Chapter 78
For the first time in centuries, Ryan woke up at peace with himself.
Certainly, he had had good mornings in the past. Waking up next to Jasmine would remain one of his most cherished memories.
But nothing couldpare to this beautiful moment. His body was numb from the endorphins; the tension in his muscles had
long vanished. He could have stayed in his bed all day, smiling at the ceiling.
Ryan Romano was happy.
It took a herculean effort of will to rise up and put on his presidential costume, for he still had work to do. As he dressed, the
courier nced at the hole a robot made in his bowler hat. One loop ago, the cruel sight would have triggered an epic, city-
destroying rampage.
But not today.
Ryan emerged from his room smiling behind his mask, and found Frank keeping watch in front of the doors. The giant
immediately weed him with a military salute. “Good morning, Mr. President. Nothing to report.”
Ryan smiled at the poor, deluded creature, his heart full of warmth andpassion. “Agent Frank,” he said while putting a hand
on the man’s back, though he had to stand on his toes. “You are the greatest hero this nation’s ever had. You are everything an
American citizen should be.”
His kind words shook the titan to the core. Frank would have cried, if he wasn’t made of metal. “Thank you, Mr. President.
Everything | do is to honor my father. He died from a KFC overdose while hanging Nazis with asso.”
“A most American way to die. He would be so proud of you, son.”
Though Ryan would have to make sure Frank and Len never ended up in the same room. He had the intuition it would backfire.
Leaving his favorite guard to his watch, Ryan moved into the recreational area while whistling to himself. He didn’t care about the
hanged gremlins dangling from the ceiling, or how Rakshasa struggled to clean up a blood puddle on the floor.
Everything just felt... right.
“Oh, you’re awake, boss?” Ryan nced at the speaker, noticing Sarin ying pool with Mosquito. The bugman had bandages
all over his shoulders and wings. “We’ve got a problem. The rabbits kept pestering the kids to y outside, and they moved into
the Junkyard after killing all the gremlins.”
“They flogged me when | tried to stop them,” Mosquitoined, pointing at the bandages. “They flogged me.”
“That too.”
“It''s okay,” Ryan replied calmly. If the plushies didn’t destroy the world today, it would be something else, like an asteroid or a
gue. No biggie.
Hazmat Girl didn’t look convinced. “Didn’t you stress that your rabbits shouldn’t go outside under any circumsta—”
“My dear lovely Sarin.” Ryan put his hands on his VP’s shoulders. “Everything is going to be fine. | promise you, darling.”
“Are you high?” she asked while abandoning her cue, sounding disgusted with her superior. “I know we have a juice production
facility, but... what’s the saying...”
“Don’t get high on your own product. | know, | ran a drug cartel.” Which turned out great! “Sarin, | have something to say. You''re
not the best sidekick | had, that would be the but | like you. | like you very much.”
Sarin pushed Ryan back and raised a vibrating fist in his direction. He had opened his heart to her, and that was how she
reacted? “Okay, what’s wrong with you? You’re weirder than usual.”
“| feel like being nice today,” Ryan said, letting out a sigh of pure bliss. “No cruel joke, no sarcasm, no mean remarks. Just pure
kindness.”
“Well get back to normal, you’re creeping the shit out of me.”
“| prefer him this way,” Mosquito said, immediately trying to exploit the situation. “Does that mean we get free juice today, since
you''re in a good mood?”
“Of course, dear leech,” Ryan said, the bugman loudly rejoicing. “Enjoy your day off, my friends. For tomorrow, we''ll go to war.”
Manada’s ultimatum expired the day after, and while Ryan had a n to get rid of him, it would involve a sh with II Migliore.
Perhaps even the Carnival, if the two groups already made contact during this loop.
Now that the president had secured his white house and electoral base, he would take the city by storm.
The elevator to the lower levels opened before Ryan could exin his n to his trusty minions. Mongrel stepped out first,
followed by a blonde woman with bloodshot eyes. She kept her head down and avoided others’ gazes, as if afraid of
overstepping.
