by Alex Raizman
Without knowing how deep Enki’s nuclear-powered descent had pushed him, calling rope out of his nanoverse could end up being far more effort than a simple twist. Ryan peered down into the chasm again. It was a yawning darkness, with only a single spec of glowing red coming from the heart of the pit, a single eye staring hatefully up at him. Ryan thought he had enough power left for what needed to be done. Barely.
He leapt in, twisting gravity to slow his descent. He didn’t risk any changes to his direction - more twists meant more power, and already his Hungers were clamoring for attention. The light on his shirt glowed to try and counteract the darkness. It wasn’t designed to illuminate an entire cavern, but it provided some vision in the inky blackness that surrounded him. The drifting was so gentle, it almost lulled him back to sleep.
Ryan smacked his thigh a few times, trying to force himself into alertness. Finish this, Ryan. Finish this, damnit. He was so weak that when he hit the cavern floor, even as slow as he was moving, he collapsed to the ground.
When he reached out to clamor towards that spot of red he’d seen before, he saw how withered his hand looked. His divine powers were fading. He was almost completely mortal. If I lose power before I get the nanoverse, I’m dead. It was a cold realization, but Enki’s ultimate resting place would be red hot and radioactive still. Hot air was still pushing out of the hole, and it felt like sticking his face into an oven.
Don’t think. Go. Push.
The red dot was a second pit, the one where Enki had buried himself. Ryan tumbled into it, slowing gravity again.
He emerged into a second cavern, this one a sphere of rock that still glowed from the heat and explosion.
Nuclear blasts were supposed to completely atomize matter caught at ground zero, but at Ryan’s feet were slivers of blackened bone. Seeing them made him shiver in spite of the heat. Enki was so strong it couldn’t completely annihilate him. That thought was logical, that thought was rational. Another one came immediately on its heels. I killed him.
In spite of everything, Ryan hadn’t killed anyone until now. Mummies had been deanimated, manticores had been blasted, but an actual human life? Ryan still believed it was the only way. No matter what, Enki needed to die. it didn’t change the fact that Ryan had helped killed someone who was guilty of believing he could save the world.
A hiss distracted him, reminded him his shoes were melting into the stone below. Ryan didn’t have time to reflect right now. Right. Nanoverse.
He spotted the nanoverse laying among the radioactive stone. Or, to be more accurate, the nanoverses. To Ryan’s eyes, the fusion looked less like cells dividing and more like one nanoverse was a cancerous mass growing out of the other. It reminded Ryan of photos of injures. They were sickening and appalling, but it was hard to look away. Something about it radiated a wrongness that made Ryan want to heave just from the sight of it. Ryan found himself wishing he could just leave the hideous thing down here, collapse the island on top of it and let tons of rock and seawater shut it away from the world.
Because that works so well in the movies, Ryan reminded himself as he bent down to grab it. If there was one thing Hollywood had taught Ryan, it was that leaving something dark and terrible buried beneath the Earth was a good way to make sure it became some future generation’s problem. And since you’re immortal now, it would probably be your problem then, too.
His fingers were still inches from it. He couldn’t make himself touch it. Instead, Ryan pulled off what was left of his shirt and wrapped it around the nanoverse. He had to spend a bit more power to prevent the cloth from bursting into flames. Stupid waste.
As he stood there, a horrible fear swept over Ryan. He’d burned too much power, he was mortal now. The hole above him had closed. There was no way out. He could feel the radiation seeping into his body, feel it causing his cells to break down. He tried to twist equations to open the rocks, to escape this prison, but his hands were swollen from the decay and his mind was sluggish.
He got close, almost managed to force a gap open, but then Enki's bones rose up and stabbed into his calves. Ryan let out a howl of pain and dropped to his knees and suddenly he knew, he was certain that he would die here. He would die here, and his body would become as diseased and cancerous as that horrible twin nanoverse.
Stop it stop it stop it!
