Two standard decades ago

  “Go on!” shouts Gahn. “Get outta here! Scram!”

  An eleven-year old Vertan spits out the last bits of dust and dirt out of his mouth, the taste of blood still lingering. The other kids around that had scraped and bruised him up soon began to scatter like roaches, and any who felt cocky enough to stick around for longer than they should soon met the wrath of Hilgo and Gahn.

  “Oh, what are you, a pussy?!” one of them shouts. “Can’t handle yourself without your bodyguards—!”

  Crack!

  Hilgo smashes the brat’s nose under the heel of his palm, the full force of a truck behind his thrust. Falling to the ground, the whimpering kid scurries away.

  “Fuck me!” groans Hilgo, feeling his scars and bruises. “My body hurts all over!”

  “Language!” yells Gahn.

  “I don’t got a mommy and daddy to get in trouble with!” Hilgo retorts.

  Struggling back up to his feet, his hair and clothes dirtied, rather than thankful, his face expressed frustration.

  “No, don’t give me that—!” Hilgo began.

  “I could have handled those guys myself!” growls Vertan.

  “Could have?! Did you?!”

  “You guys threw me off my rhythm when you came in!”

  “You were getting it handed to you by twenty of them!”

  “Eighteen.”

  “That doesn’t change anything, Vertan!”

  Vertan exhales through his nostrils with a furious scowl.

  “Well, what do you suppose I should have done, then?!” Vertan retorts.

  “You shouldn’t have gotten yourself in all this trouble in the first place!” snaps Hilgo.

  “Yeah!” adds Gahn. “If it weren’t—”

  “Shut up and let me talk to him!” Hilgo shouts back. Gahn was taken aback by this and nodded, taking a step back; he had never seen Hilgo so angry.

  Vertan and Hilgo’s breathing continues to heave heavily, more from anger than exertion.

  “So I’m supposed to just take it like that then, huh?” argues Vertan.

  “Take what?!” demands Hilgo. “Last week it was food poisoning everyone, what is it this time?!”

  “If anyone is going to insult my family, I have to stand my ground and defend my honor!”

  “No!”

  “Why the hell not?!”

  “Who’s asking you to do this?!”

  “My father would have wanted me to!”

  “Did he ask you to?”

  “No, but—”

  “Then he didn’t ask you to!”

  “Let me finish talking—!”

  “No! You’re going to stand here and listen to me for once!”

  Vertan’s eyes widened. Hilgo was seething now.

  “Listen to me Vertan!”

  “I am!”

  “Then shut it!”

  “...”

  “You think your dad’s going to be happy hearing about you constantly getting into fights and troubles while he’s away?! You think this is something you have to prove?! Nobody’s asking you to prove anything! All you’ve gotten—”

  “But I—”

  “Be quiet!”

  “...”

  “You’ve only gotten scars and broken noses from this! You want to succeed so bad? You want to prove you’re the son your old man raised?! Don’t give a single shit about these other brats! Let those morons fail out of school! Don’t overextend and let them drag you with them!”

  Having cooled down, Vertan began to absorb the weight of Hilgo’s words more.

  “We should head home soon,” says Gahn. “Your mother’s been waiting for you, I’m sure.”

  Hilgo finally calms himself from his rage, though behind his eyes, Vertan can see a glimpse of sorrow.

  “We can’t keep this up forever for you, you know,” says Hilgo. “One day, I won’t be here to save you anymore.”

  *****

  Vertan stares at what remains of Hilgo.

  Hilgo’s eyes still appeared to stare off with that same kind of sorrow, even if his soul may not be behind there anymore. The blue blood from the bottom of his torso continued to drain out, mixing with the open air rather than finding his legs.

  Vertan can only weep in silence, his tears pooling up in his helmet’s visor, blurring and distorting his vision. Opening the visor, the teardrops dripped down to the floor below.

  As though to mourn with him, there were no sounds nor signs of life left. Everything had become an eerie quietness, even the pillar’s hum sounded quieter than it was when they had first arrived. The only thing that seemed to disturb such a lack of sound is the sound of dripping.

  Blood and other organic matter smeared across the floors and railings all across the pillar’s chamber trickling down into the abyss below.

  A sudden metallic groan and creak across the chamber momentarily freezes Vertan’s heart.

  A temporary eternity passes.

  Vertan’s head swam and swirled.

