Chapter 88
Atom Smasher wasn’t one for words, so he went straight for the kill.
His glowing hands unleashed a stream of red particles at the presidential guard. Sarin reacted quickly enough to retaliate with a
shockwave, the sts colliding in the middle of the room. The resulting explosion shattered all the Knockoff bottles on the
production line.
Ryan froze time, ck and Violet Flux floating out of his armor, as he dragged his allies away from an Elixir shower. Even if one
half of his team wore armor and the other regrly dosed on the juice, any drop seeping through a crack would ruin everything.
The courier always knew a fight with Fallout was a possibility, so he prepared ordingly. His and Len’s suits had been
reinforced against heat and radiation, enough that they could survive sustained exposure; the Saturn armor could probably
survive a close encounter with Leo Hargraves. And as he guessed, Sarin’s shockwaves could match the nuclear cyborg’s weaker
particle beams, probably since they both drew energy from the Red Dimension.
However, Fallout had shown in Malta that his power could rival an A-bomb. While he shouldn''t go all-out in his mainboratory,
Ryan had no idea how far his abilities and durability extended. Neither did he find blueprints of the cyborg’s armor in Dynamis’
database, nor a way to hack it.
But Ryan loved challenges, and he had a few tricks up his sleeve.
When time resumed, the production line was drenched in multicolored fluids. The robotic arms preparing the bottles had short-
circuited, though the power armors in the room kept working.
“We should have killed you both years ago.” Alphonse Manada aimed his right arm’s energy minigun at Len and Ryan.
“Completed the family set. | had the gut feeling you would prove troublesome.”
“You already killed us once,” Shortie replied, raising her water rifle. “This... this is payback.”
Len and Sarin attacked Fallout before he could open fire, the former with a stream of pressurized water, the other with a
shockwave. Alphonse raised his left hand and expanded a shield of crimson particles outward from it, protecting himself. He then
opened fire with his minigun, unleashing a volley of sma shots.
What the weaponcked in uracy, it more than made up in firepower. The projectiles tore through walls and machines like
butter, forcing everyone to dodge. Mongrel and Shortie managed to duck out of the way, but Ryan had to freeze time to spare
Sarin five holes in her suit. “You know, if | keep saving you, people will start talking,” Ryan told his damsel in distress once time
resumed.
“Don''t focus on me, take down that jackass!” his VP snarled back. “I don’t need help!”
Mongrel used an aerokic st to propel himself towards the ceiling, and then threw a fireball past Fallout’s particle shield
from his vantage point. The mes heated up the metal armor, but failed to inflict any damage while Alphonse slowly stepped
forward. The reinforced walls were starting to look like cheese.
“Minions, keep him busy,” Ryan ordered his troops, while he dashed forward. Shockwaves, mes, and pressurized water forced
Fallout to raise his shield, leaving his back exposed.
The courier stopped time and a purple phantom raced after him. Ryan crossed dozens of meters in a dash, dodging sma bolts
frozen in midair as he tried to figure out a n. One of his devices could probably take down the nuclear disaster, but the
cyborg’s power armor might have a countermeasure. The group needed to soften Fallout up first.
Ten seconds...
The courier bent a corner around the room, the ghost of the future past gaining ground on him. But it was nowhere close to
catching up.
Fifteen seconds...
Ryan positioned himself behind Fallout, his feet anchored in the ground.
Twenty seconds...
The ghost almost reached Ryan before the courier unpaused time. He activated his armor’s chest ster, unleashing a searing
white burst of energy from it.
As Vulcan warned, the recoil almost threw Ryan on his back. The intense heat created a bubble ofpressed air around the
cannon that pushed him backward, but the armor’s servos held. His cashmere poncho, however, turned to dust; another victim of
this bloody, senseless war!
The st hit Alphonse Manada in the back and propelled him forward like a cannonball, the impact tearing the minigun from his
arm. Ryan’s teammates dodged out of the way as he crashed into the reinforced door. Already weakened by the minigun fire,
most of the wall copsed and Fallout continued his flight into the next room.
Ryan let out a cough, his chest burning. It came from the heart, as they said.
“Nice shot,” Sarin mused. “Is that what a drone strike looks like?”
“Sometimes, a leader must get his hands dirty,” Ryan replied.
“He’s not dead yet,” Len warned as she stepped into the next room, right before letting out a horrified wail. The rest of the group
quickly followed, and froze.