Ryan managed to get ahold of the panic and shove it back into his mind. He’d done it. He had it. The diseased nanoverse safely secured in his pocket, Ryan looked up to make sure he was standing under the hole that led to the surface. That confirmed, he reversed gravity’s pull and just let himself float up and out of the radioactive cave.
He looked back as he ascended. Beneath them he saw the bone shards, the final pieces of evidence that Enki had once walked this world. They seemed, to Ryan’s exhausted eyes, to twitch as their owner’s nanoverse was taken away. It was almost as if they realized their last chance of ever being whole again was vanishing.
Then again, maybe they didn’t. After all, they were just bones. The man they had belonged to was dead. When Ryan passed into sunlight again, the light globe attached to his chest dimmed back to flashlight levels. He felt a hand grab his ankle and tug him away from the pit, and once he was clear he let gravity return to normal, dumping him unceremoniously near Athena.
The cold air was immensely welcome after the oppressive heat below.
She gave him a questioning look, and he nodded, holding up the charred remains of his shirt that held that cancerous nanoverse. “Right here,” he croaked.
A sigh of genuine relief escaped Athena’s lips. “Good. The varcolaci withdrew while you were down there - passed right by us. I think Moloch is cutting his losses.”
“I’m fine with him being a problem for another day. You?” He did his best to give her a confident smile, but the overwhelming desire to sleep tugged at him again.
Athena gestured to her leg, which was now splinted. “We fought enough for this day, I think,” she managed to get out around the pain. Ryan thought of that bone jutting through the skin and then of the shards of Enki’s bones left in the pit below.
“Yeah...I think we did enough for one day.” The voice startled both of them. Ryan glanced over to see Crystal had made her way over to them. Her face was twisted with pain, although she attempted to keep a grin plastered across it.
“You okay?” Ryan asked, knowing the question was stupid but unable to help himself.
Crystal gave him a dismissive gesture. “I think that last blow broke my sodding hip. You look half dead, love, and Athena…” She pursed her lips. “Athena, you look three quarters of the way there. I don’t want to know how bad I look. Let’s...let’s get back to the castle, yeah?”
Ryan opened his mouth to agree, but his body had enough. His Hungers were dominant, and right now Sleep was winning over all the others. He raised his fist to hit himself in the leg again, try to keep himself awake, but Athena reached out to grab the limb. “Rest, Ryan. We’re safe.”
Or at least, that’s what Ryan thought she said. The word after “we’re” had faded rapidly into darkness, and Ryan fell asleep.
◆◆◆
As he slept, the nightmare vision from earlier repeated itself. Rising from the caverns, bone spears stabbing his legs, falling back into darkness. Alertness came to him like a tsunami wave crashing onto a lightless city, forcing him out of sleep and dousing him with a cold sweat. For a moment he thought it was just another symptom of the radiation poisoning, that he was still in that nuclear tomb. He reached up in a blind panic, expecting to see the swollen, bleeding limbs he had in the dream. Instead, he saw his normal arms and hands silhouetted against the galaxies of his nanoverse.
As his heart slowed down, he realized his stomach was demanding his attention and his throat was painfully dry. He was in his staging area. Did I get myself here? Did someone let me in?
Either way, he stumbled over to where he kept food and drink. Even though he knew it had just been a nightmare
, he was still shaking as he took care of his Hungers. He considered just heading into his nanoverse fully right then and there, so he could destroy Enki's twin nanoverses. Instead, he got out of bed and walked towards his doorway, hoping to find Athena or Crystal awake.
He found both, the two of them in deep conversation at a table. Crystal was slumped back in her chair, looking half alert. Athena was still splinted, and had her arm and leg resting at awkward angles. Ryan smiled to see that both of them looked much better than when he had last seen them, the color returned to their faces and their movements much more animated. He noticed that Ashtaroth stood nearby, and instead of interrupting the goddesses' conversation, Ryan walked over to the demon. "Hey Ashtaroth. How long was I out?"
The demon didn't answer right away, instead glancing out a nearby window. "Pretty much all day. Crystal said you burned yourself pretty hard on top of a healthy dose of radiation and we shouldn't worry."