  His internal organs felt as though they rearranged themselves, twitching, twisting, and turning.

  A small beeping sound comes from one of the control panels.

  Arising slowly and as soundlessly as possible, Vertan moves himself over towards the source of the sound. He could see a dimly flashing light coming from the screen, and, peering in, he can see on the cracked screen that an anchor now displays abnormal behavior.

  Two out of sixteen.

  Despair began to set in.

  Why? he thought. Why, why, why?!

  After everything, the traumas, the effort, the battle and the bloodshed, what sliver of hope could he possibly have against such an unstoppable, inevitable thing? In that moment he considered screaming out just to declare defiance against the universe. He thought about jumping over the railing into the abyss of the pillar, or pulling the pin and lying on his own grenade.

  Eventually he pulls out his handgun and points it to the temple of his own head.

  Anything if it meant going out on his own terms.

  In the reflection of the screen, for a moment, Vertan didn’t see a bloodied and desperate animal. He saw the son of his father, and the closest Hilgo had to call a brother.

  A few tense minutes pass, and slowly, Vertan’s finger lifted from the trigger, and he moves the barrel of his handgun away from himself.

  A noise comes off from the distance, and at the same time as another pulse washes through the chamber, a third anchor displays abnormal activity. The sound of a distant ka-thunk, ka-thunk reaches Vertan’s ears. He questions his hearing and sanity. Surely this wasn’t a misread?

  He looks back at the screen. The second and third anchor following the trend had moved away from the anchor closest to him, the one he had aimed for just before Hilgo leapt for him. It seemed to continue to move counterclockwise around the pillar’s perimeter. And sure enough, looking in more closely, the data and diagnostics of the fourth anchor away from him began showing fluctuations and interference.

  Something is going around methodically altering the anchors to its means, and now there is nobody else left to block it.

  Vertan’s brain began to race, scrambling for ideas. How could he fight this? If he does the same thing as he did earlier with the anchors, whatever is going around will simply put it back. The billions stationed on Thoma are all presumed dead by this point, as evident through silent comms.

  What choice does he stand against something so supernatural? The paranormal? What options does he have left? He couldn’t even perceive the thing, let alone see it in any reliable capacity. Surely it is all a lost cause, and—

  What would Hilgo think?

  Vertan initially scoffs at this idea. What would Hilgo think? Hilgo was always an overthinker. As much as he stood up for Vertan, in many other ways, Hilgo stressed himself out just as much as Vertan did—

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  But, what would he think though?

  Vertan began considering the idea. Perhaps, he thought, Hilgo would find some kind of oddity to point out. But of course, what part of this whole thing isn’t odd? He is going up against an entity of which none had survived against! It all sounds very ridiculous—

  But odd in what sense?

  Vertan reconsiders this again. Surely something didn’t add up. Surely, there had to be another side to it. A weakness. A pattern. Something. Anything! It didn’t have to be much. It just has to prove to him that it could be beaten. Everything has a limit to it, a certain capacity, even if it may not be currently perceivable.

  Maybe that’s what Hilgo would get at.

  Perhaps it’s too easy to believe the capabilities of their adversaries that they overestimate them.

  Think.

  Think!

  The fourth anchor at last displays a warning for abnormalities, just like the other three. Once again, a pulse emanates slightly stronger, and a sound echoes from the other side.

  Ka-thunk.

  Ka-thunk.

  Ka-thunk.

  Something is moving, Vertan thought. Only at a certain time and pattern. And it is still doing exactly what he and the others had previously theorized.

  Sneaking as quietly as possible, Vertan takes off his boots to quiet his footsteps, grimacing as his sore and bloody feet stepped across the metal and debris-strewn floor. Making his way up to the anchor closest to him, he sets the helmet of his dying and damaged suit to scan for similarities to the machine part he had earlier discovered.

  Once again, there it was. Now in the midst of quietness, he was granted with the clarity to realize that each device had to be placed around the same area up on the anchor. At least this was the one part that he knew of, anyhow.

  Moving away from this anchor, Vertan decides against removing the device. Perhaps it would notice and return to kill him off immediately. Ducking under cover and moving hidden within shadows, Vertan continued to trail behind the phenomenon, and moved towards the second anchor from him. Indeed once again, similar object, similar placement.

