Chapter Text
(cover art by me)
We all have our time machines, don't we. Those that take us back are memories... And those that carry us forward, are dreams. — H.G. Wells
The dual-drive motorbike cruised slowly along the narrow, flat road that cut through the valley. At this moment, Fulgur Ovid was traveling at a speed that defied human definitions—the numbers on the gauge hovered around 130, yet the barren, oversized brown hills and boulders on either side seemed to crawl past him at a glacial pace.
He lifted his upper body slightly off the seat, just enough to allow a stretch that barely stayed within the bounds of balance. His spine, stiff from nearly ninety minutes of monotonous riding, screamed in protest at the mere millimeter of movement—a jolt of pain shot from his neck down to his lower back. The motorbike’s hypersensitive steering sensed the tremor and veered slightly to the left.
For the sixth time, Fulgur pulled up the near-empty map in his IIs to double-check his direction. He had been riding this same stretch of road at a constant speed for the past hour. Scattered neural network signals flickered around him, and not a single signal tower was in sight. More than once, he’d questioned whether the coordinates—whose source was unclear—were even meant for a world still inhabited by humans. After all, without the neural network, people wandered as blank-eyed and lost as patients with damaged frontal lobes.
He scoffed at his own melodramatic analogy—but then he remembered the time three months ago, when he’d captured an illegal I’mprint and ended up infected with a virus that devoured most of his neural network. Back then, he too had become something hollow—a doll without an I’mprint, frozen and powerless.
The familiar dull ache throbbed twice at his temples, like a warning knock. To distract his mind from the encroaching pain, he instinctively reopened the map—only to realise he was now within range of the coordinates. He immediately twisted the throttle to reduce speed and scanned the surroundings for any man-made structure besides the road beneath his wheels.
As the gauge dipped below 40, his IIs caught sight of something—on the left, less than a hundred meters from the roadside, a small unnatural rise among a cluster of scattered rocks on the hillside. As he approached, the bump resolved into a compact, rectangular structure of dark gray concrete—two stories high, with a crude signal tower bolted to its side. The motorbike screeched into a sharp ninety-degree turn and began its slow climb up the slope.
He parked on a cramped platform in front of the building. His legs hit the ground with the solid finality of a landing gear after long flight. To the side of a seamless alloy door, a glowing green panel flashed: "243-4 S/Z"—this had to be the only functioning supply station Chroma had mentioned in the area. Reaching behind his helmet, Fulgur fumbled briefly. The safety lock snapped open with a sharp click. As he pulled off the sealed container that had imprisoned his head for nearly two hours, he felt like he was being plunged into ice water.
Cold, damp air shot up his nostrils, and just as the toxic haze was about to slip into his windpipe, his throat-mounted filter beeped faintly and began to hum. He placed the helmet on the seat and touched the side of his neck. The display screen lit up: “Access verified.” The alloy door slid silently open.
The inside was even more cramped than the exterior suggested. Only the most basic radio equipment, a garage, an electrical room, and a refrigeration unit had been installed. There wasn’t even a public neural network interface in sight. Luckily, his ever-paranoid Praetor had prepared for such limitations before sending him out. Fulgur brought up the comm code Chroma had given him and keyed it into the system. Within seconds, the Praetor’s overly composed voice echoed through the small space.
“It looks like you’ve found the supply station. As I told you earlier, there’s a week’s worth of provisions in the cold storage. Once you’ve taken them, head out immediately toward the power plant. It’s off-road and leads into the mountains. Judging by the map, the terrain likely won’t accommodate your vehicle. I suggest locking the motorbike inside and proceeding on foot. A storm is expected in four hours. To ensure you’re inside the facility before it hits, you’d better not waste any time.”
Fulgur was still feeling around the edges of the comm terminal. When the message ended, he pressed his lips into a flat line.
“There’s no public network interface at the station. How am I supposed to transmit the files and data back to headquarters?”
“Given your neural damage and the mission’s classified nature, you won’t be needing the shared network during the operation—I emphasised this before departure. Once you acquire the data, store everything in your personal neural cache. Upon recall, we’ll extract and transmit it all at once. Until then, you’ll return to the station every Sunday for resupply, submit your weekly report, and use this outdated wireless system to brief me on progress and anomalies. Understood?”