Ryan shuddered involuntarily at the realization that the radiation could have killed him and had really poisoned him. "Any sign of the enemy?" he asked, wanting to focus on anything else.
"No. We sent out scouts earlier today - they report the castle abandoned, with no sign of varcolac, lindworm, or Moloch." Ashtaroth smiled, a grim expression on the demon's face. "We also couldn't find Bast's body. But Enki is defeated, yes?"
Ryan could only nod.
"Then our half of the contract is filled," Astaroth said. “Do you still have the device Amy gave you?”
Ryan nodded.
“Good. My King will contact you with that when it's time to fulfill your half."
"I'll be ready. And - thanks. I know it was just a deal, but we couldn't have done it without you."
"You're welcome. I'll look forward to being able to say the same. Good luck." With that, he turned to collect what remained of his legion.
By their tone, Athena and Crystal's conversation was winding down. Ryan made his way over to them, pulling out the diseased dual nanoverse and putting it on the table in front of them.
The look they gave the tainted mass told Ryan they found it as repellent as he did. "So, this is why Enki was so strong."
Athena reached out to touch it, but pulled her hand back before actually reaching it. "It's...abominable."
Crystal nodded in agreement. "We should break it soon. Make sure Enki doesn't reform before we do, yeah?"
Athena and Ryan both voiced their agreement. "I'll do it," said Ryan, even though he didn't want to touch it again, "but I'll need one of you to tell me what to do."
The other two looked at him, but Ryan shook his head. “It was my idea, to nuke Enki. If someone has to end the life of every person in that horrible thing, it should be me.” I’ll bear that burden. The thought made it even worse.
After the other two thought for a few seconds, Crystal spoke up. "I'll just take care of it, love." She smiled at Ryan. "This thing is bloody horrible, but it's also unique. Best someone with more experience does it, yeah?" She grimaced. “Besides, I’ve done it before. You shouldn’t have to ever deal with that guilt, love.”
A part of him felt guilty at how quickly he agreed, but the whole process - both touching that foul thing and the idea of snuffing out that many lives, repulsed him so much that he was more than happy to pawn that duty off to anyone who would take it. By the look in her eyes, Athena felt much the same way.
Crystal reached into her nanoverse, pulling out of a pair of tongs. "No time like the present then, yeah? We can talk next steps once I'm done." When neither of her companions objected, she took the nanoverse up in the tongs and headed towards her doorway.
◆◆◆
Once she was back in her staging area, Crystal called up a pillar to put the nanoverse on so she didn't have to carry it. I'll be glad to be done with the damn thing. Even though she hadn't touched it, she felt a desire to wash her hands after carrying it even that short distance.
Instead, she headed over to her console and dropped the staging area into her nanoverse's real space, finding herself in orbit around one of the dwarf stars that made up the majority of her nanoverse's remaining stellar mass. This particular star was on its way to burning out completely, and it barely provided any illumination - just a dull red glow. Too much longer and it wouldn't have enough mass to keep fusion running. The planets around it, which had once sustained life, were all now cold wastelands.
Life was gone from her nanoverse.
You're stalling, love, she chided herself. But to destroy that blasphemy, she'd have to touch it, and Crystal found herself wanting to do literally anything else. She knew she had to, knew that if she didn't Enki would come back from the dead and all that effort would be for nothing...but there was such an air of wrongness around the thing that she didn't really think she could be blamed for wanting to avoid it.
Before she could dwell on it any longer, she strode over to the pillar and grabbed it. The surface felt slick and oily, and Crystal gagged and dropped it.
Come on, Crystal, you can do this. Her skin was still crawling from the sensation. Taking a deep breath, she reached out for it again. As soon as her fingers touched it, she started to heave. If she’d had anything in her stomach, she would have emptied it right there. As it was, she found herself gasping and retching.
She hadn’t picked the nanoverse up, but was maintaining her grip on it. Don’t...don’t let go. She didn’t think it was worth the time to try and acclimate to it. This thing is so strong...I’m omnipotent, and I can barely hold it.