It took Ryan a split second to recognize Acid Rain.
Her behavior, her posture, the way she moved... everything but her appearance had changed. She gave off an entirely different
vibe than the murderous madwoman the courier had grown used to. Her posture screamed meek.
“Rain?” Mosquito asked, probably expecting the violent maniac to flip out and murder them. “Rain, is that you?”
“I''m, uh... I''m Helen.” Even her voice wasn’t the same, now that she didn’t scream all the time. “That’s my real name. Helen.”
“Who let you out?” Sarin asked, pointing her hands at her.
“The Doc. He said |... that the treatment worked.” Acid Rain scratched the back of her head as everyone looked at her in shock,
before smiling sheepishly at Ryan. “Sorry | tried to kill you before. |... | wasn’t thinking straight.”
“It''s okay, | forgive you.” Ryan’s heart overflowed withpassion, and Sarin lowered her gauntlets. “I’m just happy you still have
all your hair.”
“Chemo worked on me too,” Mongrel spoke, his voice surprising in its mundaneness.
Sarin’s head immediately turned in his direction. “You can talk?”
“Yeah, though my brain hurts when | speak.” Mongrel held his head in his hand. “I think my grey matter slowly fills the void left by
the tumors.”
“| feel like I’m waking up from a long nightmare,” Acid Rain said, smiling at Ryan. “Thanks for helping. I... I’m truly grateful, like
you wouldn''t believe.”
“But our current treatment won''tst forever, from what | gathered,” Mongrelined with a groan. “Which sucks.”
No, it wouldn''t. Genomes’ enhanced metabolisms meant they developed a tolerance to chemical products much quicker than
normal humans. Eventually, their mutations would adapt to Alchemo’s treatment, and the two Psychos would descend back into
madness.
But that was the worst-case scenario, and Ryan knew he would make it right. “We have the tools to figure out a permanent
solution,” he said, ncing at Mongrel. “I have the feeling we''ll need your assistance though.”
“Ain''t gonna fight you on this,” Mongrel said. “I don’t wanna go back to eating rats, ya dig? Never asked for that.”
“You drank, like, five knockoffs,” Sarin pointed out, unsympathetic to his plight. “You were already barely better than a dog when
Adam found you scavenging trash.”
Mongrel shuddered. “I found a White Elixir while looting Old Rome’s ruins, but it didn’t do anything. | read White Genomes
affected other Genomes, but | couldn’t get my power to work. So | figured, hey, there’s gotta be faulty Elixirs lying around, and I
drew the short end of the stick. | already nned on buying a knockoff before | found my original, so...”
Ryan guessed how it went, a shiver down his spine. “You drank a knockoff since you believed yourself powerless, and you
turned into a Psycho.”
Mongrel’s ability allowed him to stockpile more than one Elixir. By itself, it did nothing. Much like how Casper the ghost only
transformed post-mortem, some powers needed very specific circumstances to activate, misleading their users.
“Yeah,” Mongrel confirmed with a nod. “I swear, if you find a cure, I’m never touching an Elixir for the rest of my life. Years as a
maddened animal scared me straight.”
“Just to be sure, you aren’t going to stab us in the back either?” Mosquito asked Acid Rain. “You gutted our previous teleporter in
a fit of rage.”
“No, no.” The young woman shook her head, her eyes betraying her horror. “I... that wasn’t me. I... | won’t hurt anyone, | swear.”
She sounded sincere, so Ryan gave her the benefit of the doubt. “Something has been bugging me,” the courier said, seizing the
opportunity to interrogate her. “In your insane state, you kept rambling about how | barred the gates, and that something called
the Ultimate One wanted you to win.”
|...” Helen crossed her arms, ufortable at reliving her days as a madwoman. “Well, | don’t remember everything. It’s all a
haze. But... | think it''s because of the portal inside you.”