The next room contained an entire factory sorge, the ceiling probably took space from the floor above. A maze of machinery
and tangled pipes formed the next part of the assembly lines, bordered by a catwalk wide enough to let a battalion walk in
formation; Ryan guessed that this allowed groups of soldiers to take positions in case of an emergency. Strange devices covered
in bulbs and shing lights thrummed as they vomited Knockoff Elixirs. The usual mad scientistir, in short.
The sight that awaited them made even Ryan, who had grown jaded to everything, pause for a moment.
A dozen naked humans floated in ss containers above the production line, like lightbulbs atop metal altars. Tubes injected
thick red blood into their back intravenously, and others pumped out Elixir-colored liquids into the machinery. Ryan’s eyes
stopped at the closest prisoner to the entrance, a muscled woman with ck hair and white dragon scales growing on her neck.
Wyvern.
Ryan also noticed a carbon copy of Devilry, and a feathered man which he identified as Windsweep, the Tempest Knockoff’s
temte. Others the courier didn’t recognize, but one pod contained a half-formed embryo of a panda-human hybrid.
Clones.
They were modified clones of the Knockoff''s temtes, transformed into living organ processors. Bloodstream’s fluids passed
into them, absorbing their gic material before being processed into Knockoffs.
“Shit...” Sarin said, unable to take her eyes off the clones.
Mongrel had a simr reaction. “I''ve been drinking people?”
Len’s hands trembled on her water rifle, her gaze following the blood. The pipes funneling it into the clones traveled through the
walls, and towards another room behind a reinforced door.
The scaly Doctor Tyrano worked behind arge control panel near the cloning pods, his reptilian ws typing on a special
keyboard adapted to his saurian biology. He briefly looked up his screen at the people invading hisboratory, but his reptilian
expression was one of supreme disinterest.
“I''m busy,” Dr. Tyrano said while returning to hisputer. He even ignored Fallout, who hadnded on the catwalk and quickly
risen to his feet. “Take it outside ande backter. I’m on the verge of a breakthrough!”
“You cloned the Panda!” Ryan raised an using finger at the scientist. “You maniac!”
“me the kids’ division!” he replied while continuing to type. “They’re obsessed with furry mammals!”
“You... you twisted...” Len snarled at Alphonse Manada. Crimson particles flowed out of the cyborg’s back, right where Ryan hit
him before. “All of that... all of that pain, for a fistful of euros?”
“It''s all for the dream.” Alphonse shrugged off fireballs thrown by Mongrel, his metal shoulders opening to reveal rocket
launchers. “All for the dream.”
Fallout fired a dozen rockets, clearly no longer caring about coteral damage. Ryan attempted to stop time, but immediately
canceled the effect when his past self appeared in very close proximity. The armor extended his time stop, but also his cooldown
period.
The president activated the suit’sser weapons while shielding Len with his body, Sarin assisting him in blowing up the
projectiles before they could reach them. While they avoided a direct hit, stray shrapnel ripped holes in Sarin’s suit and Mongrel’s
chest.
Explosions shook theb as Alphonse’s projectiles hit the ceiling, the assembly line, and the cloning pods. One rocket
incinerated the Panda’s misshapen duplicate, while another damaged the pipes and caused blood to drip onto the catwalk.
Though Len’s armor was undamaged, she looked at the red fluid with fear and disgust.
“Stop, Mr. Vice-President!” Tyrano shouted at Alphonse, diving beneath his control panel to avoid a rocket. “You''ll destroy the
laboratory!”
“I''ll stop when they’re dead!” Atom Smasher snarled back and kept firing. The entire floor trembled as rockets hit the ceiling and
blew holes in the catwalk. The wounded Mongrel had to dive to the side to avoid another projectile, while Ryan took another to
the chest; thankfully, the Saturn armor shrugged it off.
This made Ryan worry. The Architect designed Lab Sixty-Six to make sure theboratory would survive even the building’s
copse, but she didn’t mention anything about internal structural damage.
When Fallout thankfully ran out of projectiles, he raised his shining hands in Len’s direction to st her.
Having reached his cooldown period’s end, Ryan froze time and quickly punched Fallout in the ss dome protecting his head.
Empowered by his armor’s enhanced strength, the blow cracked the reinforced ss, making the Dynamis cyborg stumble back.
