Adamant Blood

Mark gasped, recalled a memory from his coma of when he couldn't breathe so they shoved an oxygen mask on him, and then he could breathe again. Every breath of air was better than the one before. Gradually, and then rapidly, Mark could see, too.

He hadn't realized he was blind until he could see. All of his senses returned quickly, and then Mark connected to the world with Good and Bad and Mark was himself even faster. His heart rocked and pulsed, and then it calmed down, and…

And Mark felt like himself again.

"Are you here, Mark?" Quark asked.

"What happened?" Mark said, as he looked around.

He was on the wall of Memphi.

Where? In the north? Maybe. Mark wasn't sure. The land ahead was very broken and there were some kaiju bodies here and there. Some giant bird and some furry brown thing with long tangled legs, or something. White shit, like droppings, was everywhere. There were no real buildings, though, and there was no infrastructure, like roads—

Mark was north of the gate district.

He didn't recognize it because the gate was gone.

Quark answered, "To speak quickly: Shit happened, Addavein cleaned it up while calling himself Sloane toward the end and he talked a lot, Mark, in order to give you information later, but right now your friends are in trouble down below right there on your map. It was a trap for Addavein. It will be a trap for you, too. Please go to fast-time and I will explain more. We do not have much—"

Mark focused.

He breathed in Alacrity and breathed out Slowness, and time slowed down, the burning fires below flickering slower, the smoke rising as though through molasses, and Mark had a moment. A long moment. His Unionsense was coming online the whole time, but now he could finally feel something out there besides the background nothing. There were people headed his way.

"—iiiiiimmmmmmmeeeeee—" Quark beep-booped. He began, "Okay. I will be able to explain some now. There is a lot. I will condense it down to the bare essentials, assuming that you want to save your friends, first. That is what Addavein assumed, too. With that assumption in mind, here is what has happened:

"The Lightbody goblin that escaped to Earth about 2 weeks ago assaulted the gate when you were dealing with the Apocalypse Beetle with Blackthorn. It broke through because there were Thrashtalon traitors among the people of Memphi. The two most well known traitors are Grey Phantom, real name Christopher Powell, and Kardi Shale, who is a distant cousin of Christopher Shale, which is not that surprising because Christopher Shale is 90-ish and he has had anti-aging work done, and a lot of mistresses. There is a lot there we do not know. Sentinel, Memphi's #1 superhero, is still out there killing the impossible kaiju and securing the walls against all of the monster incursions happening right now.

"Grey Phantom is MIA. We believe he might have gone to ground somewhere. He might appear at a bad time, but your Adamant/Ethereal seems able to target him, so he will likely not go against you, though he might.

"Kardi is down in the bowels of the gate district, fulfilling Leash's threat against you that Leash would kill your friends if you summoned Addavein. We don't know exactly what is happening down there, but Eliot was hurt and was able to form connections to the outside world intermittently, before the spill of kaiju worms cut off the connections again, likely because of acts of Luck.

"Eliot is on his own life support.

"Sally is alive and incredibly injured but still fighting. Mostly running.

"Isoko is alive and healthy and probably being saved for last by Kardi.

"Tartu and Shawn might be alive. Lenny is likely dead. Several other people are dead as well. Goblins are rallying and filling the tunnels down below, fighting and killing the worms while the worms eat them right back. It is getting bad down there. I am populating your vision with known ways into the underground now."

Mark's heart had not beat a single time in all of those words. He was pumping Alacrity hard and then harder, deeper and stronger, and time was speeding up faster and faster, as he heard about his friends. His family. Hearing 'anti-aging work done' had Mark almost rip toward Shady Acres, toward Uncle Alexandro and Gabriel, but surely they had some real fucking strong powers protecting them, right? Those guys were a literal national treasure…

Which meant they would likely be attacked most of all.

… Or else they were one of the spoils to be won from a successful war.

Mark didn't want to think about that sort of hypothetical.

Mark rapidly ordered his thoughts, ranking threats and goals. The first threat/goal were the people running up on him from hundreds of meters away, down beside the wall, inside of Memphi, and maybe inside of the wall itself. There were passageways down there, and people were coming this way. 4 people, according to what Mark was sensing.

