Raine VS The End of the World (49 page)

Heavily reinforced lines of defense orbited the diamond, both material and energy-based.

Indeed, it was all Lily could do to avoid the shards of debris and mines that ringed the structure. The glimmering fortress was far away, yet it was now nearly all Raine could see outside the confined cockpit.

Flying saucers sped through the chasm. Beings of pure light stood, sat, or floated on way stations glowing with corrupted energy. Standing atop a nearby conduit, one switched on a warning siren.

“Would you believe it, they’ve spotted us already,” Lily said as a squadron of saucers fell into formation in between her ship and the fortress. “Keep those triggers hot.”

A laser light show of enemy fire sparked all around them. Raine held tight to her turret controls and braced for impact. It never came. Instead, she jumped at the deafening rush of bombardments that eclipsed their craft, firing blindly. Another burst of light flooded her vision as a rogue ship sliced through the formation like a heated butter knife and double-backed to finish the rest off from behind.

The ship flew above and beyond them on its way back, and Raine’s eyes widened in surprise when she recognized the bright red and yellow colors of Super BlastBoy’s
Red Knight
.

“
Red Knight
to
Omega Queen
, come in.”

“
Red Knight
, this is
Omega Queen
, we hear you, Tony!”

“Copy, Lily.”

“Ha! I was starting to think you were going to be unfashionably late,” Lily teased.

“Speak for yourself, sister! You’re overdue to your own party!”

“So, not seeing any entry points. And the core remains uncorrupted.”

“There’s a method to breaking through these irises. Take aim for the big hangar. Deliver the package on Vectors 01823-0097-5064; I’ll take care of the rest. Give my best to Raine, and luck to you, little Miss.”

“And to yourself,” Lily said softly over the rising cacophony.

The Sky Admiral’s vessel made directly for the fortress’ core. On a hologram of the craft visible from the control panel, Lily set all shields to defend from the front.

Missiles were inbound from starboard side. Raine lasered as many as she could handle; Super BlastBoy and his wing took care of the rest in between bouts with fighters and floating sentry nodes.

But the swarms continued to respawn faster than the group could take them down.

“Green Squad, come in! Where’s the cavalry?” Lily called.

“We await your command.” The deep, silky voice brought a glow to Raine’s face.

“Linus!” she exclaimed.

“Hello again, Miss Rai--”

“Linus, get your butts in here, now!” yelled Lily.

“Affirmative.”

All over the edges of the sphere, portals shot out tens of thousands of airships and aerial beasts of every make. A boy who looked an awful lot like Nimbus breezed by on a well-armed bi-plane. Linus took the head of a flock of artificially intelligent dragons, leading them headlong into the much faster spaceships, sacrificing their existences to give Lily and Raine a clear path to their destination.

Raine couldn’t see whether anyone made it out alive, but the defensive lines were breached, highlighting their entry point: the largest iris, set in the heart of the diamond, and it opened and closed as fighters zoomed into the arena.

As its lenses reacted extremely quickly, entrance seemed to be impossible unless one waited outside for the right instant at a precise spot. That spot was of course strategically surrounded with turrets.

We crossed the moat. Now to breach the castle gates.

“
Omega Queen
, come in.”

“We read, Tony.”

She checked the mini-map. Super BlastBoy was carving through the swarms with seemingly every AI in the
Metaverse
tailing him.

“See that hunk of metal falling towards the gate?”

Lily and Raine glanced out their window. The wreckage of half of a large mothership was dropping towards the diamond’s center. It looked like it had been completely destroyed by Super BlastBoy’s Energy Cutter attack.

“If you max shields and give it a good ram at point five-seventeen-niner from your four o’clock, it should slam right into the iris.”

Lily fired up her engines and chased the mothership.

“The gravity is pulling it too far off-side!”

“No!” Tony insisted. “You can make it!”

Pulling into position with a quick 180-degree turn, Lily used her visor to calculate the optimal course and velocity at which to strike the flying piece of metal. Within two seconds she’d powered up her frontal shields and shot towards the thing with considerable speed.

Raine shrieked, predicting the impact as Lily slammed, and then rebounded off the falling wreck. It careened straight into the iris.

The core opened up instinctively to welcome a familiar battle station for repairs, and then quickly shuttered as the wreck approached with the momentum of a falling aircraft carrier.

Debris clogged the bay. The explosion as the mothership broke apart was enough to cause a temporary malfunction in the doors’ closing mechanism.