Suppressing a sigh charged with complicated emotion, Fulgur answered curtly, “Understood.”
The Praetor, apparently unwilling to waste another second, ended the call with a brisk “See you in a week,” cutting the wireless transmission and leaving behind a faint hiss of static from the antiquated equipment. Fulgur stood still for a moment, then finally let the trapped sigh escape from his throat. He stepped outside to push the motorbike into the garage.
In the cold storage room, a nearly deflated military ration pack sat alone on the bare shelving. It contained strictly rationed daily portions of clean water, protein bars, and carbohydrate blocks, along with a high-powered flashlight, a windproof jacket, a toolkit, a medkit, and a simple sleeping bag. Fulgur threw on the jacket, shoved the flashlight into his pocket, and pulled up the nav system in his IIs. If the terrain wasn’t too rough, he estimated it would take less than three hours to reach the offshore power plant—a ghostly silhouette on the map, ten miles away. He wondered if Chroma had underestimated his travel speed.
The supply station door slid open in front of him. Damp, bone-chilling wind swept violently into the room. He now realised, having worn an infrared-enabled helmet earlier, that the hills and scattered rocks weren’t brown after all, but composed of exposed dark gray soil and sparsely clinging mosses, most of which were shrouded in a dense fog not unlike the urban smog choking city skylines. Perhaps it was the years of mist shielding the land from full sunlight that had allowed the moss to grow naturally here. Fulgur zipped his jacket all the way to his chin and set off toward the coordinates.
The terrain at first was fairly complex, but his mechanical legs were well-adapted to the steep slopes of the hills. Anyone without his kind of monstrous modifications would likely have suffered swollen joints and searing pain from the constant strain. An hour into the trek, rain began to fall—carrying a sharp, gasoline-slick odor. Twilight darkened the already overcast sky, the darkness swelling like floodwater, rising and spreading until it saturated everything. Fulgur pulled up his hood and fished out the flashlight. The sudden glare made him flinch, eyes instinctively narrowing—but the beam barely pierced the endless streaks of rain and the fog tinged with twilight’s pale hues. It illuminated only a cone of diffused, glowing white.
Without the neural net or the dual domains of the megacity, no data filled his mind. No sights, no sounds forced their way in. Only raw, chemical input remained—the scent of gasoline-laced rain, wet soil, moss, a faint salt from the sea. Only real, physical sensations—wind, rain, the rustle of his supply pack and jacket, the soft hum of the throat filter, and one sound that seized his entire focus: his own footsteps.
Those heavy mechanical shoes struck the ground at perfectly timed intervals. The alloy soles landed now on crumbling, time-worn stone, now on damp, soft moss. There was rhythm, but no melody. The steps echoed from his legs up through his spine to his heart and skull, scattering into the fog-soaked night, resonating with each beat of his pulse.
And so Fulgur walked—through endless time, through the dim corridors of his own mind—until the soft chime of his IIs disrupted the trance. He pulled up the map. He was now skirting the edge of a bay, less than a mile from the target coordinates. His hair was soaked through from the mist, and droplets clung to his pale synthetic skin like glass beads. He crossed one final ridge, and as the descent began, his IIs caught a faint red dot in the sky ahead—a flicker beyond the veils of rain and fog. But the red light drifted strangely, suspended in the mist. No structure around it was visible. He quickened his pace and began his descent.
Soon, the incline leveled out. The massive slabs of stone beneath his feet gave way to finer gravel, and his footsteps shifted—from deep and brief to fractured, drawn-out echoes. The fog grew thinner. The sound of crashing waves had become deafening. As the sea wind rolled in, thick with salt and an acrid, pungent dampness, Fulgur finally took in the bay, sealed as if inside a globe of gaseous amber.