Next problem to tackle were his friends and also Tartu and Shawn and maybe Lenny, if Lenny was alive. Mark suspected that Quark was softening the truth when he said that Lenny 'might' be alive. Mark didn't like Tartu, but Shawn and Lenny seemed like okay guys. He hoped they were all okay.

Mark was going to rip Kardi to shreds.

And finally, there were his uncles, and the rest of Memphi. That set of problems was too nebulous to do anything with right now.

Mark took a moment, while his heart beat a single time with a slow flex.

And then Mark came back to normal time, all of his Unions shifting to Adamant/Ethereal, connecting him to the world.

He was wearing something strange. It was his adamantium, but shaped like fabric, and with every beat of his heart the fabric unfolded, threading back into scales that covered his body from head to toe. It felt weird to have scales all over his body, for the metal to form claws over his fingertips and a chestplate made of moving parts. There were tiny scales under his arms so fine that they couldn't possibly protect him at all, and something that was practically a jock around his junk. Some of that was just fucking weird, and maybe if Mark had more adamantium then the scales would be more substantial, but it did cover all of his body, even if it couldn't possibly be better than webweave… Well. It was certainly better than webweave wherever it actually protected, and for the most part his scales were thick and dense, but webweave at least gave full coverage. This stuff was weak in certain areas.

Mark adjusted the head-scales into a helmet and the chest into a real chest piece. Doing so removed enough material from his body to allow him a good half liter of weaponry. It was a fucking lot. He had had less than half of a liter of adamantium before this whole event. He must have had four or seven times that much right now. Maybe, if he had some time, he would have measured it. There was an easier way, though.

"Who is coming this way, and how much adamantium do I have right now, Quark?"

The vectors were directly below Mark, about 300 meters down, inside the wall and maybe on the wall, inside the city.

They were looking his way.

Mark instantly juked to the right, not wanting to be in the direction of whatever was going on down there—

The vectors of the people down there shifted to point at Mark's new position—

Mark started running to the right, down the intact wall. The upper part of the wall in this location, north of the gate, was about 50 meters wide. It was closer to 150 wide at the bottom, which was about 400 meters down there, if the worm-like vectors laid out like a carpet down there were any indication of a ground floor.

The wall up ahead abruptly ended after about 250 meters and then it was fully open beyond that. One of the clouddlefish had broken through there.

Mark glanced forward, and a bit to the north. Wolf Bayou was over there somewhere, beyond the Mississippi. Mark could only see the river, though, like a vast stretch of brown upon the horizon.

Quark returned, "Query for trackers complete. Apologies for the delay; Memphi had not informed me of those and neither—"

"Shorter," Mark said.

"Collective paladins that were shadowing Addavein and waiting for him to leave. They are from Memphi and they are waiting to join you in taking down Kardi and whatever other cultists appear. I did pre-checks through Mayor Ramirez; she sent them to you. I am patching them through now."

Mark stopped hovering away and voices came to him, alongside names in his vision.

"Hello? Are we patched through?" said Team Leader Reba, 5x Speedster + Union.

"Yes, hello. This is Mark. I'm back. I did not expect that to happen, but it happened and now I'm here and I'm going to rescue my friends. I assume Addavein killed the kaiju out there? They're still falling apart."

Reba said, "He did. We're here to kill cultists. Sound off. Reba, Low Speedster and Union."

Tom, Stonestrength Brawny, Retribution, "Tom, Brawny, Retribution."

Yorl, True Brawny, Retribution, "Yorl, Brawny, Retribution."

Vern, Flying Body, Union, "Vern, Group Flight, Union."

Mark spun adamantium into a tri-toroid and a counter-prop as he leapt off of the edge of the wall, into Memphi. There wasn't a whole lot of stuff out there right now, but a lot of it was on fire. The heat rushed up against Mark, the force of it almost sending him against the wall, but he angled his flight and maintained heading. He descended.

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The wall was filled with holes, all throughout, and giant rents. The majority of it would probably collapse within the day, but for now the interior was exposed. Why? Mark wasn't sure. He was pretty sure that the wall hadn't suffered this much damage during the fight between Titanfist and the—

"Is Titanfist okay, Quark?"

