The necrites began pouring in, their smiling faces a revolting sight. With them a thick fog of redness settled into the air, staining everything but Anya’s skin with the miasma and stench of infinite tides of blood. Anya smiled as her hunger flared. Saliva ran thinly as drool down her chin to the bloodless ground of Synarchy’s top beneath her feet. She knew she couldn’t eat them without poisoning herself, but… had her skin turned white again?
No.
She opened the pocket within her coat as Synarchy began taxing the hunger at her core. It would be impossible to sustain it for more than a few seconds in her present state, but her present state wouldn’t last long. She opened her mouth and the pouch produced from within what was once an inviolable sanctum used only sparingly and dumped all fourteen pills down the hatch.
Her head twitched as every muscle tensed itself. Her subordinates shouted weakly but their meaningless noises were drowned out by the pulsing of Anya’s own blood. Synarchy, too, pulsed with life and with the rage destined to kill everything in sight. Its veins found themselves writhing like oh so many blades in the meat grinder destined to feed something greater than itself. The entire room of a THOUSAND IMPERIAL FEET was covered in the tentacles Anya commanded to bring Colossus food. Synarchy obeyed with joy as it deboned the thousand smiling corpses destined to feed its master as a thousand thousand human nuggets. They were not deep-fried to crispy golden brown, but would suffice as an appetizer.
Synarchy itself was not really powerable by the necrites, but Colossus was a different matter. The smaller unit was only ever intended to be piloted by a handful of well-trained archons for whom its use would not be particularly problematic and whose effects were well within their own abilities. Synarchy was more of a platform than a weapon to them, useful for creating and closing distance and for managing the loose hordes of lesser foes they couldn’t be bothered to destroy. As such, it didn’t really matter if Synarchy replenished itself on the road. It could, of course, but its many tendrils were much more specialized for movement and distribution of close-range death than consumption.
Colossus was different entirely. It was a hundred foot lump of flesh that spilled out over the corner of the giant room it had been housed in. “Flesh” was almost the wrong word to describe it. The creature was more like a mountain of cables than any kind of human-made weapon. Its bottom began to glow as it infected the room’s already-red atmosphere with an ethereal glow more to the shade of rot than blood.
And the stench. Oh god the stench! Though the necrites generally smelled like nothing, it seemed Colossus did not have this pleasure. As its bottom-most reaches began powering on, the cable-tendrils had begun flexing, airing themselves out and shedding the old flesh replaced with that of the necrites that would soon be subsumed into the machine, their nature changed to nothing but the machine that would damn the world.
The minutes passed as Anya felt tapping from behind. There was no sound as her nose was assaulted with vile degradation so foul it would soon have the same eternal ringing and degradation of function her ears had come to possess from all the rifle fire. There was only death as the roof rose overhead, hundreds of feet in the air now. Likewise, all the textured concrete walls had expanded as though themselves flesh like the growing small mountain inside the base of a thousand miles. All this in an attempt to accommodate the growing Colossus inside, but the attempt was clearly to be in vain.
The creature expanded beyond Anya’s field of view. In all directions there was writhing wormlike flesh flowing to all directions in an unstoppable torrent up and out of the base. The walls had begun to shake as Colossus began pressing against them. Its interior glowed with the dullness of rot and yet it glowed far brighter than even the sun or stars. She could no longer look at the mountain of loose cables whose light had outshone every smiling body pouring ever-still into its expanding maw.
But soon Synarchy found itself, too, devoured. Alex, Alissa, Jesús, and Will all moved to the back of Synarchy’s ever-shrinking platform toward the sea of necrites beneath them, but it was a brief moment before the rapid expansion of Colossus overtook them all. It would soon grow beyond where the necrites poured into the room, and from that point on would enter an exponential growth phase so long as it expanded more out than up. Even then, Colossus might well have been using less energy to create itself than the individual bodies were providing per unit volume.
Within the creature Anya’s field of vision faded as she felt every surface of her body innervated with the many cables of nerve, vessel, and sinew that composed Colossus inside and out. The bundles unwound themselves and attempted to pierce her skin, and though it was likely her comrades were innervated inside and out— skewered through all surfaces a tendril could pierce— Anya’s skin could not be broken. As such, Colossus merely attached itself to the surface. Despite this, Anya could feel her nerves connect to the creature’s as though even the surface of her skin carried the necessary pathways to her brain.
