Amelia, Ch 207- Geoff
"God Fucking Almighty," Dobrynja swore. "I just broke the Nemesis encryption."
Despite Nemesis and Ragnarok being the highest priority, they were also the best encoded, using new techniques that Richter's keys didn't understand. We had to create new programs to decrypt the information they contained. This did mean they were the most recently created files in our captured database, however. It also meant that if we did this again, we might be looking at a completely alien system. We still hadn't solved how was her code evolving so quickly, and as a whole we had started to give up on even trying. Dragon was small potatoes compared to Pantheon.
"What did you get?" I asked hesitantly. After all the news about Pantheon, I had just about given up hope. I had also convinced myself that it couldn't possibly get any worse.
"The Endbringers are made by people," he replied.
It turns out, I was wrong. "What?"
"You're fucking kidding me," Mags muttered.
"Pantheon's convinced of it, and has been sharing information with the Guild and the Protectorate where they find any," he informed us. "Both of them are returning the favor. It's pretty much the world's most prestigious think tank right now."
"So they're all convinced?" I asked. "Could they be wrong?"
"Dunno," he answered. "That behaviorist Tinker from Haven. Rapture, the one working on Heartbreaker's offspring. She's applied her tech to the Endbringer patterns, and she's convinced they're at least partially guided by human beings."
"Partially guided?" I asked.
"That's what they're not sure about," he replied. "They aren't directly controlled the way Khepri controls her monsters, but they're less independent than, say, the Blasphemies or Nilbog's monsters. The closest thing I have to compare them to is Dragon's suits. They're smart in their own way, probably way smarter than any human being, but they're not capable of making their own decisions. Guided, reusable, autonomous WMDs."
"God, just when you think it can't get any worse," Mags sighed. "Dragon might evolve into a threat to all humanity. We don't know if she will, and if she does she might choose not to use that power. Pantheon already can kill everyone the moment they choose to, and haven't thus far. But the Endbringers... if someone's controlling them, then they already are trying to kill everyone. No maybes about it."
"There's also a lot of details in here about what Pantheon has dubbed 'Power Synergy'," Dobrynja added. "They have examples of certain powers becoming exponentially stronger when used with each other. It's how they broke across dimensions, and how their Endslayer weapon works. Plus the obvious example of Khepri and Gaea becoming Class S threats. They believe the Endbringers are created the same way. They theorize that a power similar to Midas might interact with a power like Nilbog's to get what we see in the Endbringers. Not actually them, of course, but parahumans with similar powers. Plus a third for interdimensional access, since the Endbringer power source, and likely their control system, exists in another dimension."
"So yet another potential world threatening conspiracy?" I sighed.
"They're using Nemesis as the de facto code name for the makers of the Endbringers," he informed us. "Thus far it's been more about ruling out suspects. It's not the Yangban or the Thanda, or any of South America's major players. According to this, the behavioral tech suggests a North American being at least one member, probably the leader. Based upon the forms the Endbringers take, whomever is in charge of their creation is most likely male and an avid reader of philosophy and mythology."
"Which doesn't narrow it down nearly enough," I concluded. "I'll send that information to Teacher as well. See if his group can puzzle something useful out of it. Locating the source of the Endbringers... if nothing else, it opens up a lot of possibilities in the future."
....
"Multidimensional space whale parasites?" I just stared at the screen. I started laughing. This was just fucking absurd. "That's it. It officially, literally, cannot possibly get any worse than this."
"Geoff?" Mags' voice carried her concern. "Are you okay?" She put her hand on mine, and I focused on that. Something familiar, someone I could trust. She was always an anchor when I needed it the most. "You should get some sleep. I know things look bad, but we're still here."
"Oh, yeah, I'm just peachy," I fought to steady my voice. "Apparently Pantheon thinks powers come from parasites from another dimension."
"Like Aleph and Avalon?" Mags asked.