Mark got close to the four Collective paladins and he could feel their worry, their hidden rage, and their need for vengeance. None of it was directed at Mark, not directly. Sure, he was catching the edge of it because none of them trusted him, but mostly their ire was directed at the broken wall, at the flaming gate district and the burning kaiju, and at all the rest of the shit of the day.

"Titanfist is in a hospital somewhere, receiving attention," Quark said.

Mark got level with the collective team. They were flying in a great gap in the wall, almost in the edge that overlooked the burning flesh down below, and all of them were in paladin armor. Mark waved at them and then connected to them with a Union of Adamant and Ethereal. For a moment they were fearful, like they were seeing a true danger in front of them, but divine gold flickered in their vectors and they solidified.

Quark labeled them in Mark's view, so he knew who was who.

Reba said, "We're in communion with Isoko and Freyala and information is sparse but expect Kardi to have stolen the powers of the people she has killed. This is a common Cultist tactic, but it rarely works because they always monsterize. Kardi seems too lucky to have that happen to her."

Mark had a tough moment —one among many such moments— as he thought about how much hate he could possibly have for one person. Kardi was going to die today. Then Mark focused and pushed out a handlebar of adamantium to Vern, the group flyer, asking, "I'm pulling you and them, or you're pulling me?"

Vern gripped the adamantium and said, "You have the AI connected to Memphi. You know where we're going."

Mark nodded, and then he pulled hard, spinning his tri-toroid as fast as it would go, dragging behind the others through Vern holding the grip. The group was practically weightless, and soon Mark was focused on nothing but the battle to come.

Through the smoke, through the heat, Mark flew fast, ignoring the weirdness coming from behind. All of the paladins were freaking out to a varying degree over Mark and the problems up ahead as Mark headed right toward the lower floors of a building down below. The bottom floor and all of the land in every direction was covered with worms.

Mark told them, "I'm killing absolutely everything. Everyone else on Purity."

And then Mark was 10 meters away from the surface of the hivemind worm kaiju and he connected to it with Adamant and Ethereal. It was like dropping acid on packing foam. The worms curled and died in every direction, decaying to husks that did not die, but they certainly formed a divot in the sea of such worms. More and more worms flowed into the divot, but Mark didn't care about those ones. They were over several hundred meters away.

The ones right in front of him were practically desiccated.

Mark turned his propeller into a spinning wheel of scales, several meters across, pulling away Vern's handle to make more cutting surfaces as he fell into the largest pile of desiccated monsters. He became a blender, aimed right into the hole in the ground that some kaiju had made, that was absolutely filled with worms.

The worms died.

The paladins behind Mark Unioned with Purity/impurity and moss began to spread on every surface that Mark churned apart.

Mark descended into the worm-filled dark and the collective paladins followed, all of them moving in unison, in a Union. The two brawnies didn't do much right now except have their swords out. The speedster and the group flyer were doing more than just Unions of Purity/Impurity, though. Group Flyer was doing that. Speedster was doing some sort of killing aura; probably Vein Integrity/Decay.

Mark struck up a conversation, "You're all Inquisitors?"

"Executioners and Inquisitors," said Yorl, the True Brawny.

Tom, the Stonestrength Brawny, asked, "Do you know what is happening out there?"

They were maybe 50 meters below the surface right now, Mark blendering desiccated worms as they went down, down, down, those worms being turned into greenery glowing on the walls. A few cleaner plants, looked like. That's where the glows were coming from.

Mark realized, in that moment, that he had just burrowed into a bunker that was below a building. Might have even been the buildings they were using for the Attack the Gate program. Had the actors, writers, and everyone else evacuated to here? Were Noel and JJ and all the rest… Were they dead now?

Mark tried not to think about that too much.

"No," Mark said, "How long was I gone?"

A wireframe model of the underground had been in Mark's vision this whole time, with highlights on the model telling Mark where to go, what to look for. Quark was updating it in real time as they got deeper into the massive hole in the ground. The model showed a tunnel headed off to the south, just another 50 meters down.

All Mark could Unionsense were worms. They were like uncaring static upon every horizontal surface. They were looking for water, though; Mark could tell that much. They were water worms. Not land worms.

There was no water here.