“Hang on!”

Since she was in the middle of firing at some tailgaters, Raine didn’t know what to hang on to, so she pushed against the walls of the
Omega Queen
with all her might.

Lillian hit the afterburners. The ship barreled through the veiled center. They were in.

Inside, as far as they both could see, was an expanse of white and green squares, rapidly pulsing in binary.

A warm sensation grew in Raine’s chest, and black pixels erupted from her being, filling her field of vision and infecting her throbbing head with another wave of nausea.

Gradually, the data blitz faded, and for a second, nothing happened. But white light started to peel away from the edges of the chamber like old paint, revealing layers of jumbled code being overwritten –changed from green to red - at incredible speed.

“It’s the virus!” Lily cried. “It’s working! It’s beautiful.”

Raine’s vision blurred out. Alarms rang in her head, and she felt very unwell. She tried to call Lily’s name, but the words wouldn’t leave her lips. Just breathing became a struggle.

Sky Admiral Lily watched in awe as her creation spread across the spherical room in spirals. She looked down at her hands. They were disappearing. The code dictating the appearance of physical forms within the game was systematically overwriting itself with zeroes. With old Tony’s help, the non-data would spread to the mainframe backup. Within minutes, the
‘Verse
would be completely erased.

“Raine, are you seeing this?”

At the sound of her own name, a searing pain suddenly shot through the girl, causing great distress to her state of mind.

“
Tanha
server shutdown.
Maya
server shutdown.
Avidya
server shutdown.”

The pain returned, all too real this time. She screamed, trying to drown out the unbearable noise that once again echoed like billions of detonations inside her skull.

“Stay with me!” Lily wailed, finally taking note of her companion’s plight. “We’re almost through!”

Raine shut her eyes but the pulsing continued. She grabbed her head as if to keep it from breaking apart.

“Make it stop! It’s killing me!”

“I can’t!” replied Lily, powering her ship through the nothingness. She glanced back to the iris; the entrance was long-gone. They were safe, and Tony would keep everyone else out.

As Raine convulsed, Lily got back on her radio.

“Eighteen-seven. Eighteen-seven, this is Lily. Package has proven effective. Get us out of here. Repeat. Get us out. Agent HH, Lotus, XF, Joaquin, someone, we need you to start the lock-out procedure immediately!”

Lily clutched the controls, heart pounding. She tried to send another message, but the
Omega Queen
was fading away, leaving the two girls floating in dead space.

Raine might be dead in minutes unless someone could get her out.

“What’s happening to me?!” Raine shouted between muffled howls.

“I… I don’t know,” trembled Lily.

Raine grabbed Lily’s hands in both of hers and cried. The pain simply unbearable, she dug her nails into her friend’s strong grasp, only to feel those comforting digits unraveling.

Pixel by pixel, polygon by polygon, Lily was disappearing, despite every attempt to hold herself together.

“Raine, we’re gonna get you out of here, don’t you worry!”

The void absorbed even Lily’s reassuring words. Soft echoes bounced off the disappearing wireframes representing the core, melding into a single, hollow hum.

The girl looked down at her hands. She was pulsating with white noise, as if she were a TV channel with a bad connection.

“I’m scared, Lily.”

Though she wouldn’t dare tell her even if she could, Lily knew exactly what was happening to Raine, and it had to do with Wrathman’s counter-virus. The nano-machines implanted in her brain were self-destructing rather than disintegrating. They were trying to kill Raine by triggering an overload of stimuli.

The only hope to sever the nano-machines from the Network would be to force off her helmet. Taking the
Gear
off someone plugged in deep ran the risk of leaving them comatose, and under these conditions, even the most careful extraction might be fatal.
Best course of action?
It would do no good to worry her – stress always makes for a painful emergence. She had to be strong, to give her hope, even if there was precious little of it.

Lily gave Raine a loving embrace. There wasn't much of her left, and Raine’s sense of touch was failing, but she held on tightly. The girl had a terrible feeling that she was going to be alone again.

The time traveler’s voice returned in a faint whisper. “Don’t let the darkness take you. Just… be strong. I will find you. This might take a while for you, or it might happen right away; I’ve no idea. But helping you from the outside is the safest way. I’m gonna code you an exit. Make sure you get out in one piece, all right?”

“I’ll be strong,” Raine said sternly, tears floating in little bubbles around her eyes.

