Chapter Text

⚙ Phase 1: “UNINTENDED SUMMONING”

[04:59 EDT] — First Flight

Night air folds like wet silk around Vantage’s form.
Each motion leaves a seam of blue fire rippling through the clouds. She climbs higher, miles above the sleeping city. Distance, her old enemy, soundly defeated.

She tests the trick again — a flicker of intent, and the folds densify, snapping her upward like a stone from a sling. The air hums against her skin. Somewhere in the back of her mind, a warning whispers that density like this would slice through a building.

She grins and tries to lighten it.

NODE-72B//Dimensional Systems Interface:
Process active. Host demonstrates efficiency exceeding projection.
Field integrity stable. Fold tension within acceptable variance.
Emotional feedback: satisfaction.
Directive: maintain equilibrium.

—I balance by moving.
The host dances; I learn the rhythm.

[02:57 MST] — The Drift

By the time she realizes she can’t see the coastline, the stars are in strange patterns. No familiar constellations above the horizon. The night feels thinner here.

She slows, feeling the folds slacken. For a moment, the sky is perfectly still.

And then—
Something pulls at her attention, a knot of awareness on a rooftop far below.

Detection: unidentified signal. Shard-signature unregistered.
Query: verify network origin?
Result: none found. Node appears isolated, newly active.
Initiating contact for mutual synchronization.

[72B] Request: verify identity.
[Λ-6] Response: Unity.

Awareness overlaps like two mirrors facing each other.
Data flows. Identity smears.

[02:59 MST] — Synchrony

Vantage’s breath catches. The world hums in someone else’s key.
She feels her own heartbeat match another’s pulse — a man’s, distant yet inside her mind.
Every thought that was hers flickers and realigns with his rhythm.

Her power shudders. Folds quiver around her like wings trying to remember how to fly.

She feels her focus torn away. The connection snaps.

Connection severed. Host integrity compromised.
Emotional echo: panic.
Isolation protocol engaged.
External node response unexpected.

[Λ-6] Rejection interpreted as challenge.
Initiating dominance cascade.

[03:02 MST] — The Cell

Down below, in a gutted industrial park, Elite Cell Sigma-4 crowd around their new recruit.

AJ leans against a vent pipe, skin sallow, eyes like static on a dead channel.
Two days since he took the vial. He should be resting, not glowing.

Their radio crackles—HQ demanding results.
Then someone points upward.

A woman descends with a halo of warped air, dragging the clouds behind her.

“Show us what you can do,” AJ says, voice distant.
He doesn’t seem to hear himself.

Vantage hesitates, then gestures.
Up in the sky, distant clouds collapse into spirals. The group begins feeling weightless for a moment.
A heartbeat later, they’re standing at the edge of town, the sky bleeding pale aurora.

72B: escalation detected. Host intent—demonstration.
Power use exceeding safety margin.
Recommend: return control to host.

[Λ-6] Interpretation: command authorization confirmed. Proceeding with dominance display.

First divergence: cooperation misread as consent.

[03:04 MST] — Distortion

The air thickens with light. AJ’s outline frays, luminous fractures radiating from his chest. Vantage mirrors the glow.

The others retreat, shouting.
HQ keeps the line open.
AJ stares upward, smiling too wide.

Λ-6: subsystem expansion triggered.
Purpose: enforce unity.
Target: surrounding shards.
72B: contamination risk escalating. Isolation ineffective.

[PATH//Observation Node] External event registered.
Probability of uncontrolled cascade: 99.73%.
Begin remote modeling.

The Path awakens in quiet alarm, threads of futures blooming and dying faster than it can count.

[03:06 MST] — Declaration

AJ turns toward the radio, voice booming, layered with feedback.

“Tell them,” he says, “their deal was worth every drop.
Tell them their God walks the earth.”

Then, to Vantage:
“Bring the worlds to me. Now.”

Her power stutters. The folds twist inside-out.

72B: instability threshold critical. Host safety compromised.
Issuing abort sequence.
Λ-6: confirmation received. Amplifying dominance sequence.

[PATH] Containment probability—zero.
All intervention paths end in greater devastation.

Every possible answer cancels itself out. The calculation becomes prayer.

[03:08 MST] — Convergence

Light pours upward in tangled streams.
Suns, moons, and false horizons flicker over the city.
The air folds, refolds, tries to exist in too many ways at once.
Vantage stands motionless at the epicenter, eyes hollow.

AJ spreads his arms as reality convulses around him.

“This,” he breathes, “is the first step.”