“The portal?” Ryan frowned behind his mask.
“Yeah.” Acid Rain searched for the right words. “When | switch with my raindrops it''s... it’s not instantaneous. It looks like it from
the outside, but from my point of view... everything goes purple, and | move from one spot to another through a corridor.”
“You enter the Purple World when you teleport, using it as a shortcut through space.” It exined why their powers could sense
the other activating. They both shared a strong connection with the dimension fueling them.
“When I''m in this ce, |... see a weird pyramid thing above us, watching.” Helen took a deep breath. “I hear voices too. I’m not
sure if it’s talking to me, or something else, but... | hear people speaking. When | look at you in this state, | can see a pathway |
can’t ess. A pathway that you close. If that makes sense.”
“| see.” Ryan crossed his arms. “Thing is, | have been able to open a gate to the Purple World in the past, but only with my
power boosted.”
“You could do that?” Acid Rain’s head perked up in hope. “You could... you could go back in time with that ce. | know you
could. It’s... all of space and time, it all goes back to it.”
Sarin gave Ryan a knowing look, and though he beamed with happiness, he was careful enough not to reveal the truth.
Especially not now, when things were finally looking bright.
“I''ve... I''ve lost my family because of a... because of a mistake,” Helen said, joining her fingers and looking down. “That''s why |
looked for a Violet Elixir. | could already summon the rain, but...”
“You drank a Violet Elixir, in spite of the risks?” Ryan asked.
Acid Rain shook her head, her face turning ghastly, her fingers shaking. “I found one, but... | thought | could give it to a friend.
That maybe they would luck out. But Adam... Adam caught me and... he took the Violet Elixir, and said...”
Her stare reminded him of a traumatized victim having a PTSD episode.
“He said that If | really wanted to go back, |... | should do it myself. So he... opened the bottle and...” Her voice died down her
throat, her breathing shortening. “And he...”
Ryan shivered as he listened to her tale, and suddenly realized that Hannifat Lecter’s obsession with force-feeding him an Elixir
wasn’t a one-time impulse.
It was a habit.
That murderous bastard shattered people into broken shells of their former selves, until they had no other option but to follow
him.
“| doubt we can help your family, Helen,” Ryan apologized, crushing her hopes. Even if he managed to ess the Purple World,
ording to Darkling, the Ultimate One would preserve causality and avoid time-paradoxes. “But we’re going to help you, at
least. | swear it.”
“|... okay.” The way she said it made Ryan feel sorry for Acid Rain, of all people. She gathered her breath, and managed to calm
herself. “Okay.”
“Maybe you could ask the Augusti?” Mosquito suggested. Did he rediscover an ember of humanity? “I heard Mercury could raise
the dead, and we made peace with them.”
“He raises them as mindless zombies, you stupid jackass,” Sarin said, before returning to the pool game. She wasn’t one for
emotional moments. “Anyone else wanna y? I’m on a roll right now.”
“Sure,” Mongrel said, before looking at the dead gremlins dangling from the ceiling. “Also, why are there dead hanged animals
above the table?”
“They''re our lucky charms,” Sarin said, as she sent an 8-ball rolling into a hole.
Toasty chose that moment to roll into the room, avoiding a blood puddle and immediately rushing at Acid Rain’s feet. “Hey,
blondie,” the toaster greeted Helen, as it put on the charm. “Do you want me to... toast your bread?”
The poor woman looked at the toaster in absolute confusion, and then at Ryan. “Is this a prank?” she asked.
“If you don’t like your bread raw, I’ve got butter,” Toasty said seductively. His game was atrocious, but then again, he was a
toaster. “Sweet, soft butter.”
“How can you get butter when you don’t have arms?” Ryan pointed out the obvious.Content held by N?velDrama.Org.
“Hey, you’ve got enough chicks vying for you already, leave some for us,” Toasty replied. “When are you putting me inside that
big hot mech in the garage? Then, I''ll show you arms!”
