Creation: Book 3: Strandbinder Complete!

Nobody:

Deep in the tunnels beneath London proper, a frustrated man of some importance stared at a poster on the wall.

It showed a suited man in a red tie traveling down a set of metal stairs. One of the man’s hands were raised, as if asking the round metal transport to wait. Near the top of the yellow sheet, the words “A little patience won’t hurt you” were stamped in bold black letters.

Unknown to himself, Nobody growled at the image. The man’s blank expression, a veritable nobody on a planet doomed to fail, seemed to be mocking him. In his mind, he saw himself as the man, telling himself that all of the delays, all of the trials he’d had to bear after landing on this backward planet, were worth it. Only, he knew deep down that they weren’t.

Staring into his own facsimile, he tore it from the wall with an unrecognizable snarl before crumpling it up and throwing it toward the ground.

Elsie looked toward him. They’d been traveling the tunnels for a few days, still clearing out all of the life left within the rotten core of London.

Nobody looked at the girl for the first time in the last several days. Stubble covered her formerly smooth skull. Elsie had allowed her hair to grow back, which confused him.

Since they first began training within the heart of the ancient ruins, she’d always kept it shaved. After the first year, she’d taken an odd bit of pride in the mark of the warrior, as was only proper. Now that he considered it, she’d spoken of Spartan soldiers and the need for hair to not be used as a weapon against them. He’d asked her how she knew that, and she’d said that her late father had been a fan of history.

All of that should reinforce her need to keep a clean scalp, and yet, the fact that she had a blade on her person, and one that he knew to be quite sharp, worried him. If she had begun to stop marking herself as the warrior he had trained her to be, and her father had inadvertently encouraged, then she had changed. One change begets another, and another.

Nobody knew that when a person began to show signs of fundamental alterations to their person, it was time to worry. But he was stuck with her. There wasn’t enough time to find another Champion and train them to his way of thinking. The fact that she was from his bastard Creator’s world didn’t even factor into it. He had found a backdoor entry for the Omega protocol. To prove his worth, he not only had to destroy the Earth and all life upon it, but to do so with the help of its own population.

Even now, thousands of shadows swarmed through the Earth’s vast oceans, attacking and destroying any life that might find a way to survive. He received constant updates across his vision, which he had ignored until now. But, as he looked into his Champions eyes, he glanced at the corner of his vision and clicked on the notifications that he’d ignored thus far.

Step 3: Eliminate all life forms within your chosen vicinity.

Destruction is your cause, and returning the primordial energy to the root of all creation is your mission. Let no one encroach upon where you build your base of operations, and take over that which has failed the multiverse.

Life forms eliminated: 94851/94987

Reward for completion: The builder system

Nobody ran a hand across his face, an odd sliding motion making him look at his fingers. Their tips held a grimy film, likely picked up from the poster he’d torn down. He used his Removal ability to erase it from existence with a grimace.

For months now, they’d been trying to eliminate all of the life in the city.

But they just, wouldn’t, die.

Making a face, Nobody finally clicked on his Shadow system, the first one that had been granted to him after his initial breaking of time. Another shadow had to be replaced. And another. Hundreds…thousands.

Most of the needed replacements had occurred in only three places worldwide. He pulled out the world map he’d received from the first task, when destroying San Francisco.

The most egregious killer was near the northern edges of England, only a day or two of travel for his Champion. He noted that the replacements occurred simultaneously each day, within a few short hours. Logically he knew that meant they were on a schedule.

“Schedules are dangerous,” He said to himself quietly. It meant they would be an easy mark when it came time.

Looking at the second one, he found most of the replacements coming from the middle of…Kansas. Although the attacks had slowed recently until eventually stopping, implying they’d either moved on or died. He sincerely hoped for the latter but knew he wasn’t that lucky.

The last one was in New Delhi, a place he knew well. It was a city that once held millions of people, but now it held mostly death and long echoes. His Creator had attempted to recreate New Delhi in his time, but it hadn’t held up. It had been long ago destroyed by the ravages of war and the creatures from the Cage. Only some of the wonders of that city existed at the time he had lived on Symphony.

“So many plans, so much to do,” Nobody said more loudly to himself, causing Elsie to look at him again. He took note of her shaven skull a second time, and couldn’t help himself.

“You’re not shorning your hair anymore?”

The young woman shook her head without speaking, causing him to consider her a third time. When was the last time he’d heard her voice? He wasn’t sure, and that caused him to worry even further. He’d have to keep her close to him for further observation.

Changing tactics, he gave her a smile with many teeth, “Hey, Elsie girl, what’s the matter?”

Elsie:

Elsie looked at the display of teeth but knew better. She also knew better than to let him know what she was planning.

Giving him an unaffected shrug of the shoulders, she said, “I don’t know. I just wanted to see what it would look like if I grew it out.” Elsie pointed out an ad on the nearby subway wall, near the poster he’d torn down. It depicted a young woman smiling with lustrous hair as a man looked back at her. " It makes me wonder if I could’ve looked like that in a normal world.”

