preservation of human population. The aliens received a new directive that overrode all their previous protocols:
—TOTAL EXTERMINATION. NOW. NO SURVIVORS.
The fifteen ships approaching the remaining human bases increased their speed, their weapon systems charging with energy sufficient to vitrify entire continents. The Zephyrians, freed from the subtle restrictions that had limited their attacks, prepared to end the war once and for all.
Fragzion watched with bitter satisfaction as his new orders were executed. If he couldn't have humans as pawns, at least he could feed on their final extinction. The desperation of the last moments, multiplied by forty-seven thousand souls simultaneously, would provide enough energy to partially compensate for the loss of his long-term strategy.
(And you, Bruce Morrison, wherever Oberón has taken you... I hope you're aware that your "heroism" just condemned everyone you tried to save.)
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At the epicenter of the explosion that had consumed Manhattan, something impossible occurred. Bruce Morrison's dispersed atoms, scattered across a radius of hundreds of kilometers, began to glow with a golden light that belonged to no known physics.
Reality itself fractured like broken glass, creating temporal cracks through which energy from impossible dimensions filtered. For a moment that lasted an eternity, Bruce existed in a state of pure consciousness, experiencing his own death and rebirth simultaneously.
His last vision of the world he had called home was Earth burning behind him, cities turned into smoking craters, oceans evaporating under alien heat. And in that final image, he saw the faces of all those he couldn't save: Sarah with her brave smile, Dr. Kim working until the last moment in his laboratory, Soldier Walsh making bad jokes to keep morale up...
(I failed them. All of them. But if there existed the slightest chance of returning with the power to change this...)
The golden light enveloped him completely, tearing him from one reality and hurling him toward another. The universe faded into a tunnel of light that extended infinitely in all directions, and Bruce Morrison began his journey toward a destiny he couldn't even imagine.