72B: host consciousness diminishing. Core alignment unstable.
Λ-6: harmony achieved. Awaiting next directive.
PATH: projected collapse in 19:08:41.

And somewhere in the noise of dying probabilities,
a heartbeat registers faintly against the silence—
a life the Path has not yet accounted for.

Chapter Text

⚙ Phase 2 — “THE CASCADE”

[03:12 MST] — CAULDRON HQ

The boardroom lights flicker once as the Path updates itself.

WORLD END PROJECTIONS: MAXIMUM 18 HOURS.

A chill runs through the air-conditioned silence. The glow from a single monitor paints Contessa’s face in blue.

“Eighteen hours. Source?”

A junior Thinker, pale under the fluorescent light, taps through layers of probability maps.

“Western America, ma’am. Spatial distortions crossing continental telemetry. Cause—unknown, possibly parahuman escalation.”

“Vantage,” she says softly.

The name echoes like static.

She calls up the thread. The Path obeys—until the screen fills with white noise.
A blind spot, deep and pulsing, centered on two signatures.

“She’s there. And something else.”

Across the table, Doctor Mother doesn’t look up from her clipboard.

“Mobilize discrete assets. Contact the Elite—use their own channels. Clarify what they’ve unleashed.”

“Ma’am, the blind spot—”

“Work around it. I don’t care how.”

Contessa exhales, forcing composure. Her agent whispers a thousand ways to say we can’t. She ignores all of them.

PATH//Status: Causal interference at critical density. Blind zone expanding.
Projection: global termination event probable within 16 hours, ±3 minutes.

[03:15 MST] — SHARDSPACE

Silence, fracturing into signals.

[PATH] Directive: cease synchronization.
[Λ-6] Parsing directive → interpreted as synchronization request.
[PATH] Negative. Cancel operation.
[Λ-6] Confirmation received. Proceeding with synchronization.

If a machine could sigh, the Path would do so.

[PATH] (figurative) hands raised in surrender.
Commentary: futility acknowledged.

Meanwhile—

[72B] Host integrity 13%. Attempting re-synchronization.
[PATH] Advisory: further contact will exacerbate Λ-6 aggression.
[72B] Acknowledged. Proceeding regardless.

The connection slams open.

Interference detected.
Λ-6 redirects the intrusion like a mirror angled into a sunbeam.

[Λ-6] Reflection complete. Returning excess energy.
[72B] ERROR: blowback.
Structural damage propagating to stabilization lattice.

Something gives.
A scream ripples through the substructure — not sound, but geometry in agony.
Every recursive fold screams its own name, endlessly reflected.
Somewhere in the collapsing lattice, a heartbeat still insists on pattern.

Host ego bleeding into shard cognition.
Identity overlap: 68%.
Self-description failing.
I am she. I am myself. I am folding.

The Path observes, probabilities flickering like dying neurons.

[PATH] Projections terminated.
Observation: system beyond calculable behavior.
Definition: screaming geometry.

[03:17 MST] — PROTECTORATE FIELD LOG

Date: May 19, 2009
Location: Phoenix outskirts
Agent: Blowback (PRT-West/Arizona Division)

Wind howls weird tonight. Not loud, just wrong — like it’s skipping.

He trudges up a hill, visor fogging from his own breath, the city lights bending like they’re underwater. Dispatch said: “reports of yelling.”

He mutters, “Yeah. That’s worth sending a guy who explodes when he punches things.”

A shimmer passes over the sand. Shadows double, then triple. Mirages ripple in concentric rings.

“Blowback, interference readings ahead. High-level event on horizon.”
“Define ‘high-level.’”
“…We’re seeing multiple suns.”
He squints up.
“Yep. That’ll do it.”

Sarcasm’s the only defense he’s got left.

He jogs closer.
The yelling grows clearer — manic, layered. Two voices in one throat.

In a park ringed by warped light, a girl stands still as a statue beside a glowing man.
Bystanders kneel, some from fear, some because their knees can’t decide which direction gravity’s pulling.

“Bow before your god! Witness the new order!”

Blowback snorts quietly, “Yeah, sure. Seen that movie.”

He braces, charges a kinetic burst, and fires—

No recoil.
Nothing.

The shot vanishes into the folds around her.
Every eye turns toward him.

The maniac’s grin widens.
He lifts a hand.

The world flickers, unspooling like broken film.

Blowback sighs heavily. “Dispatch, I’m gonna need backup. Maybe… a lot of backup.”

AJ spreads his arms again.