  Returning back to his original position, Vertan finds the diagnostics screen. Sixth anchor from him now with fluctuating statistics. Fifth anchor clearly displaying abnormalities. Hilgo’s body is still lying there.

  How do I fight this? Vertan thought. How do I fight this?

  Do I have to?

  Eyeing the ring portal, now shut off and easily mistaken for another stray piece of metal, Vertan ponders in thought as he moves over to collapse it back into its capsule-form. He looks at the one clamped onto his own suit’s utilities, and pairs them wirelessly.

  A heavy breath taken.

  Looking up towards the anchor closest to him in the opposite direction, he could see with a rather clear view that it had yet to be tampered with once more, and it remained shut off. Eyeing the position of the needed placement of the alien devices, one would need to step foot on that specific platform provided for accessibility.

  If there’s a thing, Vertan thought, It can be trapped.

  Both hunter and prey, Vertan moved stealthily towards the anchor.

  A pulse.

  Ka-thunk, ka-thunk, ka-thunk.

  Vertan freezes.

  The sounds stop.

  Vertan continues.

  Painstakingly making his way up the steps, Vertan arrives at the anchor’s opened panels, the machinery from inside showing bare from when they tore off the parasitic device earlier. On the platform’s floor are bits and pieces of sharp metal and debris.

  Hiding behind the massive figure of the anchor, Vertan slowly opens the ring portal, leaving it shut off. Placing it within the piles of debris, it looked indistinguishable from the rest of the mess, and soon, Vertan headed back down the steps, monitoring the connection between the ring and his on the way down.

  A pulse.

  Ka-thunk, ka-thunk, ka-thunk.

  Vertan freezes.

  The sounds stop.

  Vertan continues.

  On the floor now, Vertan once again checks and monitors the signal between his portal ring and the one he had placed. Connectivity status still remained strong. Fearful of dying in an enclosed space, Vertan opens the portal ring currently on him, and places it on the floor out in the open, once again hiding it amongst bodies and debris. Looking up at the pillar, Vertan reasoned that whatever entity that was coming around must be directly across from him now, the line of sight being blocked by the massive structure.

  And, quietly once more, Vertan returned to his original position, putting his boots back on, though by this point, it did little to soothe his pains. On the screen, the entity had finished with the eighth anchor, and had moved to the ninth.

  Patiently, Vertan waited through the eerie silence, punctuated only by the periodic pulses and thudding sounds in between. The entity continued with its usual uncanny and methodical process.

  Vertan hid himself to the point where he almost couldn’t see anything, ducking low below the control panels and terminals. He could only track the movement of the entity through the sounds he hears, and the statuses of the anchors surrounding the pillar. A different screen showed a series of cameras surrounding the chamber complex.

  And suddenly, there it was, on screen.

  The sight of it immediately chilled Vertan’s spine.

  Its mere presence causes interference and static as it passes through. The figure of the entity is barely comprehensible through the noise, but undeniably there. Two dimly glowing eyes appeared to leave a trail behind them as they went, and a cold, uncanny mask that didn’t demand presence, but was the embodiment of presence itself.

  Somehow, it didn’t speak to him as “you will die,” but rather, like to many before him, “you are already dead.”

  The entity passes, and closer and closer it comes.

  Vertan could feel the rate of his heart and breath picking up, and tried desperately to calm himself, paranoid that maybe it could smell his fear and instantly rip him to shreds.

  Breathe.

  Breathe.

  Breathe.

  Vertan looks back at the screen, steadying his breath.

  The sixteenth, the final anchor, now displayed fluctuating statistics.

  Now or never.

  With his time grenade ready, and eyeing the ring portal set on the floor in the open, he throws the grenade, and turns the portals on.

  Immediately, a mess of debris, the remains of organs and bodies falls through in opposing directions each side. But in that same instant, there it is.

  The entity.

  An imposing figure clad in a foreign armor, its dimly glowing red eyes bored straight through Vertan’s core.

  The time grenade, set to loop, goes off the next microsecond. Again, and again, and again, the entity continually falls through the ring-portal.

  Without wasting another moment, Vertan immediately sets about laying waste to the entity.

  The shots of the last man standing ring out against the quietness of the chamber.

  Not every shot strikes the entity. Sometimes it phases through. Other times it bounces back in haphazard directions, barely missing Vertan.

  The entity appears to attempt to break out of the loop, only to be continually pulled back in, falling endlessly, incessantly.