Mark descended on blendering adamantium, sucking up all of the kaiju's Adamantine nature, and giving it Ethereal weakness in turn. Usually Mark would have been worried about losing his adamantium by making a blender like the one he was riding downward, but this specific Union was weakening the kaiju a lot. Its astral body was pretty much eradicated. Minimized.

Tom answered, "37 minutes. Addavein killed the kaiju except for the worm one then cleared out north command and took a swing at east command, and then he came here to the north to give you back your body. Is that something you have always been able to do? Summon him?"

Mark said, "Freyala suggested that I would need to summon him so I summoned him when it looked bad, and no. I expected to ride around on his shoulders or some shit like that. Apparently he was ripping across North America killing kaiju before he got here."

Desiccated worms fell in from above.

Mark uncovered the tunnel Quark was expecting. It was an oval 30 meters wide, 20 meters tall, and filled with worms. It looked like it was a major underground route. Some planned subway tunnel? Mark rushed into the tunnel, clawing down into the concrete bottom, racing into the dark. Quark turned on some lights on Mark's helmet, pointing outward into the depths of worms as Mark rushed forward, blendering them.

Vern flew the paladins behind Mark, keeping up with Mark. The brawnies took out flashlights and attached them to their shoulders, illuminating the tunnel with spotlight brightness that bounced around a lot and did a whole lot more than Quark's little lights.

The worms did not end at all, but the model in Mark's vision updated.

Fault lines had been opened in every tunnel, more worms pouring downward all the time.

Rocks fell.

Mark did not like being underground. It was dangerous as fuck.

Reba said, "The skyscraper bear out there was an earthshaker type. This tunnel might not be that strong."

Quark told Mark, "It's the highest chance of being connected to the gate tunnel systems, as this tunnel goes through the very center of all of that. Eliot's tunnels are scattered all above and below this one."

Mark said, "It will work, and if it doesn't work I'm going through the ground itself. It's just tier 0."

Tom said, "Don't lie to yourself and go thinking that's survivable without Earthwalking magics."

Vern said, "I can get us out in a collapse."

The other three relaxed a slight amount at that.

Mark wondered, "You four don't normally work together?"

"No," Tom said.

Reba said, "We know each other from the Collective."

And that was enough of that.

Everything was dark as fuck except for the light from the paladins behind. Everything was mulching flesh and screaming worms and it smelled like a horror. Everything was death and dying, and Mark felt most of the land up ahead based on the worms that were absolutely everywhere, in every underground tunnel, as they fell through cracks in the ground and spread out in every direction.

Quark's wireframe model of the underground was a little better at showing stuff than Mark's Unionsense, but Mark could tell a lot was hidden from him. Quark's model showed this tunnel leading ahead and tens of side tunnels branching off, but in reality, this tunnel was a main artery with hundreds of arterioles. The work Eliot had put into the gate district was vast and deep, and whatever systems Quark was taking his information from were incomplete. But Quark was updating here and there, as fast as he could.

They were about 2 kilometers north of the 500 meter wide gate itself, and moving fast.

Mark's too-fast speeds got them to 750 meters away from the eastern edge of the gate, and within potential sight of Eliot's main side tunnels that he used to unify the laser turrets by the gate—

Quark flickered in Mark's vision, and Eliot's tunnels suddenly updated, showing a whole new flow of tunnels everywhere out there—

"Temporary connection established to Eliot's network in the tunnels," Quark answered. "I am updating Eliot with your presence right now— Updating complete. Backsignal traced. Location of team found."

Mark's heart soared even as he reached the first main opening into Eliot's tunnels, even as he saw wireframe dots with labels pop up on his vision. Isoko, Eliot, Sally, Tartu, and Shawn were near each other, on the far southern side of the gate, about 2.3 kilometers away.

Kardi was within a hundred meters of his team.

Quark populated a path through to the team, rapidly snaking lines through his wireframe models, showing Mark the fastest route then a few options for the safest route. Mark picked one of the shorter 'safe' paths. The entrance to that one was right up ahead. Mark churned through worms—

There was a tiny light upon a box of something, strapped to the side of the tunnel. The light was red.

Now the light was green.

Fire, thunder, and pain exploded down the tunnel, shredding everything and sending Mark tumbling, flying into mulched worms.