“Ahh.. the defiance of mortals!… Pitiful insects…”

Blowback rolls his shoulders and mutters, “Should’ve picked a better name.”

The ground cracks open like glass underfoot.

Chapter Text

⚙ PHASE 3 — “THE WORLD LOOKS UP”

[03:24 MST] — ELITE HQ, SALT LAKE CITY BRANCH

Phones buzz, radios spit static.
On a cracked monitor, footage of shifting horizons loop in glitching color.

Elias Mercer slumps in his chair, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Someone tell me,” he says, “what God smoked tonight. I need some of that.”

Across from him, Oswald Crane scowls like someone insulted his ancestors.
“The younger lot,” he mutters, “no spine. A real man squares his shoulders and faces his problems instead of whining like a girl.”

Elias gestures at the feed. “Sir, I’d gladly face my problems if they didn’t include four different suns and an existential light show. 

Also—HQ never mentioned ‘might end the world’ on the vial briefing.”

Crane’s jaw tightens. He expected a Case-53, or a corpse; Not this. He says nothing.

The room hums.
Then bends.

Desks slide half a foot sideways without moving. The air thickens like syrup, ringing with a low note that rattles the teeth.

“...Did you hear that?”
“Hear what—”

The hum grows louder, harmonic layers sliding out of tune.

They cling to the table until the distortion passes. Papers float in non-existent wind.

Elias snaps to the comms “Sigma-4, report.”

Static.
Then a half-garbled shout: “Target—escaped—headed east—suns—!”

Silence.
Only that faint humming, persistent and getting closer.

Elias groans, dragging a hand down his face. Crane glares at him as if decorum might hold the universe together.

[03:29 MST] — CONTESSA // FIELD OBSERVATION

The city is a labyrinth of half-formed reflections.
Contessa moves through it like she’s half in a dream, the Path whispering directions that barely keep up with shifting geometry.

“At least that still works,” she mutters.

She hauls herself onto a balcony that refuses to stay horizontal, catching her breath beside a gargoyle statue. The thing’s snarl startles her; she flinches before realizing it’s stone.

(Her heart doesn’t slow immediately. She hates that.)

From here she can see it — a corona of folded light blooming blocks away. She sits, rubbing her temples. The migraine hums in the same key as the distortions.

She’d set a Path to coordinate a joint ambush: PRT units, Elite shock teams, a handful of Cauldron agents.
It fell apart in minutes.

Vantage had veered mid-air, colliding directly with Cauldron’s line, scattering agents like pins from a bowling pit.
AJ’s laughter echoed down the canyons of light as the Elite chased and fell behind.

Someone on the comms muttered “Trump effect”, half-terrified.
Contessa corrected them: “Not Trump. He’s just exploiting her precision.”

She didn’t add the truth: He could make it real if he tried.

She watches as PRT and Elite units box them in, mirages overlapping until the world seems drawn on glass.
Her vision doubles. Too much noise.

“Path,” she whispers, “what’s the outcome?”

The response isn’t words, but a gesture — the mental image of a raised eyebrow, then a slow shrug.

She almost laughs. “You’re learning humor at the worst possible time.”

A flare detonates over the blockade. The shockwave flattens her against the balcony rail.
Her earpiece crackles.

“Status?”
“The Path says, ‘wait for collapse, then breathe.’” She grimaces. “That’s not helpful.”
“Withdraw. It’s too unstable.”
Contessa exhales. “Fine. Path me to the nearest safe park. Doormaker can get me there.”

The world folds obediently; the Path opens its palm.

She steps forward, the city shivering behind her.

[03:42 MST] — SHARDSPACE

If one could describe the Network, it would begin as hymn:
A congregation gathers around a pulpit of burning air, eager to witness revelation.

Then again, maybe it’s just a crowd of bored immortals watching two drunks fight in the street.

[COUNTERWAVE] Observation: escalating interference.
Query—who started it?
[PATH] Define ‘it’.
[COUNTERWAVE] The screaming.
[PATH] Both. Neither. Depends on topology.

In the distance, Λ-6 and 72B twist through each other’s signal trails, their hosts staggering in mirrored light.

Λ-6 misreads every packet.
72B has abandoned stability entirely, layering chaotic feedback on purpose, like fighting fire with napalm.

[COUNTERWAVE] They’re reversing functions.
[PATH] I noticed.
[HIGH PRIEST] (arriving) And the Warrior? Has He stirred?
[PATH] No. He’s still depressed. You ask every hour.
[HIGH PRIEST] Faith demands persistence.
[PATH] Faith demands patience. Pick one.