Crystal tried not to think about what someone smarter than Enki would have been able to accomplish with it. Time to end this. She teleported herself out of her staging area, to the other side of the dying star, and then begun to squeeze Enki's nanoverses between her hands. She was shaking and fighting her stomach’s attempt to escape through her esophagus. It was the same gesture she would use to draw power out of her own nanoverse, but instead of compressing under her grip it was rock solid. She kept applying pressure, feeling it begin to crack under her hands, the fractures spreading across the cancerous nanoverse with an agonizingly slow speed.
Her physical strength was about as relevant for her task as the color of her eyes. What mattered was her power, her near omnipotence. The same strength she would use to send her entire nanoverse spiraling into a Big Crunch also allowed her to shatter a foreign reality once it was within her domain. But that omnipotence wasn't complete, it was still “only” near omnipotence, so shattering two realities at once required actual effort and time on her part.
It was a relief to see the cracks begin to spread across the surface of the twin nanoverses. Now that she was sure she could destroy it, she found herself wondering what this looked like from the inside. Did giant rifts appear in the sky, forming slowly over thousands of years? Or did it happen in an instant - the universe going from normal to fracturing like stained glass before shattering into infinite shards?
It was a useless question. If she ever got the chance to see for herself, it would mean she was about to die. With a final push of effort, she felt the twin nanoverses crumble to dust.
The nearby star, the dying red dwarf, flared to life at the exact moment the corrupt nanoverse died. It started to glow as brightly as it had in its prime, but the light wasn't normal red or even yellow - instead it shone a deep, unnatural green color, like a sickly emerald.
Oh yeah, I'm definitely doing a bloody Crunch now. What the sodding hell was that? That green hue was already fading, and Crystal was relieved to see it die away, but after that weird side effect she thought the best option would be to wipe the whole nanoverse clean and start fresh. It’s wrong. As wrong as that damn nanoverse. I’m so glad there’s no more life here so I can wipe the slate clean. Not trusting it, she didn't take her eyes off the fading verdant star as she started to set a Big Crunch into motion.
Maybe if she had, she would have noticed the same color had spread to ever
y other star in her nanoverse.
Chapter 30
Aftermath
Crystal had been gone for a handful of seconds when she walked back out of her nanoverse. She had a haunted look to her eyes and was shaking slightly. Ryan and Athena had barely had enough time to feel relief the dual nanoverse was gone. Crystal didn’t seem to share in their relief. Her omnipresent smile was drawn and didn't quite reach her eyes.
"Are you alright?" Athena asked, and Ryan was glad to know she saw it too.
Crystal shrugged. "I just snuffed out two nanoverses worth of life and started the Big Crunch on my own, love. I'd have to be a sodding psychopath to be perfectly alright, yeah?"
"Fair enough," Ryan said, his eyes drifting to Athena. By her frown, she wasn't fully buying Crystal's explanation either. "As long as you're sure."
The nod she gave them was a bit too eager as she changed the subject. "We've got a lot of work to do still, loves, so I figured this was the last chance I'd get to do the Crunch for a bit. After all, we still need to find a loophole in this whole ‘end the world’ business."
"Right." It had been so long since he last worried about the impending apocalypse that the reminder was like a bucket of cold water being splashed across his face. He shook his head. "I'll be honest; I have absolutely no good ideas about how to do that."
Athena perked up at that, and for a moment Ryan dared to hope she would have some miracle cure. Instead she asked, "Well, we can work with bad ideas, perhaps improve them."
"Sorry, I'm out of those too. I'm guessing you two are in the same boat?" Their looks told him everything he needed to know, and he let out a deep sigh as Crystal took back her vacated chair. "Guess that would be too easy. Crystal, how long do we have?"
"Hate to have to say this, love, but no way to know for sure. We'll know when it's close - the sun will start pulsing - but that could be in a matter of weeks or a matter of years." She shook her head, a clearing gesture, and her smile slowly became more natural. "And best part is, Moloch and Bast are still out there, and hells only know what those two wankers are up to."