Vision returned from the darkness inside the beast to all sides, but it was more of a vague sense that food was all around and a glow in the direction of highest concentration than any kind of true sight. Smell, too, was muted, as was hearing. All the senses merged into one general sensation to the brain, a kind of glow in the direction of food, and all thoughts from the beast found themselves congealed to the same single and all-directed intention:
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Hunger.
Colossus meant to eat every necrite and person in sight, and to keep going until there was nothing more to consume. In this Anya was united with the will of the beast: they would destroy every necrite and this duplicated night would end before the repetitions of a time loop could really make themselves worn on.
Alex: “This is strange. It’s like I’m floating.”
Alissa: “Alex? Where are you?”
Alex: “Here!”
Alissa: “Where is “here?””
Alex: “Here!”
Anya could feel the generalized direction of the beasts’ many senses point inward to the core.
Alex: “Anya, are you there?”
Anya: “Yes. Jesús? Will?”
Jesús: “It’s dark. I hate it.”
Will: “I’m here.”
Will: “It’s not so bad Jesús, at least there’s light outside.”
Jesús: “Not enough.”
Anya: “Enough to see where the necrites are.”
Alex: “Is that what those lights are?”
Alex: “Can any of you see anything else?”
Alissa: “Just the red haze.”
Will: “Same here.”
Jesús: “And blackness.”
Alex: “So will we go back to normal on the next loop?”
Alissa: “I hope so. I miss you.”
A picture of hands held tightly together appeared in Anya’s head.
Jesús: “Ew, stop it. It’s been two seconds.”
Alissa: “Shut up Jesús.”
A picture of a mutilated hand severed at the wrist appeared in Anya’s mind.
Alissa: “Aaaah! Stop!”
Jesús: “Jajajajaja.”
Alex: “Seriously Jesús, fucking stop.”
Jesús: “Or what?”
Anya: “Or you won’t get a promotion.”
Alex: “You’re still seriously considering that!?” The sound of a disembodied sigh followed.
Anya: “Why not?” Unfortunately for her, there was no room to hide intent when your minds were directly connected. She wasn’t really serious about promoting him.
Jesús: “...”
A picture of a severed head appeared. It was David’s.
Anya: “Jesús I’m going to kill you if you do that again.”
Jesús: “...”
Will: “Does that even matter if we’re in a time loop?”
Anya: “I’ll demote you too.”
Will: “Can you even do that? Raethor should still technically be the commander even if he’s “dead.””
Alex: “He’s still “dead” even if he’s not dead.”
Jesús: “...”
Anya: “Thank you, Jesús.”
It was strange being disembodied like this with her thoughts connected to the others, but almost natural, as though this was the way things always should have been. Colossus was simply the vessel that housed their collective consciousness, and their collective consciousness was always intended to be one unitary entity. It was always supposed to be together as a gestalt inside one body. Anya was always supposed to be above the rest, even as nominally their voices held the same volume. Perhaps it was destiny she alone had been granted the greater new state.
Will: “Anya you’re not God. We can hear you, you know.”
Anya: “...” She could feel her cheeks blush.
Alissa: “And you’re not any better than the rest of us!”
Anya: “I didn’t mean it like that.”
Alex: “How did you mean it then?”
Jesús: “But she is better than us!”
Anya: “...”
Alex: “No..?”
Jesús didn’t say anything, but the color white flashed inside Anya’s head. It was clear what he was implying.
Alex: “...How did you mean it then, Anya?”
The picture of white appeared again.
Anya: “The fact I look like the greater necrites… It means something.”
The color white appeared again, followed by a dying gasp as though someone was choking.
Alex: “What’s that sound?”
“...”
Alex: “Anya are you killing Jesús?”
Anya: “...”
Alex: “Anya! Are! You! Killing! Jesús!”
Anya: “yes.”
Alex: “How even?” He seemed more curious than displeased, unsure of how Anya was skirting the Imperial Mandate.
Anya: “I may not be God, but I feel like one right now.” To Alex, those words read as “Jesús disobeyed me and therefore the Mandate.” It still wasn’t clear how Peter had skirted it, but perhaps along logic of the same lines. Did the Mandate have an ability to read intent? Strange.
