Splitter-V Epilogue

Splitter-V
Epilogue
Organized Chaos


     Jace ran as fast as he could through the streets, his electrical reserves brimming from a quick tap into the city’s power lines. His short grey hair whipped around in the air as black metal grew over his skin. The green lines that followed glowed brightly in the darkened streets.

     Dead ahead lay what appeared to be a bunker constructed for wartime use, despite being in city. Two gates opened on its surface, releasing a pair of mechanical behemoths. The revolving chambers attached to their humanoid arms spun as the four spider-like legs under the torso carried them toward him, peppering the ground with lead as they tried to stop the rogue agent.

     Jace’s form darted back and forth as he approached. Suddenly the shrouded figure took his place and the pair of yellow eyes glared violently at the automatons. As fast as it had appeared it split into two and leapt through the metallic hulls as though they weren’t even there, emerging from the other side with pieces of broken circuitry moments before they exploded.

     The cyber didn’t even see it however, as he had already darted past the machines when they malfunctioned.

-------

     Anne ran among the coffins of the mausoleum-like structure as electrical bolts lanced around her. The woman with blue eyes had been knocked unconscious, the first of the group to fall moments after they spoke with Irving. A quick glance to her right and she could see Eric doing his best to distract Jace’s crazed superior without being fried. Then she saw him make a single mistake, a leap straight into an arc of electricity, and fall onto Kahai’s battered form.

     Irving stared directly at Anne with cold eyes and blurred towards her form. Her hand barely reached Zane’s coffin before the metal casket next to her exploded in sparks.

     “Don’t touch that lid,” the man said as he held his right hand up to reveal an orange sphere set into the palm, “or else you’ll regret it.”

     “How can I possibly regret not opening it?” the young woman said as she leaned against the glass slab and prepared to throw it open.

     “Preservation,” the answer caused her to stop, “if you open that you will cause the truth to flood through the information networks all around the world. You see, if there is too much chaos the world will fall apart, if there is too much order people reject the reality and thus reality itself ceases to exist. You saw the results of chaos on her world, it is no different a fate.”

     Anne followed the jerk of his thumb to Kahai, but remained in her position, “what does that have to do with anything?”

     “Our organization was developed to preserve the status quo of this world and others. We are here to keep deterioration at a minimum and prevent tragedies such as hers from occurring again,” his left hand ruffled his hair as he took a step forward and placed the gem in his palm against her forehead, “we are here to keep mistakes like you from getting out of their cages.”

     “Fudpuck…” she mumbled, looking into the crystalline sphere that now held her fate within its bounds.

     A crash echoed from above and Jace fell from the ruined remains of the elevator, “Incoming, shit-head!” His black body spun in the air as he fell to the ground to deliver a roundhouse punch to the back of Irving’s skull and threw him over Anne’s form into the air. A quick pop of his knuckles and he was back in a fighting position on his feet, hands laced with neon green bolts.

     A moment later he ran straight towards Irving’s rising form and allowed Anne to lift the lid of Zane’s coffin. Information flashed through the monitors suspended overhead: diagrams, plots, charts, pictures, everything that the people around her had stored for ages ripped through the glass surfaces and towards the communications hub that hung from the vaulted ceiling. Pulses of white light pulled inward before they shot upwards through the ceiling. The impact opened a gateway to the star-filled night where the lines formed into a four-pointed cross that shattered the sky.

     Irving delivered a series of blows to Jace’s metallic head as the earth crumbled around them to reveal an endless ocean of black populated only by tear droplets. In rage he grabbed the cyber by the back of the head and pounded his face to drop the metal man like a lead weight, “I told you! I told you that there must be a balance!”

     Anne took a step backwards and turned to find that there was almost no place to run to. Perched on Zane’s coffin however, was the black shadow with yellow eyes, the feminine form that had been shrouded for so long finally revealed. It was transparent however, almost as though it was about to die in the collapse of the world around it.

     Still it managed to proclaim in Anne’s voice, “Balance was lost long ago as it is the world’s own chosen path to reform to what it should be.”

     “Reform?” Irving asked, holding his gem-engrained hands forward as the vortex swirled below, “Look around! It’s being torn to pieces!”

     “Planes are like matter and energy, they cannot be created nor destroyed. They evolve, they learn, and they change based on what is required and what its populace has done,” the shadow’s form began to fade ever more, “your injustice to the people of this place will be for naught.”

     Smoke folded over Anne’s form as the creature continued to fade away. In the back of her mind she heard the creature say that she and her friends would be safe.

     The ground under Irving’s feet fell into the abyss. His unsupported body seethed rage as it dropped into the darkness and exploded in a nova of white that quickly pulled back into a star. All around pieces of reality did the same and soon enough the fragments had flitted into the distance.

     All that was left was for her to rest as the shattered pieces of earth that she and her friends were on drifted. One by one they rose to see the void of tears that was the region between realities. Of all the droplets that hung a single spark expanded before their eyes, one with a long stone bridge that jutted from its side and ended in a crumbled gateway.

     Jace’s eyes lit up and he shouted, “Ead! We didn’t even have to look for it!”

     C’s robotic body wriggled out of Eric’s pocket and proceeded to float above his head, “D’s signal confirmed!”

     Anne stared in wonder at the two rings that rotated around the planet’s atmosphere, the urchin-like satellite that orbited between in between the narrow clearance of the two halos, and the continents that floated just above the suface.

     “We never did get your name…” Kahai said to the woman with blue eyes as she gently punched her in the shoulder.

     “It’s Vai…” the biohazard responded, “and it looks like we’re still in for one hell of an adventure.”