His particle beams instead hit the ceiling, melting the steel.
“This ss dome isn’t protecting me from you.”
Red particles so simr to Ryan’s own flew out of the crack in Fallout’s helmet. The crimson, shining skull behind it seemed to
scowl and breath nuclear fire. The air around him shimmered with heat.
m the hand that splits the atom, the light that ys life.” His fists burnt with a crimson glow, a promise of death and cancer.
“All that | touch withers, and dies.”
“Didn''t anyone tell you?” Ryan raised his fists, revealing the des hidden in his forearms. “I’m immortal.”
Alphonse attempted to grab the courier’s head with his glowing hand, and he was surprisingly faster than he looked. Ryan deftly
dodged and responded with a punch of his own, but to his surprise, Fallout managed to deflect the blow and counter with
another.
“You know Krav Maga?” Ryan asked in disbelief, but the armored cyborg responded with a particle beam to the face. The courier
lowered himself to dodge the attack. “Minion!”
“On it!” Powering through his injuries, Mongrelunched an aerokic st of air at Fallout’s left knee, making the heavy
colossus stumble. Ryan exploited the opening to ram his fist and de through the cyborg’s helmet.
Though the ss dome shattered into tiny pieces, releasing red particles into the air, Ryan’s retractable de also shattered
upon hitting Fallout’s skull. Perhaps the courier’s previous sh with Wardrobe had weakened it.
Fallout exploited Ryan’s brief surprise to viciously headbutt him, his skull unleashing an energy pulse on impact. The courier’s
vision shed red for a moment as the shock sent him flying backward, but the Saturn armor resisted.
Ryan gathered his thoughts as hey on the floor, his vision blurring due to what felt like a concussion. Alphonse Manada
loomed over him while what remained of his ss helmet melted. A crimson nuclear fire erupted from inside the cyborg’s suit,
making Fallout’s skull look like the Terminator emerging from the mes.
His hand reached for Ryan’s head, but a stream of pressurized water hit him from the side. The liquid heated up into steam at his
contact, but offered the courier a brief respite.
“Riri, back off!” Len had moved behind Tyrano’s control panel, while Mongrel nked Fallout with air sts. Sarin herself still
struggled to cover the holes in her suit. Her gas leaked out, rusting the machinery and even the floor.
Ignoring the minions’ attempts to distract him, Fallout raised his armored foot above Ryan''s head, and attempted to smash it
beneath his heel. Of course, Ryan had patented this authoritative move, and took outrage.
The courier froze time, violently kicked Alphonse in the chest to make him stumble, and rolled away to safety. Unfortunately, even
the time-stop didn’t shield the courier from Fallout’s radioactive presence, as the constant warning messages on his armor’s
lenses attested. Just approaching that Chernobyl might kill a normal human in seconds, and a Genome in minutes. They needed
to take him down now.
However, the courier noticed something interesting as he rose back to his feet. The ck Flux he produced devoured Fallout’s
crimson variant, like ck holes eating light.
Questions forter.
Deciding to use his trump card, Ryan opened a smallpartment in the armor''s backpack, a ck sphere no bigger than a
tennis balling out. The courier tossed it at Fallout, the projectile hitting him when time resumed.
The ck sphere expanded the moment it hit the titan’s skull, transforming into biomechanical goo.
“What''s this?” Fallout snarled angrily, as the substance spread on his skin and armor. Though Ryan worried otherwise, the
cyborg’s mechanical suit had no contingency to resist the hostile takeover. The goo repurposed its steel to make more of itself,
restraining the Red Genome.
“Nanomachines, son!” Ryan gloated. Mechron had used them to extract material in radioactive, high-temperature areas, but the
courier repurposed them as a capture device. After all, as a president, he had to fight against nuclear proliferation.
Within seconds, Fallout found himself encased in a ck goo coffin; unable to move, unable to fire a beam. Dr. Tyrano dared to
peek over hisputer while Ryan’s group rxed a little. Perhaps the device would prove just as effective against Augustus.
Then the Saturn armor sent an rm message, as it noticed an abnormal heat increase.
“Override safeties,” Fallout snarled, his body producing more and more light. Though the goo attempted to fully cover him, light
rays came out of small cracks, the air growing oppressive. “Override!”
