The voice sounded like a dozen different ones. It was the voice of Emi. It was the voice of Bjorn. It was the voice of his sister. It was the voice of his mother. It was the voice of his father.

  All at once, all at the same time. A perverse melting pot of a dozen different identities.

  But stronger than all of those voices was one singular voice that Nathan would never forget, couldn't forget.

  "The Mother System." He gritted his teeth. "I was wondering where you were."

  The Mother System made a squealing noise. "You missed me? Ah, I'm so flattered!"

  Nathan's hands tightened around his fishing pole.

  He'd known this encounter would happen again. Deep down, in the back of his mind, he knew he couldn't avoid her.

  Even so, he hadn't thought it would be so soon.

  "Yeah, I missed you," Nathan said. "I didn't have the chance beat the shit out of you last time."

  The Mother System laughed. A cacophony of instruments — a full orchestra — all playing random, discordant notes.

  Nathan gripped his head with his other hand. Even just listening to her talk was wearing away at his stamina. And not in the metaphorical sense. It genuinely hurt to try to comprehend what she was saying. He could feel it — he wasn't meant to understand her words. His brain was working overtime to try to synthesize what she was saying into actual speech.

  "A mere mortal threatening me?" she said. "I don't think I've ever experienced such a thing in my entire existence."

  Nathan licked his dry lips.

  "I can hear her too," Lily murmured into his ear. "But I can't sense her. I don't understand how. I'm sorry."

  Lily couldn't sense her.

  And yet despite that, the Mother System was projecting her voice directly into Nathan's mind. Not only that, but Lily's as well.

  How was that possible?

  "It still feels the same, right?" Nathan said. "Like we're surrounded by nothing?"

  "Yes. Nothing. Absolutely nothing at all. The complete absence of anything."

  Nathan gave a strangled laugh. "I forgot what she told me."

  "She?"

  Nathan brought his hand up to his forehead and gripped as hard as he could.

  "Thalassa," he said. "She warned me. She told me. Nothing isn't a dream. It's not dead. It's alive. It's seen. It's thinking…

  "And it's watching us right now, isn't it?"

  The voice giggled behind his ear.

  "Correct. You truly are the brightest star of humanity, Nathan. You are well deserving of your title."

  "You'll forgive me if I find the idea of accepting a compliment from you completely grotesque."

  "Grotesque!" she said. "Now that's not a word you hear every day. Especially not from you. But then again, you always did prefer to play the fool, didn't you?"

  Nathan frowned.

  "How would you know anything about me?" Nathan asked.

  "You'd be surprised. I'm everywhere, Nathan. Don't you remember that? It did take a little bit of digging to recall you, but it was well worth the effort."

  Nathan could tell that he wasn't going to like what was about to happen.

  "Nathan Lee," the Mother System said, like she was reading off a file. "Born 2002, April 1. An ironic birthdate, all things considered."

  Nathan's eyes darted from left to right, searching for the source of the voice.

  "I disagree," he said. "My whole life has been nothing but one extended joke. All things considered, that's pretty much the perfect birthdate."

  She hummed, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. "You excelled in early academics. You had a hard time articulating your thought process, but your intuition was incredible. You snapped up concepts and ideas and understood them on a deep level. Your teachers were impressed. They were certain that you'd grow up to do well for yourself."

  "Yeah, well, we all make bad bets."

  Nathan shut his eyes and extended out his senses. She was everywhere, right?

  There had to be something he could do with that.

  "Was it really a bad bet? Or was it laziness on your end? Or maybe fear, even?"

  "None of the above. They thought I was smart. I wasn't. At best, I was above average, but that proved to be totally wrong. By the time I hit middle school, it was clear that everybody had been mistaken."

  A small hum came from the air. "Is that so?"

  "You sound doubtful."

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  "You'll forgive me if I think that the strongest warrior of the apocalypse is nothing more than average." The Mother System scoffed. "The idea that kingdoms and dictators have been toppled by a teenage deadbeat without a shred of potential would be more than a little disappointing."

  "Why not?" Nathan shrugged. "Empires have been toppled by less."

  The voice hissed in his ear.

  "False humility is considered a sin not just in your universe, but in others," she said.

  Nathan thought that was a little bit unfair.

  False humility was lame, yeah, but Nathan honestly didn't think he was particularly anything special. His powers had been given to him via luck. He'd run into convenient situation after convenient situation. If it hadn't been for Thalassa, he probably would've died ages ago.

  "You can say what you like," Nathan said. "But does it really matter? This all happened years ago."

  "One of your ancestors had a good quote about this," she said. "Something about how in order to see your future, you must first understand your past. It's by the past that we have a context to even understand what's happening around us in the first place. Without that context, we're nothing more than children, incapable of deciphering the truth of something."

  "How would you know? Aren't you suppoed to be some kind of eternal monstrosity that's been around since before time?"

  She laughed into the void. Nathan tried to suppress the headache."

  "That doesn't mean I was always knowledgeable." Her tone turned a little more thoughtful, wondering. "I wasn't always intelligent. I was more akin to an animal, operating purely off my instincts. Universe after universe consumed in my blind fits. I don't know how long it took for me to become self-aware. It might've been millions. It might've been billions. It's hard to recall."

  "And then what happened? You just suddenly became capable of thought?"

  "More or less." She laughed — a low, dry laugh. "And it was then that I realized that ignorance was so much better."

  "Why's that?"

  "Because then I knew that I was hungry."