Lily gave her a static-filled kiss on the cheek.

“That a girl. I’ll be the first face you’ll see. Don’t keep me waiting, Raine.”

Raine let Lily go, and she disappeared completely, her last few pixels floating out into the now dead-silent vacuum.

The bubble finally vanished. Raine tried to blink her eyes open and shut. No, there was absolutely nothing left of
Endless Metaverse
.

She had helped turn out the lights, and now she was floating alone in the dark.

“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.” - Lao Tzu

It is impossible to describe in terms of the way we measure time just how long Raine spent in the darkness.

To her it had felt like eternities, and yet it was also no time at all. There were no emotions here, no needs, no cravings, and no distractions. It was as if her mind had slowed down enough to present her with the clarity and beauty of the entire universe.

She saw her physical body in the third person, asleep on a medical bed. Lily frantically working on getting the helmet off, aided by a small team. They were in a room made of metal, but it was hospitable, familiar.

Time itself vanished, but Raine was not mindful of this. When she became conscious of its lack, her present condition came to slowly define itself. The girl had no concept of time or memory at all, for she had no need of them. In here infinity was expressed the way she had, in secret, always conceived it - a vast pool of nothing.

Everything was dark. No borders, or markings, or anything living.

And then, she saw bubbles rising up from one direction to the other.
So that’s ‘up’.

She found that she could move, or rather, that her consciousness could see from different vantage points. All that was left for her to do was to focus her senses and set out to explore this world, searching for an exit. And that she did.

The freedom of Raine’s endless watery domain was absolutely perfect. She and the formless beings that materialized alongside her knew nothing of pain or challenges or conflict, only absolute peace.

She swam adrift in this shapeless sea for years and years. One day, however, her wanderlust led her to powerful currents far from her waters and into the shallows, where she discovered a looming end to the ocean - a vast beach that seemed to beckon her to abandon the watery paradise. She floated above the water, sat upon a cloud, and observed the land. It was terrifying, but also beautiful.

Before she realized it, Raine was standing on the hot sands. Her curiosity had gotten the better of her. Looking straight ahead, she taught herself to walk. She walked for hours, days, months, taking in the sights, sounds and smells. She touched the leaves of trees, breathed of cool air at the bottom of waterfalls, and soon imagined into existence animals of every shape and form. And then they flocked to her. Entranced by her own powers, Raine spoke to them, and asked them to dress her, and to teach her to eat and drink like them, so she might better understand her creations.

Soon, Raine had her first conscious feeling, one of longing and vast emptiness. It fascinated her. She wished she could capture it, describe it somehow. And so she created others like her, but they were a disappointment, merely copies of her physical self.

Who am I kidding? I’m no Goddess.

In distress, she ventured back towards the shore. It was a perilously long journey wrought with sadness and danger, and it took much of her strength, which she thought to be boundless. But at last, she found the right beach, where the waters beyond receded into a glowing, untouchable bliss. The wind blew softly from the surf, and whistled sweetly in her ears. Yet its song filled her with immense sorrow. She knew, somehow, that it wasn’t yet her time to return.

And then she turned around.

Raine looked mournfully at the wooden door that loomed before her. It hadn't surprised the girl, as if she knew it would be there. And yet, it seemed beguilingly suspect, like an Easter Island statue in the midst of a shopping mall. It, too, called to her, patiently, not by name, but with a strange hum that shook her to the core. She looked around it. It didn't seem to open into anything, but the draw of its promise, the glimmer of its handle, was so powerful, so sinister, she could not help but to turn away in disgust.

“Not yet,” she murmured, and went about her journey back across the countryside to her people.

The dreamlike landscape was now even more structurally perfect, its natural forms transparently bowing and evolving to her every whim. She took on the mantle of creator, and molded it to her liking, drawing ideas from within that seemed to come from somewhere other than her mind, as if she were creating the world as it was telling her it ought to be.

Decades passed in seconds. Through the power of her thoughts, she constructed a multiple-storey tree house on the largest tree in the forest. From her balcony she could watch the dolphins' morning ballet and the fireworks from the nearby castle where she found herself welcomed by a procession and doted on by the royal family. There were minor conflicts amongst the townspeople; they always turned to her for wisdom, and she was more than happy to solve each petty problem. Far from exhausting, the duties kept her busy.