His grin faltered, seeming to slip off of his face, before reappearing. In her mind, his smile looked like nothing else than a sunrise ascending from hell, “Oh, daughter, you are much more beautiful than that woman.” His eyes flicked to her stubbled head before he looked at the poster again. “No,” He said with a shake of the head, “The vanity of that woman is what did her in. Her, and this world. They believed in the purpose and strength of technology, of money, not of self. They were worthless, and they deserved to lose their place in the cosmos.”

He was always talking about the Cosmos. About a new world, he was going to take her to. One that didn’t let parents die, and brought out the best in everyone. Where shadows didn’t exist, and life continued on in fruitful ways.

Only, as she grew older, cracks started to show in his speeches. The biggest problem he ran into was the most simple one.

Repetition.

He always said things the exact same way. Practiced. Perfect. But whenever she asked a direct question about something, he’d shrug it away as if it didn’t mean anything.

She’d never noticed. Not within the ruins, or as she now thought of it, the place of her torture. She was always too busy. There was too much to learn, to do, to train. Then they’d arrived here, and all of their plans for the last several years were coming to fruition.

She could fight; she could prove herself worthy of the time and sacrifices he had made for her. She could prove the stories right, in the next world. This one was already lost.

But now, those stories he’d told since she was a little girl no longer matched up.

These people she was fighting and killing, the ones her master said were the cause of the world’s darkness…the cause of everything. They were just…people. Just fighting as best as they could to survive the world. Whereas, for her, the shadows never attacked. She’d watched settlements, villages, and children die to them. And yet, no matter where she looked, they ignored her.

She’d watched as many of the “Champions,” as the system called them, fought the shadows. They did something then, something she didn’t know how to do. With shining weapons, each killed the creatures that could not be killed.

Mr. Nobody had said that killing the Champions would kill thousands of the things. But she’d seen no evidence of it thus far. It was all just…it felt…evil.

She moved out of her introspection when she noticed him staring at her expectantly, “Sorry, can you repeat that?”

“I said,” He replied evenly, though his eyes told a different story, “We need to finish clearing out this tunnel. Immediately.”

“Yes, of course, Master.” Elsie nodded sharply, “I’ll get to it right away.”

“Excellent. Please proceed.” He made a shooing gesture with his hand. But, unlike normal, where he’d turn his back immediately afterward, this time, he kept his eyes on her the entire time.

She self-consciously rubbed her head and lifted Chuck from where she’d left it against a train car. The weight of it on her shoulder was both comforting and uncomfortable.

Moving into a light jog while holding the ball of her morning star in the other hand, she quickly moved down the tunnel in the darkness to complete her mission.

Killing rats never hurt her feelings, and according to Nobody, was required to complete his task. But after Chuck's fourth swing, she began to feel something. Exhaustion. Not of the body, but of something else. The soul, maybe.

She found an empty station. One that looked like it had broken down long before the end of the world. Sitting down on an only slightly broken chair, Chuck fell from her fingers to the ground as she placed the bottom of her palms to her eyes.

No amount of rubbing them took away the images she’d seen or the things she’d done.

The Boy’s face had stared at her from her dreams, and now she saw it whenever she closed her eyes. She hadn’t killed a Champion since the one that came before him, and she felt no regrets now that she hadn’t killed him. But, she’d killed what had sounded like his family. People that cared for him. His screams resounded in her mind, but it was his face, the moment he saw her watching him and his family from atop the tree, that stilled her mind.

It was a face that thought it would die and didn’t agree to it.

How could a boy, a young child who, by all rights, should be doing their best to survive school right now, be one of the people who had started all of this? It was impossible; thus, she found another hole in Mr. Nobody’s plan. Another gap in the stories he told.

Why did he pick her? A young child, to take into training to save the world? Why not a fighter? A military person? Hell, even a cop? But he took a kid who didn’t know better about the world. One he could change.

The more she thought about it, the more real it became for her. Elsie’s breathing came in sharp and fast as she considered the ramifications of everything she’d done since she’d met Nobody. Was she on the wrong side of all of this? Had she been killing her fellows, her people, this whole time?

That line led her down another. Was Mr. Nobody, the man who raised her, the cause? Is that what was happening now?

Further thoughts were put aside as the sound of something crashing to the ground only a hundred feet away rang out. True to her training, she quickly lifted Chuck and put it on her shoulder. Stepping quietly to avoid being heard, she moved along the sides of the wall in close to pitch darkness. The only light that drifted down to this world without power was from small breaks in the ceiling. Cracks ground into the cement by time, generic damage, or even herself when fighting the large group of Champions who had sprung up in London.

That was why he’d brought her here. To kill them all.

And she’d done it with aplomb, excepting one.

She turned a final corner and spotted a small boy and girl scraping the inside of an aluminum can. She let go of Chuck, the Morningstar landing hard on the ground, and watched as the two children hop slightly at the sound. Putting her hands up in the air to show she wasn’t a threat, she stepped closer, quietly saying, “It’s okay, kids. I’ll get you out of here.”

Elsie had made a decision.