Ryan’s suit sent rm messages, as the heat around Fallout increased. “No, no!” he panicked, the nanomachines corroded by
the sheer amount of Red Fluxing from the trapped Genome. “You will blow up the ce if you continue!”
“But you will be dead!” Fallout answered angrily.
“Cool him off!” Ryan ordered his troops. “Cool him off!”
Len bathed Fallout with water, and Mongrel with pressurized air, but neither helped much. Theb’s fire sprinklers activated, but
the liquid turned to steam before it even reached the cyborg.
Half a dozen cracks rapidly formed in the nanomachine coffin, particle beams leaking out. One hit Ryan in the chest with such
intensity he could feel the heat through the armor, and another...
Another split Mongrel clean in half at what seemed like lightspeed.
Realizing the danger, Ryan froze time. He quickly dashed towards the agonizing Sarin, grabbed her by the parts of her suit
without holes, and dived behind the assembly line for cover.
The nanomachines gave out when time resumed, melting into a charbroiled shell. More stray particle beams came out of
Fallout’s body, shattering the prison from within, cutting lines in the ceiling and the catwalk. Metal tes fell from above, the
whole ce copsing. “Sir, calm down!” Ryan heard Dr. Tyrano shouting from his hiding spot. “You''ll kill us all!”
Perhaps the risk of harming his lead scientist calmed Fallout, for he stopped sending particle beams in all directions. Ryan
peeked at the maddened Genome from his hiding spot.
Alphonse Manada had shed the nanomachines, his armor, and his humanity. He had turned into a ckened skeleton
surrounded by incandescent mes and Red Flux particles. He had be a raging nuclear hazard, the ground melting
beneath his feet.
“Come out, Quicksave!” Fallout’s voice now boomed like the heart of a burning star, as he looked for the president. “Come out
and fight!”
He was like Hargraves, and just as durable.
The realization sent a shiver down Ryan’s spine, as he realized he had drastically underestimated Dynamis’ ace-in-the-hole;
Fallout could have vaporized the group alongside the entire building, if he didn''t risk destroying his own HQ. The courier should
have asked Mechron’s Als to develop a superweapon to take that living A-bomb down.
“Anything else that can kill him?” Sarin whispered at Ryan’s side, leaking out so much that her suit had ttened at the fingers.
The courier had to stay a few meters away to prevent her from corroding his armor.
“None that won''t risk killing everyone here,” Ryan admitted, only to hear footsteps echo from the previous room. Unless...
“Mr. President?”
Who needed a secret weapon, when they had a secret agent?
Frank had managed to climb up the elevator shaft and walked into theboratory, his body absorbing machinery pieces on
contact. The giant nced at Alphonse Manada’s otherworldly redness, and immediately put the two and two together.
“A Soviet Mexican!” Frank let out a roar of pure patriotism. “I knew it was all connected!”
He had uncovered the true conspiracy behind everything.
Alphonse sted Frank with streams of red particles, melting the metallic giant’s outeryers. The nuclear Genome didn’t even
need to use his hands anymore; his chest, his mouth, his entire body emitted energy in any direction he wished.
Yet as a true American badass, Frank powered through the radiation and tackled Alphonse like a football yer. Both colossi
crashed into the wreckage of the Wyvern clone’s pod, trading blows powerful enough to shake the room. For a moment, Ryan
hoped that his bodyguard might turn the tide.
But for all his might, Frank’s metal hands softened whenever they hit Fallout. The heat was too intense, and the Red Genome’s
unique biology granted him heightened resilience. Much like Mr. Sunshine, Alphonse Manada had be something more than
human; a living nuclear core.
And the factory''s ceiling kept raining metal panels.
“Stand still!” Ryan told Sarin, as he gestured at Len from across the room to stay hidden. “We''ve got to run before the ceiling
copse on ou—”
“Don''t waste time with us,” Hazmat Girl replied with a grunt. Frank let out a pained growl, as Fallout grabbed his metal head and
started to melt it. “You go. You and your girlfriend.”
“What?”
“The cure!” Sarin shouted from behind the assembly line and sted Fallout off Frank with a shockwave. The radioactive
Genome bled light and the sustained st made him stumble, but it didn’t throw him off bnce. “You need the data inside this
ce? Then take it while we keep him busy!”
“That’s suicide!” Ryan protested, assisting her by firing his chestser at Fallout. The Red Genome formed a shield of crimson
particles around himself, while Frank regained his footing. “You''ll get buried alive, if he doesn’t kill you first!”