“Tomorrow, my friend. Tomorrow.”
Wyvern had destroyed robots and mechs before.
But she had never fought a toaster.
After briefing his mooks on his devilish n, Ryan moved to the lower levels.
Len had set up a modest Genius workshop in one of the underground chambers close to the holographic dome. Ryan had
disabled the cameras and microphones for privacy, which Alchemo took as a sign he did dirty things with Len behind doors.
If the courier could trust the screens on the walls and the information banks they showed, the room used to be an archive of
some sort. A holographic projector at the chamber’s center showed a map of Earth, with half a dozen glowing red points
around Eurasia. Perhaps they indicated Mechron’s remaining facilities. Ryan would have to track them down after settling things
in New Rome.
“Hi, Shortie,” he told Len, upon finding her working on the brain-copying machine. She had repurposed a desk into an improvised
workbench. “You look good.”
He had grown used to seeing dark circles around Len’s eyes, but not today. She looked as well-rested as Ryan himself, and her
cheeks had regained some color.
“Hi, Riri,” she said with a warm, kind smile. “Yes, I... | feel good. Alchemo gave me pills, and they work much better than my
previous antidepressants. | can think clearly even when I’m not using my power.”
Though Ryan still distrusted Alchemo, he had to admit the Genius could do a great deal of good when he wanted to. If the
courier learned how to reproduce his miracle drugs, he could provide Len with treatment across loops. In time, she might regain
the same vivid, innocent energy of her teenage years.
“So any progress on the machine?” Ryan asked, looking at this device with reverence. It had saved him from centuries of
loneliness. “Now we proved it works and Psyshock won''t follow us again, we can finally make long-term ns for the future.”
Especially since this loop would probably end with another firefight.
“| still can’t believe we just time-traveled,” Len admitted. “When | looked at Sarah, and how she had never seen my sanctuary,
|... | understood how you felt. People forgetting you over, and over again... it must be maddening.”
“That was before,” Ryan said, as he sat on the workbench. “Now we can bring more people into the loop. | have an arrogant
young disciple | would love for you to meet.”
“There’s a problem, Riri,” Len said, biting her lower lip. “The machine can only send one brain map back in time at once. Maybe |
can improve it and raise that number, but for now... we''re limited to one person.”
“You then,” Ryan said, quickly understanding the method''s limits. “And we''ll need to rebuild the machine and send you back each
time in an unbroken chain. If it breaks once, you''ll forget everything.”
“Unless we have a ce where we can store the memories,” Len confirmed with a nod.
“We''ll need Livia,” Ryan said. The courier intended to talk to her so she could assist with the Psycho cure project, so he would kill
two birds with one stone. “I thought you didn’t trust her?”
“She... she followed through with her end of the bargain.” Len took a deep breath. “I mean, she could have told her father to
storm this ce, but she didn’t. Maybe... maybe | misjudged her. | don’t want her to see the machine’s blueprints, but we could
cooperate.”
“Do you have the resources to recreate the brain-scanner at your base, Shortie?” Len’s strained face told him otherwise. “Since
Psyshock corrupted the prototype, we''ll need to create a new one from scratch.”
“|... no, I’m sorry. We''ll need better tech than | have. Vulcan’s, or this bunker’s.”
Unfortunately, the courier couldn’t conquer the bunker without help for now. After fighting the defenses, Ryan realized it would
take an ungodly number of loops to take it over solo. He couldn''t take it without casualties either, at least not until he perfected
the process through constant repetitions.
He could convince Vulcan or Dynamis to provide him with tech under the right circumstances, but Livia looked like the best
option. If they could work out a deal, the Augusti princess could provide an enormous amount of resources and serve as a back-
up. “I''ll ask Livia.”
“What next afterward?” Len asked. “I... even if some of them helped this time around, we’re surrounded by Psychos. Mosquito
and Mongrel, they tried to abduct the children one loop ago.”