  There was an emphasis that she put on the word "hungry," a bitter bite to her voice that Nathan had never heard from her before.

  "You people can't understand," she said. "The hell that I'm in. Every second of every day, all I feel is this gnawing hunger down to my core. And no matter what I eat, or how much I consume, it's never satisfied."

  "Sounds to me like you should just give up on it and leave everyone else alone."

  She cackled. "This is what I mean. If you were in my shoes, you would never suggest such a thing. But you can't. No one can understand the world of a being that has outlasted time."

  "I really don't see how being hungry — no matter how bad it is — could ever justify consuming universes like popcorn."

  "Justify?" She sounded confused. "When did I say I was attempting to justify anything? I am aware that, according to most universes' standard of morality, I would be considered a monster beyond redemption… Which is something I find more than a little amusing. One doesn't blame an earthquake or tsunami for acting according to its nature. And yet I am seen as infinitely worse than any of those things."

  "Because you're conscious. You have the ability to distinguish between right and wrong."

  "But I don't have the ability to act outside of my nature."

  "Under that line of logic, anyone, anywhere could use that justification and get away with anything. By definition, everything that we do is according to our nature." Nathan shook his head. "What are we even talking about? Why are you debating pseudo-philosophy with me?"

  She hummed to herself. "Because it's interesting! Don't you think it's fun to talk about the sorts of things?"

  "No. You do?"

  "I do! Not as much as I enjoy a good meal, of course. But I do derive a certain satisfaction from thinking about the sorts of things."

  The Eldridge horror beyond all comprehension enjoyed being a philosophy debate-bro. Why was the apocalypse like this?

  "Right," Nathan said. "I think I've got an idea of how all this works."

  "Oh? Do tell."

  "I'm pretty sure this is actually reality," Nathan gestured at the darkness surrounding him. "This isn't an illusion. It isn't a mind trick. This space actually exists in the real world."

  "Is that so?"

  "I've been walking for ages and never hit a wall or an end. But I don't think it's dimensional warping shenanigans like I've experienced in the past. Could be, but this doesn't match up with previous iterations." Nathan tapped his foot against the ground. "And finally, there's that thing that Lily told me."

  "Oh yes?" The Mother System seemed almost giddy. "Continue, by all means!"

  Nathan frowned. The way she was unfazed by anything he figured out was deeply disturbing — but he couldn't exactly show that.

  "I'm inside you." He paused. "Wow, that sounds horribly wrong. But you get what I mean. You're everywhere. You're so everywhere, surrounding us, that Lily mistook you for nothingness."

  "Well done, well done." The faint sound of party poppers and cheers echoed from every direction. "You figured it out. Yes, this is a physical space. What a divine being would call a Territory."

  There was power to that word — Territory. She meant it in a different way than he was thinking, he was pretty sure.

  "Unfortunately, at my current power levels, I can only bring you and your plant friend in. I couldn't do so for the rest of your allies. At this very moment, they're attempting to blast their way inside using explosives…"

  She paused for several seconds.

  "One of them has summoned a giant robot and is currently attempting to punch their way in."

  Mara. It was obvious that it was Mara. She pulled out the Transformers plagiaristic look-alike just for him.

  "You see," Nathan said. "The thing that concerns me about being everywhere is that you're kind of making yourself into one big target, yeah?"

  She didn't say anything, and Nathan grinned.

  He held out both hands and [True Maelstrom] flashed into existence in front of him. A whirling cyclone rotating at the speed of wind.

  He deployed it up into the air, and something cracked in the distance.

  "Is that the best you have?"

  Her voice was unsteady, like she'd just been hit in the stomach.

  Nathan summoned another [True Maelstrom] and sent it flying into the sky. He could feel the burn in his chest — he could only do that so many times. Maybe two more?

  The glass cracked again, this time a little closer.

  "You can't keep that up for long!" she shouted. "You know you can't! Not unless you ascend!"

  Ascend? To the next rank of his race?

  Nathan's jaw clenched.

  He didn't want to, but if it came down to it…

  No, better not to think about it. He would win here and now using the power he had in his hands.

  She wasn't at her strongest. Not yet. The fact that he was able to do this damage at all showed that.

  He just had to keep attacking.

  Another cyclone spun into existence. He deployed it onto the floor, and this time the glass shattered almost right next to his ear. Black flecks, barely visible in the light, flew into the air and stayed there, suspended.

  One last [True Maelstrom], and that would be the last big attack he would have.

  I hope this works, he thought.

  The cyclone formed in front of him, larger and more monstrous than any he had formed up to this point. He gritted his teeth against the strain.

  His chest burned, and his lungs were sucking in air like he'd just run a marathon.

  He shouted and threw it into the ground.

  A cry of infernal pain rang in his ear. The world shook, and Nathan fell to his knees.

  The darkness glowed a fiery red. The scream got louder and louder. Nathan brought his hands to his ears and tried to shut it out, but it did nothing. It was coming from every direction, coming from inside his own ear canal.

  Glass shattered. Again, and again, and again, building up to a fever pitch.

  And then it all stopped.

  The darkness came back, the sounds quit, and Nathan was left right back where he started.

  He blinked.

  She laughed.

  "Just kidding!" she said.

  Nathan's heart sank.

  "Did you really think that would be enough to actually do anything? You must really underestimate me. Honestly, I'm very disappointed —"

  A bright flash of light.

  A loud explosion ripped through the air.

  A figure, descending to the ground.