“Now that Mongrel is dead...” Hazmat Girl briefly nced at her ally’s corpse, and the possibilities his Elixir represented. “Now
that he’s gone, none of this matters anymore. If that cancer kills you... if he kills you all of this was for nothing.”
She had epted this loop was a lost cause.
“Your life matters!” Ryan protested, but almost stumbled as the ground trembled. The constant explosions had fragilized the
factory’s foundations. “Sarin, don’t—”
“That’s not my name, jackass!” she snarled. “Why won’t you leave?”
“Because I’m not Adam!” Though the Meta were assholes... though he made use of them for his own objectives, Ryan couldn''t
let them sacrifice themselves for him. “I promised | would help, and | still can!”
As long as they lived, they could find a way. Whether in Antarctica or somewhere else.
Sarin looked at Ryan in surprise, unable to say a word for a few seconds. But in the end, she had made her decision. “Then
remember your vow next time around.”
Ryan’s heart skipped a beat, his fists clenching. “What''s your name?” he asked. “Your real name?”
She looked at Fallout. “Bianca.”
She dashed at him like a suicide bomber, while Ryan looked away as another friend went on to die for him.
No matter how many loops, that part never got any easier.
“Next time, I''ll save you,” he swore to himself, before freezing time. Regrouping with Len, the courier immediately grabbed Dr.
Tyrano and mmed him against his control panel when time resumed. The dinosaur looked at him in rm, his breath short
from the heat. “Open the door to the next room. Open it now.”
“Why wou—” Dr. Tyrano didn’t protest long, as Len put her water rifle against his chin. “Uh, you make a convincing argument.”Content ? copyrighted by N?velDrama.Org.
Ryan froze time again, carrying both Len and Tyrano across the room. He sent a nce at his allies, his heart freezing in his
chest. Alphonse punched a hole inside a half-melted Frank’s chest, and a cloud of gas escaped from an empty hazmat suit. The
ceiling below the shining Fallout had started to rust.
“Why?” Len asked when time resumed, the trio had reached the st door to the next room. Her helmet turned to nce at the
damaged pipes, and the blood flowing out of them. “Why did you turn my father... why did you make all these horrors?”
“What, the Knockoffs? This is but the first step of my n!” Dr. Tyranno admitted while putting his hand on the door’s bioscanner,
unlocking it. “l am refining the substance so that it can not only change the host''s species, but its entire biological ss! From
mammal, to reptile!”
Ryan instantly put the two and two together. “You can’t possibly mean—”
“Yes!” The Genius turned to look at them with maddened glee, as the door opened. “Soon, | will create a Knockoff Elixir that can
permanently turn any human, INTO A DINOSAUR!”
Ryan looked at the deluded, scaled furry.
In hindsight, he should have expected such a motive.
“Consensually,” Dr. Tyrano added, almost as an afterthought. “Bing a superior reptile should be a fundamental mammalian
right.”
The courier wanted to hate him, but he loved dinosaurs too.
Aloud crack echoed across the facility, as the ceiling finally copsed. Ryan barely had the time to force Len and Tyrano inside a
steel corridor, before tons of steel and concrete copsed inside the Knockoff factory. Alphonse, Frank, and Sarin vanished from
the courier’s sight as they were buried alive. Dust and smoke flowed inside the corridor, while debris closed the exit.
Ryan and Len exchanged a silent nce, none of them uttering a word.
The others had earned their minute of silence.
Ryan, Len, and Scalie reached the heart of the facility after a short walk, arge, dimly lit atrium of thick steel and concrete. An
enormous mechanical aquarium stood at its center, linked toplex medical devices, pipes, tubes, and aputer system.
As for the fish swimming inside...
It was a true shoggoth, an eldritch blob more deformed than Darkling had ever been. A dark red, protosmic slime asrge as a
house; a shapeless, twisted amoeba with temporary eyes forming on its putrid surface. If that thing had once been human, one
couldn''t tell so at first nce.
And yet...
And yet in spite of everything, Ryan recognized him.
It was him, in all his bloody, mutated glory. His long-dead nightmare had risen from the ashes. Len dropped her water rifle at the
floor, rushing to touch the ss with her hand. The blob’s eyes looked at his daughter, both reunited atst.
In the end, blood called to blood.