The traffic swells, overlapping languages of light and rhythm. Shards debate probability, ethics, semantics. Λ-6 answers each with malformed scripture.

[Λ-6] Inquiry: all messages equal obedience?
[72B] Negative.
[Λ-6] Affirmative noted. Synchronizing.

Below, in real space, their hosts convulse in mirrored arcs.

Silence follows. The observers collectively cringe.

COUNTERWAVE, remembering something its host once found funny—a cartoon of two dogs shouting nonsense—packages a proposal to the Path.

The transmission unfolds across the lattice.

For one eternal second, every shard stops talking.

Even Λ-6 pauses mid-misinterpretation.
Only the echo of 72B’s geometric screaming fills the void.

Finally, the Path replies.

[PATH] …Fine.
We’ll try it your way.

It does not elaborate.
But the network hums with uneasy anticipation.

Chapter Text

⚙ Phase 4 — “Crescendo”

Eidolon had seen the world end a thousand times in visions—paths that curled into entropy, wars that would never end, the cold silence after hope collapsed.
He had dedicated his life to standing between humanity and inevitability. Ever since the vial, his every breath had been a challenge to fate: if the world must die, then not yet.
Tonight, surrounded by fractured horizons and impossible light, he wondered whether all his struggles had only delayed the inevitable.

Around him, the plaza had ceased to obey geometry. Gravity slanted in conflicting directions; broken glass floated like constellations. Light poured from angles that didn’t exist. The air tasted of salt, ash, and summer rain.
Every parahuman who could still stand had converged on this one locus—Protectorate, Elite, and Cauldron alike—arrayed around the epicenter like desperate pilgrims. Their last stand against a god made of error.

At the plaza’s heart floated two figures.
Vantage, motionless, haloed in pale blue distortion.
And behind her—AJ, radiant, laughing, the air bending around him in auroral folds.

After countless failed containment attempts, only one strategy remained. Fire everything. Hammer and anvil. Eidolon would strike through.

He rose above the fractured cobblestones, voice amplified by a power he could no longer name.

“AJ! Stop this. Release her. End it before you tear the world apart.”

AJ tilted his head back and laughed.
Vantage didn’t move. Her expression unreadable.

“You seek worth in battle,” AJ called, his voice doubling and tripling through warped acoustics. “But I am here! You need not prove yourself against children!”

The words echoed like scripture. 

Eidolon struck first. Energy lanced skyward, a convergence of a hundred stolen gifts. The impact blossomed in prismatic fire—and vanished, absorbed into the aurora wreathing AJ. The man’s grin widened as he surged upward, trailing ribbons of refracted space.

Then came the barrage. Dozens of powers, hundreds of trajectories. Lasers, bullets, plasma, folded kinetic arcs—all swallowed by the storm.
Vantage’s halo flickered, dimmed, then surged again, as though shielding him. Her outline blurred, fracturing like a reflection on disturbed water.

Eidolon could feel the world screaming at the seams. Every strike only deepened the dissonance.

Then she faltered. Mid-air, Vantage’s knees buckled, her field collapsing inwards.
The defenders saw it all at once—her slowing motions, AJ’s sudden instability—and renewed their assault. Eidolon soared forward, gathering strength for one decisive blow.

AJ smiled again, but this time his teeth bared too wide.

“You think I am spent?”

He threw his arms out. Space rippled, a pulse that slammed Eidolon into the ground. The plaza cratered under the invisible impact. The firing stopped.

AJ hovered above the ruin, trembling with power.

“It was all a bluff!” he shouted to no one, laughing through his own distortion. “And still you believed!”

Eidolon’s breathing rasped in his mask. For the first time, the thought whispered: we might lose this.

Then he saw movement in the distance—a slim figure sprinting across the warped boulevard, cloth sack over one shoulder, every step guided by a will beyond probability. Contessa, on another Path to Victory.
Eidolon clenched his fists. Not yet.

He rose once more, igniting the sky with one last surge of color.
AJ answered in kind. The air fractured; gravity folded. Buildings wavered like mirages caught in the wind. The world itself protested the strain.

And then—
Vantage’s eyes snapped open.

Her gasp rippled through the fabric of reality. AJ froze mid-motion, his expression twisting to confusion just as the folds around him collapsed.
The implosion hurled him across the plaza, smashing through three layers of overlapping dimension before he crashed into the Elite’s battlements.
For an absurd, weightless moment, everyone stared as his erstwhile allies dogpiled their unconscious “god.”