"Turns out, there might not be numbers big enough to express how many universes there are," I informed her. "Remember the information we got off the PRT networks about the end of the world? That we thought Dragon might cause? And then we thought Pantheon might cause? And then we thought Nemesis might cause? Well, scratch all of that. Apparently Scion is the real source of Dinah's doomsday."
"How? Why?" she asked, moving her hand to my mouse.
"Because he's an alien and that's how they breed," I told her. "They travel between worlds, using people the way flowers use bees. Giving us powers, and then using our natural tendencies toward violence in order to advance their own evolution. Then, when they believe the process is complete, they eat everything. And I do mean everything. When they're done feeding, only dead space will exist where our world use to be."
"Can't we find another world, then?" Mags suggested. "Pantheon-"
"Won't matter," I told her. "These creatures are going to do the same thing to all of them. When I said everything, I mean everything. Every Earth in every dimension without any exception. Total omnicide."
"Holy fucking Christ," she whispered. "Are you certain about this?"
"Dragon's certain," I offered. "So is Pantheon and the Triumvirate. And remember that shadow organization that Teacher was so obsessed with finding before he wound up in the cage?"
"I remember," she agreed.
"I found it," I replied, tapping the screen. "They're called Cauldron. Somehow, they found the corpse of one of these aliens. What they call 'Entities', and are harvesting it to grant powers. The Case 53s are what happens when something goes wrong in the process. Dragon's been compiling a list of these artificial capes, but it's not stored on the database we acquired. I only know because one of Pantheon's members, Hecate, bought her powers from them."
"So one more giant conspiracy to the list," she laughed unhappily. "Got any idea how powerful they are?"
"Powerful enough to take down Teacher when he prodded them," I told her. "Enough that they functionally own the Protectorate, one way or another. Dragon seems to be legitimately scared of what they're capable of. The Triumvirate are also members, if the snippets of notes in Nemesis are any indication. Which means if we go after Cauldron, we could get a face full of Alexandria's boot."
"And they're all working together on the Nemesis and Scion threats," Mags added unhappily. "We can't really play them against one another when there's that to worry about. They're united until those threats are dealt with. And even if by some miracle we did win... it would be like killing a bunch of jackals, only to be eaten by the lion that they were keeping at bay."
"I know," I agreed. "We're just mortals. This is a battle between gods."
"Company!" Dobrynja shouted. Screens flickered to show the approaching person. A woman in an impressive suit. Her features suggested Mediteranean ancestry, but in a world of shapeshifters and tinker grade plastic surgery, that meant nothing.
She casually typed the code to the electronic lock for our current hideout. What confused me was that it worked- the code was irrelevant, it read your fingerprint to determine if you were allowed in. But apparently it worked for her, as the blast door opened. Dobrynja took point, being the only one of us in battle armor. Mags had rushed to get into hers.
The woman regarded us for a half second, then stepped into the bushes, out of our sight. A ball of mud sailed into the room and caught Dobrynja's visor. The woman rushed in a half second later, easily dodging the shots from my tinker handgun without even glancing toward me, diving for cover before throwing one of our wrenches at me. It wasn't hard to avoid at this distance, but I couldn't believe how she moved. How does someone dodge automatic weapon fire?
She jumped toward me the moment I ran out of ammo. Less than half a second later both my arms were behind my back and I existed as a human shield between the woman and Dobrynja and Mags. If either of them pulled the trigger on their better weapons, both the woman and I could be buried in the same coffee can. Something that didn't seem to bother her at all. She dragged me to one of the computer terminals, all the while ignoring the threats issued by my friends.
Seconds of typing later, both their armors lost power, and they were trapped in hundreds of pounds of tinker weapons and exotic alloys.
Suddenly my arms were freed and I stumbled forward. I briefly considered attacking the woman.
"Now we can talk," she spoke casually, without any indication that she had just performed feats reserved for Olympic athletes while being shot at.
============
A/N- What? Cauldron's allowed to do things too, you know.
Also: poor Saint. As if two potentially world ending forces weren't enough, it turns out they're teamed up against A Whole Lot Worse (tm).
