Facility forty-two was one of Atom’s closely kept secrets. Honestly, all his facilities, depots and the many vaults in his possession were secrets. Since Atom had no friends that he had actively interacted with in the last few hundred years, no one should know about any of them.

How Dory knew about any of his projects was beyond him. She had hinted a few days ago that she was aware of some things, but he was sure she was only fishing. He had to have messed up somewhere along the way. But where?

It was possible to suspect he had crafted things out of the ordinary. This could be seen just from the materials he had acquired over the years. Atom had been careful in his acquisitions, mostly trading resources for resources, thus avoiding a credit trail. Unfortunately, there were some things that only credits could buy. Even worse, there were some things you couldn’t outright purchase at all. You had to compete with others at auction to obtain.

There were untold Auction Houses throughout the planes. Almost all of them had a digital presence giving their patrons the ability to bid anywhere, in any plane, anonymously. It was very similar to Earth's online auctions. Make a purchase, and the items are shipped to wherever you wanted.

The items offered had many grades depending on the typical factors such as scarcity, age, uniqueness, or, if a completed artifact, the renown, and talent of the crafter were factored in. These factors and many others combined into a universal grading system used throughout the known planes.

The grades you could find in these houses were common, uncommon, rare, supreme, and occasionally mythic.

These establishments were open to anyone. If you had the credits, then you could buy. Now, if you wanted something mythic and above. There was only one place you could go. The Aleph Auction House.

The Aleph Auction House was owned and operated by the Aleph Consortium. The establishment had zero digital footprints aside from the collection and transference of credits. They operated in a traditional auction house fashion. If you wanted to bid, you needed to physically attend and to attend, you needed an invitation. The establishment explicitly catered to powerful and affluent Ascendants among the known planes.

The Consortium was owned by the Aleph family, one of the elder families of Arcodawn. This made sense as the eight elder families were amongst the oldest families in recorded existence. They were powerful immortal families long before the Council had been formed. Each elder family had their hands in various businesses throughout the planes. The families were very similar to Earth's nobles.

Atom had met Seth Aleph and his new wife Trisha while adventuring. Why was the heir to one of the wealthiest and most influential families in existence out adventuring in the planes, might someone ask? Well, Seth had been in quite the rebellious phase after graduating from Nexus Academy.

He returned to his family after graduating. Expecting his family to welcome him home with open arms and congratulations, instead, he found politics and chains of obligation.

The elders had attempted to force him into an arranged marriage. His parents, the current patriarch, and matriarch of the elders' council, refused to hear his plea to stop the arrangement.

This obviously didn’t go well with the young heir since he was already engaged. Seth and Trisha, who had graduated as together, had long fallen deeply in love as they went through the deadly trials of the Prime rank. He attempted to bargain, but the elders were dead set on the alliance his marriage would bring.

Trisha was from a distant branch family of the Gaspari, another elder family of Arcodawn. At the time, the Gaspari and the Aleph were not on cordial terms, and while Trisha’s parents supported their daughter, the family elders disapproved of the union.

Without support on either side, the couple was left with few options. So, Seth, the hot-blooded youth that he was, stole away in the night with Trish and eloped.

Those who graduated as Primes were not the average cut of the mill Ascendants. The skills needed to be mastered to complete the trials were not few. Using those skills, they disappeared from Nexus and went out to seek enough power to force their families to accept their love.

It was a classic tale of two lovers trying to fight against their family's wishes. One that would have ended badly in an ancient ruin on a shit hole of a cracked planet if Adam hadn't shown up to assist the two in a battle with an undead demon lord. After the event, they had become companions and adventured together.

Their adventures came to an end after an outing into the Void. The events in the Void forced Atom to break through into the Divine realm under un-idealistic conditions. Yet, it still hadn’t been enough.

Atom had been forced to manifest his Mantle in the end. While that had been the deciding trump card in their escape. The events had left his companions gravely injured and mentally scarred from the experience.

Atom had hidden his true power from his companions, and even though he had saved them, it had damaged the bond of trust they shared. The group went their separate ways after that. There were no hard feelings in the departure, but their adventuring days were done.

Seth went back to his family and took his place as the heir once more. They stayed in touch, and Seth acquired many things for Atom throughout the years.

On the other hand, Atom had slowly slipped into the madness that came with the elevation to the Divine realm. A madness that was supercharged by his experiences in the Void. That madness led to the construction of facility forty-two and the birth of Tess.

But how did Dory find out about facility forty-two? If Seth and Trish had become one of Dory’s agents after returning, it would explain some things. It wouldn’t be hard to make the intuitive leap that Atom was creating something he probably shouldn’t. He might even be the reason that the couple had gotten caught in her web now that he really considered it. Atom could even remember when this recruitment may have even happened.

Seth had acquired a Primordial grade artifact for him at auction. Primordial grade artifacts were exactly what they sounded like. They were items that either was primordial in nature or could reverse engineer something to a primordial state. These things were dangerous beyond belief, with some items able to drive a whole planet to madness or death just by their very presence.