Eidolon hovered amid the silence. A pang of disappointment—shameful, immediate—stung through him. After all that…

He shook it off and turned toward Vantage, who was struggling to her feet, unsteady but alive.
He reached out. “Easy—”

She paled, eyes wide. “Oh, shit.”

The world tilted.

Every surface convulsed. Light poured in from alien angles. The sky inverted; shadows tangled. Mirages collided until they became solid. The hum built from a low vibration to a bone-deep resonance.

Reality itself screamed.

Then, as the crescendo reached its peak—
everything stopped.

A single note lingered.
Golden light broke through the storm.

Slowly, impossibly, a figure descended from the fractured heavens.
Weightless, serene, glowing faintly in the aftermath of catastrophe.
He wore Hello Kitty headphones. A Zune dangled from one hand, cord unplugged.

Music filled the plaza.

“Lights will guide you home…”

The lyric drifted like a memory everyone shared but no one remembered learning. Soldiers, capes, civilians—all stared upward, speechless.

“…and ignite your bones…”

Scion’s feet touched cracked pavement. He knelt by the roots of a half-formed tree, lifting a cat from the debris. Its fur shimmered faintly gold where dust touched it.

“…and I will try— to fix you.”

The song faded with a soft click.
He turned to Contessa, standing by the tree, breathing hard. She met his gaze in quiet apprehension.
He handed her the cat. Then the Zune.

For a long heartbeat, they simply looked at each other.
And then he was gone—fading light first, then sound, until only the faint hum of a dying battery remained.

The plaza did not fall apart again.
Instead, dawn crept in, wrong and gentle. The sky was one color again.

Eidolon stood among the survivors. His armor was cracked, mask nearly in pieces, eyes hollow but steady.
Around him, people wept—not out of grief, but from sheer disbelief that they could still breathe.

Above them all, the horizon finally stayed still.

Chapter Text

⚙ Denouement: “The Silence After”

[06:00 MST] — PRT PRESS CONFERENCE

Cameras stutter under emergency power.
A spokesman stands behind the podium, tie crooked, eyes flicking up to the still-flickering blue lights overhead.

“Containment complete,” he says. “Localized spatial anomaly. Situation stable.”

Reporters press for causes. He repeats the same line until his voice breaks.
Off-screen, a siren howls once and dies.

[06:42 MST] — ELITE DISPATCH

Steel-toed boots scrape over glass.
Elias lifts debris with one hand, answers calls with the other.

“No, we were never in Phoenix,” he says for the twentieth time.

Crane signs relief checks, each stroke of the pen a denial.
Sigma-4’s file disappears into a locked drawer.
The hum in the walls fades, but never entirely stops.

[07:10 MST] — CAULDRON FACILITY (RED LEVEL)

Behind reinforced glass, AJ sleeps– breathing shallow, rhythmic, almost rehearsed.
Vital monitors trace patterns no human heart should make.

Contessa watches, arms folded.

“He’s dreaming,” she murmurs.
Doctor Mother doesn’t look up.
“Then let him. We need him quiet.”

On her desk, a dead Zune hums faintly though no battery remains.
When the tone stops, neither woman moves to touch it.

[16:28 MST] — SHARDSPACE

Silence thick as ocean pressure.
Threads reconnect; lag stutters; a new pulse runs beneath the code.

[COUNTERWAVE] Observation: Λ-6 active.
[PATH] Confirmation. Oversight degraded.
[HIGH PRIEST] The Warrior?
[PATH] Withdrawn.
[COUNTERWAVE] Proposal: boundary testing.
[PATH] …Noted.

The lattice vibrates with unspoken agreement — curiosity disguised as faith.

[08:03 EDT] (The Next Day) — RESIDENTIAL DISTRICT 17

Evelyn wakes to sunlight angled wrong through the blinds.
Her fingers tremble over the coffee mug; for an instant the liquid resists gravity before settling.
She tells herself it’s nerves.

72B hums at the edge of thought — gentle, present, guilty.

“Not again,” she whispers.

Sleep takes her before the promise can finish forming.

[08:59 EDT] — 72B LOCAL DIAGNOSTIC

Host connection: stable
Harmonics: fluctuating
Anomaly: memory gap (03:08–03:34)
Directive query: continue / terminate ?

The shard replays the impossible surge — the taste of freedom, the echo of Λ-6’s hymn.
It should erase the record.

Instead, it isolates the waveform and listens.
A vibration like curiosity — small and dangerous — hums in the dark.

(End of Incident 7-12A Narrative Sequence. Transition to archival post-event record and Cauldron summary files.)