Lilith's flailing body plummeted through the pale blue sky like an angel cast over the towering walls of the silver city. Her tattered black wings fought in vain to escape the angry saltwater grave that rushed up to greet her as convulsing hands pawed at empty, oozing sockets. She was blind, in pain and trapped in her own mind.
In an instant, Lilith had become a helpless passenger locked away in a nightmarish world of growing pain and shrinking awareness. In all the passing years of her time-stream, she had never lost control to the host. She sensed only darkness and pain. And loneliness. But that feeling was nothing new. The loneliness had been there since she was a child.
But now, the subatomic passengers- sentient machines grouped together to mimic individual cells- had seized control of Lilith's central nervous system, forcing her mind into a hazy, subconscious prison.
Her limp body punched through the gentle waves, sending up a geyser of bloody seawater as twisted limbs struck the bottom and crumpled. Moments later, a frenzy of ravenous fish gulped the chum and made to dart away. But none of them made it further than a few feet before convulsing and sinking into the depths as their carcasses disintegrated.
"Was that one of those things?" a large Necromonger in tattered armor yelled over the relentless surge.
Krone and his men had made the long crossing only to get trapped in the tumultuous surf. Wave after wave came out of nowhere, dragging them further away from dry land.
Then, the thing had crashed down a few feet away from the stumbling giants, flipping them upside down and pulling below the briny water. They rolled beneath the waves, coming up coughing and sputtering, spewing profanities at a world that cared little for their existence or survival.
A great bloody geyser shot up in the air beneath the area where the creature struck the water, and blood spread outward only to reverse course and fade away. In the near distance, a giant dorsal fin rose out of the waves, and the sun-bleached sailors reeled in shock, pointing their dripping weapons into the choppy, churned-up surf as wind blew the stinging spray in their cracked and peeling faces.
The dull blue light overhead did little to illuminate anything hidden beneath the choppy surface. They bobbed in the shallows, afraid to turn their backs on the unknown threat beneath the waves. Each of them waited for some unseen devil to leap from the depths like a giant Leviathan, ready to drag them to their doom. Foaming bubbles broke the roiling surf.
For a week, the small group had paddled through the endless waves on massive chunks of floating driftwood. Whole dead trees uprooted in massive storms centuries ago. They fastened them together using rifle straps and scraps of torn clothing. A hasty makeshift flotilla, pushed along by the steady winds and unseen currents. Each took turns paddling and kicking against the relentless current. All the while, the eerie jagged island on the horizon never seemed to get closer. It was as if the sea around the serene shores kept would-be visitors at bay.
The weary men slept when overcome with exhaustion, ate little, drank less, and huddled together in the safety of ancient twists of branches, hiding from the winged creatures gliding on the warm thermals overhead. Some were the size of small single-engine planes.
Early in the journey, small tormentors dropped from the sky, pecking with sharp beaks and slashing with razor-sharp claws. Later on, the torments grew. The weary sailors hid in the branches. When those attacks failed to yield results, large groups of flying raptors rocketed in at blinding speeds, pummeling both man and wood like kamikaze pilots. Most of the attackers had perished, but the constant onslaught and weariness had demoralized Krone and his men. And their bloody carcasses had drawn things from beneath. Their malfunctioning gravity rifles struggled to keep the savage creatures at safe distances.
Two days prior to beaching their makeshift craft, a giant winged bomber cut one of Krone's men in half and reduced the flotilla to a pile of shattered logs. As the corpses of both man and beast drifted away on the currents, a massive cyclone churned out over the horizon. As it drew nearer, it became a winged storm of ten thousand raptors. The flock of death churned the sky black in a wailing maelstrom as screaming creatures descended on the remains, lifting the chunks high into the air and tearing them to shreds. When the feast ended, the eyes in the sky turned to the flotilla. They fired into the fray, sending up clouds of sticky blue blood, kicking off a bloodthirsty feeding frenzy. The ravenous creatures tore at one another until blue blood and macerated flesh rained from the sky. After an hour of frenzied firing, the living storm abated, leaving the battered sailors floating in a gelatinous cesspool of pungent guts and coagulating bluish blood. Days later, with the carnage clinging to their failing raft, it sank beneath the waves, leaving behind the rancid stench and oily feel of death that smeared their skin. The weary men paddled on, swaying between quiet sobs and fits of cursing rage.
"Get out of the water!" Krone screamed, dragging one of his stumbling men through the surf behind him as the giant black fin turned towards them.
The massive shark, larger than an orca, larger than a megalodon, prowled the churning shoreline. The tip of its dorsal fin slashed through the waves.
Krone tripped over a bobbing chunk of driftwood and fell face first onto the pure white beach as his men leapt over him, running for the safety of open sand. Each turned to see the jet-black shark surface, revealing a set of sunken, hollow eye sockets. It launched itself open-mouthed onto a sopping figure still caught in the surf and dragged the man down into a pool of swirling blood. The ebony beast popped above the swirling surface. Its massive teeth lined an enormous mouth that gaped wide, and its sightless sockets filled with chrome eyes that reflected their terror.
"Nope," Krone shouted, rolling over on his backside and scrambling backwards away from an incoming wave as if it were acid. "Definitely not one of those things. Whatever that is, it's something else."
The megalodon slammed its massive tail against an incoming wave, sending up a giant shower that painted the intruders. They turned away, throwing up their arms to shield their faces as the salty water crashed down on them. The water knocked two men down, and the receding flow pulled others towards the waterline. Those left standing leapt and lunged at their faltering comrades, hauling them back onto the dry beach before the shark attacked again.
The creature spun around, facing them like an alpha predator regarding its just out of reach prey. Its unmistakable sense of longing sent a shiver up their spines. It sank beneath the surface, flicking its muscular tail one last time before giving a final indignant slap of its tail. Water hit their faces like salty expletives spat in loathing, and the creature disappeared into deeper water.