Everyone marveled at how beautifully Raine aged. Smug in her maturity, she lost recognition or knowledge of the seasons. It seemed once again as if no time was passing at all, and yet every day was filled with wonderment, if not surprises. Before long, she grew complacent, and old at heart, but haunted by hazy half-memories, her soul was not yet satisfied.

Decades more appeared to pass, and with nary a change.

Doubts gnawed at her. The feeling of cosmic abandonment grew to haunt every moment. For long nights she wept in solitude, waiting for a Divine voice or revelation, for the pain or pleasure of some sort of interaction beyond herself. This dark night of the soul eclipsed Raine’s entire being until she’d convinced herself that there was nothing else, and the surety of death was all she could wish for.

Somewhere along the line, however, even this feeling passed, and she learned to become numbly content in her solipsism, returning as a forgotten mother to aid her creations, working selflessly.

And then one day, a man appeared, riding a dragon. Raine had long forgotten their names, but their faces told her that these were old friends, now come as messengers of destiny.

When his face lit up from ear to ear, she practically melted. Like her, he was different from the others: aged and yet majestic, clad in a velvet robe and ascot tie under a vest of mithril, with a fiery red mane. He allowed her to show him around the kingdom, and presented her with a delicious cake, for all the birthdays he’d missed.

“There's nothing in the world that makes me happier than to see you so blissful,” he practically whispered, the warmth of his voice traveling down her spine until it warmed her toes.

“It's wonderful to see you, too,” she said, a sparkle escaping his eyes where hers were reflected via candlelight. “Although I wish I could remember where we've met.”

“Alas, I must confess that I am not one of your creations,” he said sadly.

“Then from where are you come? Are you of another world?”

“I'm afraid I cannot say. My memory fails me. But I know you. I have known you since time immemorial, and I have searched for you. And now you are found.”

That night they ventured down to the beach on the dragon, now metamorphosed into a Pegasus.

“Oh!” Raine exclaimed in surprise.

“This is your realm. I take on any form you wish me to, milady,” the winged horse proudly proclaimed.

“Then my wish is for you to take on the form that you are most comfortable with,” Raine opined.

He let out a boisterous laugh. “Then I would be a human, and unable to carry the both of you.”

The man nudged Raine. “There’s a lovely vision!”

She tightened her grip around her beloved's waist, gazing at the ocean as two sea serpents performed somersaults in the glimmering light of the full moon.

Presently they arrived at the wooden doorway. Raine didn't even have to look up; she recognized its call.

The mythical steed slowed to a standstill.

“Why have we stopped?” she asked him, her heart suddenly sinking into her stomach.

The man helped her off the Pegasus with a guiding hand.

Raine took off her heels, set them down in the sand, and walked barefoot towards the old doorframe. It loomed like a strange obelisk in the middle of this otherwise beautiful beach, one that Raine had never once set eyes on.

Only, her memory told her that indeed, she’d set eyes on it before, eons ago. Yes, it was strange, otherworldly even, and its low hum had an air of vague familiarity, but it was not nearly as menacing as it once appeared to be.

Rather, the portal now filled her with a feeling that in her millennia of power and immortality and countless cravings and aversions Raine had all but forgotten about.

Curiosity. Pure, raw curiosity.

Raine turned to the man and kissed him. Knowing that she might never see him, nor partake in the wonder of this realm again, she took the doorknob.

She felt the odd sensation of her mind re-arranging itself.

For the first time she could ever recall, Raine knew the meaning of absolute peace. She also knew deep down, somehow, that she had just been asked back to the physical world to use her renewed consciousness to fight, to sacrifice herself if need be to resolve some Earthly conflict, some war she was fated to be a pawn in.

Except now she was more than a pawn. She calmly read the electrical signals guiding her back to what she now recognized as her brain.

Raine instinctively felt it: her every muscle, nerve, joint, and tendon, all completely in control, and yet it was merely a distant shell, like a game controller made of flesh and blood, if one tied to her consciousness. She was beyond the zone. She had found the zone, staked out her claim, and was living in it full-time.

There would be no going back.

This is my chess game, and I am a pawn who crossed the board
, she thought.
Now that I am to be a Queen of my own, I’ve finally realized the truth that all may see, the one that I’ve always known, but was trained to ignore: I’m sovereign. We are all sovereign.

But none exist in a vacuum. Our existences are all co-dependent. Our evolving consciousnesses are all tied to a cosmic whole.

And as long as slavery and persecution exists, I will fight it.

None are free of these bonds until all are.