  Charging up a stronger shot, Vertan fires a beam squarely through the entity.

  An explosion rings out from the sixteenth anchor, and a corrupt pulse emanates across the chamber, echoing and bouncing multiple times, destabilizing the others. In a seeming attempt by the pillar’s systems to recover and restabilize itself, it hiccups a distorting wave of space and light, completely disorienting everything around Vertan, and the mixture with an ongoing time loop ongoing next to a teleportation device seemingly eviscerates the entity.

  Suddenly, all of Vertan’s surroundings change.

  What happened?

  Looking around, he was back outside on top of Base Seven, its ruins still stretching far into the horizon. In the sky above him, the gateway still stood and shone, if not damaged in several ways.

  A body drops from the sky.

  Then another piece of machinery.

  And another.

  And another.

  Everything that was underground earlier seemingly materializes instantly out of thin air, and begins dropping from the sky, crashing to the ground. Running, Vertan frantically scrambles to dodge the downpour, sometimes getting missed by a hair’s margin.

  The temporary downpour subsides, the last bits of debris sprinkling down onto the ground, floors, and rooftops.

  Stepping back out into the open, Vertan pulls off his helmet to breathe, only to find there to be no longer any suitable air to breathe, and puts his helmet back on.

  The quietness once again consumes him.

  No sound. No wind. No people. No communications. Nothing but an empty wasteland stretching the entire planet.

  The eye in the sky that is the gateway continues to watch down upon him with its gaze.

  Holy shit, he thought. Did I do it? Am I going to live?

  Turning around as he surveys his surroundings, his heart skips a beat at the sight.

  Standing before him, is the entity.

  Bleeding, injured, exhausted and with his suit struggling to tend to his body’s vitals, dread and despair began to seep in once more.

  No. No! This can’t be! After everything—!

  But the entity continued to stand there with an uncanny quietness. Somehow, the lack of a clear menace to its stance made it even more creepy. Gone too now, were the dim red eyes, which now left only an empty void of black behind it.

  In a rageful panic, Vertan shrieks and attempts to shoot the thing once more, only to find that his rifle was dead for good. He rushes in, and whacks the rifle, beating at the figure.

  The entity simply falls down, crashing to the ground.

  The seeming normality of what just occurred jarred Vertan.

  What?

  Coming to his senses for a moment, Vertan quickly takes a few steps back. Somehow, he had expected to die right then and there. Perhaps something still should have happened. He should have been pulled into unreality. Or perhaps this is the Abomination’s final, cruel trick to lure him into feeling some kind of hope that he could beat the odds. What even is this thing that is physically tangible after everything—?

  The figure continues to lie where it fell.

  His panic subsiding for a moment, Vertan carefully approached it once more, no longer blinded from his senses.

  Something felt deeply, deeply, wrong with everything in that moment, reaching down to the pit of his soul. He couldn’t explain the feeling.

  It still lies there, remaining unchanged. It still appeared as it did, in its armor. So it is armor, though nothing of which he recognized could belong from anywhere. It looked so oddly normal, all things considered. Two legs, and what should be two arms, though one was clearly torn off. A part of the abdomen had also been torn off. The thing’s suit appeared so saturated and charred with damage and scars from battle that it was unbelievable it was still holding up intact at all.

  Reaching with the butt of his rifle, he jabs and pokes the figure. It still lies there.

  Scanning down the figure, Vertan notices it again. Underneath all the scars and damage, he could faintly make out markings. Symbols. An emblem on the shoulder plate.

  The same ones Hilgo had previously pointed out.

  His heart continues sinking.

  Reaching for the already damaged helmet piece, and with his suit’s combined strength, Vertan struggles but eventually tears the face piece off.

  Staring back at him is a face not unlike his own.

  The two stared at each other in silent awe for a moment.

  That’s it? Vertan thought, wide-eyed. That’s the Abomination?

  The person in the suit on the other side coughs up more blood, struggling to breathe. It’s clear that he won’t last much longer.

  The diagnostics and statistics running through Vertan’s HUD continue to scroll endlessly.

  With the same weight of the wrongness boring down on his soul, Vertan instinctively reaches for his Daero Counter, and for the first time since coming back to the surface, he switches it on.

  The Counter blinks, then flashes to life. It beeps and crackles, and upon being pointed at the dying man, returns:

  Daero Level: 100%

  Log ID: ###-000001