"Great," Hodge said, coming over to stand beside Krone. "Another thing down here that wants us dead." He kicked a chunk of driftwood into the surf. "And I just lost my rifle." He held up the torn carry strap from his gravity rifle for Krone to inspect and threw it in the surf.
"Leave it." Krone said, squinting into the sky as Hodge gave him a look that asked if he should go retrieve it from the shallow water. He gestured for him to hold fast. "Between the things in the sky and the things in the water, I doubt you'd find it before something had you for lunch." He turned to Hodge with a conciliatory expression and held his weapon out buttstock first. "Take mine. You can watch my back with it."
Hodge stood there, mouth open, staring at the rifle being presented to him by the most selfish man he had ever met. He thought it was a trick. When Krone didn't pull it back, he asked, "Who are you?" The old Krone would have never considered someone else's safety over his own.
"Don't look at me like that," Krone said.
"Like what?"
"Like I'm an asshole."
"I'm not ready to like you," Hodge said, taking the rifle. "But maybe I don't have to hate you."
"I can't go back to being him."
"Don't."
He knew his men hated him. And he knew they had the right to. He was a dick. Worse. He was a danger to them all. But that was the old Krone. He was a father, a husband, a high school science teacher and a pathetic loser who failed to save his family from a Necromonger invasion.
But here in the timeline, his family was still alive, and he was himself again. But they were far from M6-117, and trapped in a world of monsters with no way to reach them. And even if he could, there was already a version of him there. And that Krone was innocent of his crimes.
Krone stared through Hodge at the life he had lost long ago and felt an overwhelming surge of emptiness and guilt. No going home; no going back; no do-overs for the damned.
"You know," Krone said. "Time travel sucks."
"Big 10-4 on that," Hodge said.
"It doesn't make the slightest difference if anyone knows what's coming, if no one can change the things that lead us here."
"The only way to do that is to kill the Lord Marshal," Hodge said, looking concerned. "That's shithouse crazy. Even if we could get back there, we could never get close enough before he saw us coming."
Krone let out a mirthless laugh and said, "Billings was wrong. The only way forward is to go back and end the Necros before they begin. And we're here. We need to get to Asylum."
"Are you serious?"
"It's the only way to save our families."
"Our families don't even know we're gone, do they?"
Krone shook his head. "And they never can. Because we can never go back."
"What could we say? We're still there."
"We are. But we're free. And even though this situation sucks and hurts, they still need someone to save them. Because the Necros are still coming. If nothing changes, they still die, and we become these things. But we can make it right — the only way we can." He turned to his comrades. "I'm never going home. They don't need us there. At least, not this version of us. And that's on us, not them. So, I'm going to finish whatever this is and pray that I can mend what's left of my shredded soul by ending the motherfuckers that killed our families and did this to us. If such a thing is even possible."
They all stood in silence, gawking at their own feet, fighting off the sting of guilt. When it passed, Krone said, "We need to find a dry place where we can field strip and clean our weapons." He removed the combat knife from a sheath on his side and held it out. "And anyone without a rifle should fashion a spear. If there is anything out there. Our best chance of survival will be to keep it as far from us as possible. Those with rifles, shadow those without. Two-man teams."
"Which two are with you?" one man asked.
"Worry about yourselves, and I'll worry about me." No one said anything.
"I warned you, didn't I?" Carolyn's grandfather said in a hushed but haute told-you-so tone.
None of the men on the other-side of the bushes found the sarcastic taunt funny. Especially the snarling man standing beside him, fists balled in abject rage. "I told you I would show you something so horrifying you'd want to kill yourself," he chuckled as they stood there hidden behind a dense layer of vegetation. Commander Krone stared at himself hacking his way through the jungle undergrowth. "Technically, it's kind of like killing yourself."
"Don't play with me, Purifier." Commander Krone said, wiping dirt off his pristine ceremonial armor. The brute squad with him wore the battle damaged blood red armor of the Lord Marshal's royal guard. They were lethal monsters, unstoppable in battle. "Disgusting," Commander Krone seethed, holding up his combat knife with a shaking, white-knuckled fist. It was the same knife his doppelgänger held. "I'm going to drive this blade into his traitorous heart."
"Not yet," the purifier replied, gesturing him away from the clearing before the men in the near distance overheard or spotted them. "I suggest we let our onetime brethren clear the way for us." Commander Krone turned to him with a pallid expression and agreed.
"It is the Necromonger way." Commander Krone said as the shadow of a cold, humorless smile crossed his face. "Let the cannon fodder lead the way."
"No matter what they say about you, commander. I have always liked you."
Krone's left eyebrow twitched, and the eyelid beneath became a slit. He turned to the six armored foot soldiers crouching in the bushes behind him. Some of whom were staring at themselves in wide-eyed astonishment. He gestured for them to fall back. Some hesitated; others did not. Commander Krone didn't notice either way. He was busy staring at his alter ego standing in the middle of the clearing, helping one of his men fashion a spear out of a combat knife and a tree limb. What a loser, he thought, moving off to join the others.
"What now?" Commander Krone asked, stalking over to the purifier.
"We wait for him to arrive."
"And what of the obelisk?"
"Let them think we want it. It is nothing more than a convenient distraction and a way to get him here."
"What if the champion makes us wait?" Krone said, scowling in the clearing's direction. "I don't relish the idea of becoming..." He gestured towards his doppelgänger and said, "Him."
"Soon," the Purifier replied, turning towards the clearing. "Keep it together. He'll be here soon enough. Then the true battle begins. Until that happens, I'm sure we can find you something to help occupy your time."