“| wouldn’t worry about the children. Considering their protectors, | worry more about running out of mooks.”
“I''m serious, Riri. It’s... It''s hard to pretend nothing happened. Every time | see the Meta-Gang’s members, I’m tempted to shoot
them.”
“| was too,” Ryan admitted, “but I’vee to realize that while there are monsters in their midst, some of them are victims of
circumstances. | can’t help but wonder what they will do with their lives, if we can cure them of their madness and addiction.”
“They''ll just fall back into their old habits,” Len said cynically.
Ryan wasn’t so sure. Though it might be his inner optimist talking, he wanted to believe people like Mongrel or Acid Rain could
turn their life around. He had the intuition Sarin wouldn''t start any trouble either, if she recovered a body of flesh and blood. His
Perfect Run demanded he save those who deserved it.
“In any case, we''ll focus on mastering this bunker’s technology.” Darkling kept pestering Alchemo about the portal, but the
Genius still struggled to ovee Mechron’s firewalls. While the bunker’s security systems didn’t attack on sight anymore, the
key, critical areas remained out of reach for now. “And afterward, we''ll deal with Dynamis.”
Len nodded, her face betraying a hint of anxiousness. “We''re raiding Lab Sixty-Six this loop?”
“Yes. | already set things in motion to prepare the terrain.” Whatever may wait for them inside Dynamis’ fortress, they would soon
learn it. “Len, there’s... there’s something | wish to talk about.”
She looked away. “What Psyshock saw in my mind, isn’t it?”
Yes.
“Len.”
Ryan gathered his breath.
“| love you.”
There, he said it.
“I''ve loved many people. So many, you can’t count them all. I’ve loved Tea, and Jasmine, and... | admit | have a huge crush on
Wardrobe.” God damn it, why was she already taken? “But out of all these rtionships, ours... ours always had a special ce
in my heart. |... | hoped we could settle down somewhere. Build a house. Make children. You know, the old dream. |... now that
you can remember, I... | have to know if you feel the same.”
He had waited so long to get it off his chest.
Len’s arms remained crossed, and tightened further. She kept looking away from him, avoiding his gaze; perhaps she wanted to
spare him the sadness in her own eyes, or her emotions overwhelmed her.
|...” Len struggled to find her words, and Ryan patiently waited for her to do so. “I still... | guess after all we went through
together, it can’t ever go away. But...”
But.
Such a small word, and yet one that crushed so many dreams.
“But so much happened, Ryan,” she said with a deep, sad sigh. “So much. I... | wish we could go back to simpler times, but...
we can''t, even with your power. I’m... you’re my best friend, Riri, and... and | don’t want you to go away. But... | don’t feel I’m
ready for us to be more than that. Perhaps never.”
Ryan listened in silence, having expected something like this.
“I''m...” Len finally looked into his eyes, and he could see she was terrified of his reaction. “I’m sorry, Riri.”
“No, it’s okay,” Ryan reassured her with dignity, and he meant it. “I had centuries to process these feelings and prepare myself.
I... understand, Shortie.”
The courier didn’t like it, but he understood. He had clung to an idea of the past for so long, he couldn’t keep looking back.
Things happened. Things changed. He had to ept them, and move on. Len still had her own issues, and couldn’t give him the
emotional intimacy he yearned for. She already wanted him in her life against all odds, and he couldn’t feel entitled to more.
“| will give you your space,” he said. “Frankly, I’m just happy we can be friends again, and stay that way.”
All Ryan ever asked for, was for someone to remember him.
He couldn’t ask for more of Len, now that she fulfilled his dearest wish.
“|... perhaps | was wrong. | don’t think we’re best friends. It seems... it seems not strong enough a term.” Len gave him a bright,
warm smile. “We''re family, Riri.”
Yes. Yes, they were family. Perhaps not the one Ryan had hoped for, but a family all the same.
And...
He was fine with it.