The seabed beneath his feet lay fully exposed to the air. Originally pale gray with calcium deposits, it was now irregularly veiled in a black, mud-like substance—the erosion from mist and air had etched grotesque, vein-like fissures that stretched outward in every direction. Dark gray rocks lay scattered between them, strands of aquatic plants long dried and shriveled clinging to their edges. Behind him, the bay’s enclosing hills were swallowed by low clouds, hidden entirely from view. Ahead, where the fog had nearly vanished, the oil-colored sea surged onto shore, churning up pale brown foam. Fulgur shook himself from stillness and began walking along the stone-strewn shore toward the open expanse. Soon, beneath the solitary red light he had spotted earlier, a hulking silhouette abruptly appeared in his vision.
A sprawling structure—composed of massive, interlocking boxlike forms—crouched across the bay, stretching from the base of the mountain all the way to the exposed seabed. Its form bore no resemblance to the smooth, pristine white architecture of the cities. This one was wholly dark gray, nearly indistinguishable from the earth and the night itself. It didn’t look like a power plant. It looked like an abandoned military fortress, built to withstand a nuclear strike.
Fulgur came to a halt and pulled up the file in his IIs. If Chroma’s intel was correct, the power plant’s automated defenses were still active. If it detected an intruder, it would lock on and tear him to shreds in seconds—a turkey shoot. He wouldn’t have minded storming in and trading blows with the defense systems. But his ever-prepared, ever-strategic Praetor had provided him with a safer path—and made it clear he wasn’t to take any reckless action.
As he approached the part of the structure that extended toward the shore, the sealed, heavy entrance came into clearer view, and the building loomed taller with each step. Fulgur’s brow furrowed slightly. He didn’t like entering fortified cages with no intel advantage—but the wind and rain were growing more violent by the minute, and even with his heavy mechanical limbs, the incoming storm could easily sweep him away if he didn’t get inside soon.
He pressed his body against the recessed surface near the door. As he edged toward one corner, something clicked faintly underfoot. His synthetic spine discharged a pulse in an instant, snapping his body into full alert. He looked down. Beneath the black gravel, something metallic glinted faintly gray. And then, from a crevice in the lower corner of the doorframe, a thin line of pale cyan light slipped out as a hidden panel slowly pushed outward. Fulgur stepped toward the light with deliberate caution. He knew, without question, that the giant had registered him. Right now, any number of auto-turrets were probably trained on him, ready to reduce him to a splash of blood and twisted metal.
The metal panel slid open to reveal an access terminal. There were no words on the display—only a single glowing triangle rendered in geometric relief. He ran his fingers carefully along the edges of the terminal. In the lower-right corner, he found a connection port and pulled it out. He exhaled slowly and brought up the encrypted identity key his Praetor had given him—a key once belonging to the defeated I’mprint who had injected the neural virus into his brain.
Last mission. After this, I’m done.
He held his breath—and plugged the interface into the side of his neck.
Everything around him froze, as if locked inside a glacier. Fulgur’s neural network detected no signals, no shifts—only the roar of the waves and the howling wind behind him grew fiercer, pounding at his eardrums, threatening to breach them and flood his brain. He didn’t know how long he’d stood there, locked in that position with the interface connected. Only when the terminal emitted a soft confirmation tone—subtle, yet final—did he manage to reclaim his breath. And then, he heard it. A dull, distant groan echoed from within the structure, each beat of his heart beginning to sync with its rhythm, picking up speed. He felt a faint vibration underfoot—the whisper of fans and engines whirring to life somewhere deep inside. The giant machine exhaled—a gust of damp, rust-tinged breath—and began to wake. The alloy doors in front of him shuddered once, then began to retract slowly, groaning as they slid apart. Fulgur yanked the interface from his neck, leaned against the wall, and exhaled through clenched teeth. Rain and sweat ran together through his gray hair, sliding coldly down the back of his neck and into his collar. Through the widening gap, he glimpsed rows of blinding white tube lights flaring to life, one after another, carving out a corridor that reached deep into the unknown.
By force of habit, he glanced over his shoulder—but there was nothing behind him except the shoreline, now almost fully swallowed by the dark. He stepped over the track, and the massive doors rumbled shut behind him with a heavy, grinding screech of metal pulleys.
With a final, thunderous boom, the wind, the rain, and the waves were sealed away.
[TBC.]