Gravity is a constant law. But when an Alpha Class Ether Devourer wakes up, the laws of physics quit their job.

  The reactor chamber didn't explode outward. It imploded.

  The metal debris, pieces of Miguel's armor, and ambient light were sucked into the rift that opened in the machine's shell.

  "Don't look at the light!" I shouted, covering Luna's eyes with my hand as we ran for the armored door. "It's not light! It's Cherenkov radiation! He's tearing reality apart!"

  [SYSTEM ALERT: CRITICAL FAILURE.]

  [PARASITE ENTERING STASIS MODE DUE TO PRIMAL FEAR.]

  [USER, YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN.]

  "Coward!" I cursed my own internal biology, feeling the chitin armor dissolve and retreat back under my skin. Now I was just a man in a torn suit running against a god.

  Valéria limped ahead, clutching her burned shoulder.

  "The stairs!" she pointed. "They're twisting!"

  The spiral metal staircase was twisting like a corkscrew made of play-dough. The "King's" gravity was pulling the structure downward.

  "Luna!" I called. "We need propulsion!"

  "I can't fly!" she yelled, stumbling on the bent steps.

  "Not fly! Jump! Use the baton as a sonic piston! Aim down and fire at max power!"

  Luna understood. She hugged Valéria, and I grabbed her waist.

  She pointed the baton at the crumbling metal floor.

  "BASS BOOST!"

  VOOOM!

  The shockwave launched us upward, skipping twenty steps at once. We hit the biopolymer walls, which were now bleeding black liquid, and kept rising, bouncing like ping-pong balls in a ventilation tube.

  Behind us, in the darkness of the shaft, the Reactor gave way.

  A hand... if that could be called a hand... emerged. It was made of Void, dotted with distant stars. It grabbed the walkway where we had been seconds ago. The metal didn't crumple; it simply ceased to exist. It was deleted.

  We went up.

  The air grew thin. The sound of the world outside began to leak in. Screams.

  We emerged in the main nave of the Cathedral.

  Chaos was absolute.

  The white marble floor was cracking like thin ice over a dark lake. The Pillar of Light had vanished, replaced by a geyser of black smoke and purple lightning.

  Sovereignty's elite—the generals, the politicians, the socialites—ran in panic.

  But the Cathedral doors were closed.

  The security system had gone into Lockdown to contain the breach.

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  "We're locked in with them!" Valéria shouted, trying to hack the side door panel, but the system was fried.

  On the altar, Emperor Pontiff Aurelius was still sitting on his floating throne.

  He didn't run. He looked at the hole in the floor with a serene, empty smile.

  "Father has arrived," he said, his voice amplified by the emergency speakers. "The feed is ready."

  The floor beneath the throne exploded.

  The Emperor was swallowed whole by a maw that looked like a flower made of impossible geometry. He didn't scream. He was just... consumed.

  The "thing" began to emerge from the hole.

  It had no defined shape. It was a cloud of solid darkness, with multiple limbs, eyes that looked like windows to deep space, and an aura of cold that froze the vapor in the air instantly.

  People near the altar began to float, pulled by the creature's gravity. They screamed as they were disintegrated into particles of light, which were absorbed by the monster's skin.

  "Arthur!" Luna shook my arm. "We're going to die!"

  I looked around. The windows. The armored stained glass.

  They were our only chance. But they were made to withstand missiles.

  "Gristle!" I shouted into the radio, praying the signal would cut through the interference. "Gristle, if you can hear me, I need an express delivery to the North Sector of the Cathedral! NOW!"

  Silence and static.

  Then, the most beautiful sound in the world.

  A V8 diesel engine roaring with mana injection.

  CRAAAAASH!

  The side wall of the Cathedral, right behind the choir, exploded inward.

  Our armored truck, modified with a Giant Armadillo shell ram, flew through the stained glass, landing in the middle of the wooden pews in a shower of glass and stone.

  The back door was kicked open.

  Gristle was there, holding a rotary machine gun she had ripped from somewhere.

  "Taxi's here, princesses! Get in!"

  We ran down the central aisle, dodging aristocrats trying to grab us, begging for help.

  "Take me! I'm the Minister of Finance! I'll pay!" a man shouted, grabbing my leg.

  I kicked him in the face without pity.

  "Money's gone, Minister. The new currency is speed."

  We jumped into the truck bed. Valéria ran to the driver's cab, shoving Gristle to the passenger side.

  "Reverse! Reverse! Reverse!" I shouted, banging on the metal.

  The Devourer "King" noticed the movement. A vacuum tentacle whipped in our direction, ignoring the crowd to focus on the only source of technology trying to escape.

  Valéria shifted into reverse. Tires squealed on polished marble.

  The truck shot backward, exiting through the same hole it entered.

  The tentacle hit the floor where we had been, pulverizing the stone down to the basement.

  The truck landed in the plaza outside the Cathedral, crushing the suspension.

  Valéria spun the wheel, maneuvering between decorative fountains, and sped toward the Ministries Esplanade.

  I looked through the slit in the rear door.

  The Cathedral of Brasília, the ultimate symbol of Sovereignty, was inflating.

  The white walls stretched like a balloon. Purple light leaked through the cracks.

  KABOOM.

  The structure gave way. The Cathedral didn't collapse; it was shattered from the inside out.

  In place of the church, a column of darkness now rose, touching the sky.

  The Dome of Light protecting the city flickered and went out.

  Utopia was naked.

  And the monster in the center of it was bigger than any Kaiju we had ever seen. It was the height of a skyscraper and seemed to be "sucking" the color out of the world around it.

  "The barrier is down!" Luna shouted, looking out the window.

  In the slums around the city, the people saw the light go out. And they saw the monster.

  But they didn't run.

  They began to invade.

  Thirty years of oppression exploded along with the Cathedral.

  "It's the end of the world," Gristle murmured, watching the horizon burn.

  "No," I replied, closing the rear door and locking it. "It's just the end of the lie."

  I sat on the truck floor, next to Valéria who was applying healing foam spray to her shoulder.

  The Parasite began to wake up, now that we were far from the King's direct radiation.

  [ENEMY DATA ANALYSIS: 15% COMPLETE.]

  [PRELIMINARY CONCLUSION: TARGET IS NOT BIOLOGICAL. IT IS CONCEPTUAL.]

  [TO KILL IT, WE NEED A WEAPON THAT KILLS CONCEPTS.]

  "Great," I sighed, resting my head against the vibrating truck wall. "We're going to need a metaphysical weapon. Anyone know a convenience store that sells that?"

  The truck tore down the avenue, fleeing the shadow growing behind us.

  Brasília was falling. Sovereignty was dead.

  But we were alive. And we had the map, the data, and the will to fight.

  "Where to, Boss?" Valéria shouted from the cab.

  I looked north, beyond the city. To the Amazon. The only place where the biomass was dense enough to hide something capable of fighting that thing.

  "To the jungle," I replied. "If civilization failed, let's see what the wild has to offer."