The purchase of such an item was not illegal. Those who could afford or use such an item typically weren’t out to watch the universe burn. The Council handled those types without mercy. Needless to say, the sale of such an artifact was a very high-profile event that would raise tons of red flags depending on who acquired the item. Therefore, Atom knew he shouldn’t have purchased it, but it had been required for the facility forty-two’s project. He'd been more lucid later and avoided situations like that again. That didn't mean the damage hadn't already been done, though.

Dory and the General had appeared shortly afterward with an invitation to a Council seat. He had never connected these two events before. He blamed it on the madness. Their offer and reason for how they had found him had been logical.

Atom wondered what would have happened if he had been resistant to their offer. The image of his body being reduced to microscopic detritus, free-floating in the vacuum of space came to mind.

But Dory had actually known about him all this time. She had known his gramps. Had Seth and Trish already been one of Dory’s people when they met? It was troubling to consider. How deep did the rabbit hole go?

These were the thoughts that passed through Atom’s mind as the trio shifted into a circular dark metallic room. It was around twenty meters in diameter and ten meters in height. This room had no doors or exits of any kind.

It could only be accessed by Atom or Tess. There was nothing significant in the room itself. What was important about the place was where you could go from the room.

A smooth, clear crystal ball was sitting in the center of the room atop a pedestal of emerald glass. This pedestal would open a portal to any of Atom’s facilities attached to its network. It was a safety precaution he had put in place. If he ever needed to bring someone with him to one of his private realms, this would prevent them from discovering their real-world anchor points.

Private or pocket realms were like little balloons of space with their strings attached to the Planes they were created from. This was not to be confused with a God Slice. The owner of the pocket realms did have control over them but not to the extent they could create life from nothing. Not that it mattered. Atom had been extremely paranoid at the time, and it still wasn’t enough.

That was made clear as Dory walked past him, munching on a pastry. Crumbs fell on her chin and shirt as she walked right through all his unseen security measures and formidable defenses. Defenses might he add that would keep even someone at his own power level out without issue.

He sighed loudly.

Dory turned around at his sigh and looked at him in confusion.

“What?” She questioned. Pieces of flaky crust flying out of her mouth adding to the ridiculousness of his life.

Atom just shook his head in defeat. Why did he even bother when things like her existed?

Dory gave an ‘oh’ face, signaling that she had realized what she had done.

“Ah, common kiddo. Don’t be such a sore paw. You know I already know. So why pretend. We are on the same side. Now take me to the good stuff.” Dory said, giving Atom a sheepish toothy grin.

Atom ignored her words and said, “You have something in your teeth.”

Dory cursed, pulled out a mirror, and dug at the offending food particle.

Atom smiled internally at his petty victory over the woman, but it did nothing for the feeling of unease that was building inside him. Something was off about Dory, but he couldn’t pinpoint exactly what was different. He wanted to say she was an imposter, but he could sense that it was, in fact, her.

If anything, according to his Presence, it was more her than ever before. The feeling was hard to explain. It was almost like previously when he met with Dory, she hadn’t entirely been there.

Atom tsk audibly. Another mystery he was sure she wouldn’t divulge, and probably not one they had time to discuss at the moment.

Walking to the middle of the room, the orb lit up at his approach. Atom touched it once, injecting a bit of his power into the thing. Only Tess or he could do this and survive. It was the last security measure to the access point. Without it, you wouldn’t be able to use the room even if you somehow managed to find it. Something he had previously believed to be impossible yet now questioned.

This particular access point was inside the core of a protostar drifting in a dark nebula on the edge of a barely awakened Plane. The instability surrounding the birth of a baby star made it a prime place to hide such an access point. Very little could be observed as the protostar greedily sucked in the stellar gases and matter around it to aid its attempt at Ascension to full starhood. Whether it would succeed was yet to be seen, but Atom could tell through his path, Stellar Might, that it was coming along nicely. It might succeed in a million or so years, giving this access point a power source to run on.

It took quite a bit of power to drill through the fabric of space and connect two points in a safe and stable manner. As it was now, Atom had to supply the juice. That was something he did not lack. But the use of that much anima, especially his Divine grade, created ripples that could be traced. Not easily, mind you, but someone could do it at his realm and above. Which is why this access point was inside a noisy celestial fetus trying to give birth to itself.

The orb lit up, and a three-meter hollow screen popped up in front of him with hundreds of lines of text visible. Atom tapped at the search function, and a keyboard appeared. He typed in his query, and the options on the small screen dropped to one. Facility forty-two. He selected the option and confirmed it. The screen disappeared, and he laid his hand on the orb.

The orb served as a focus and a compression apparatus for the power to build. As he dumped power into the orb, a miniature golden sun grew inside. Once the threshold was reached, a ding was heard. The ding, very reminiscent of an old school microwave, rang out. Letting Atom know it was ready. It took a few moments after the ding for it to do its thing. He removed his hand, and the group waited in silence.

“This thing is going to work right?” Dory enquired after a minute or so. Her tone sounded skeptical.

“You of all people should understand that to do this safely, it takes time.” Atom replied.

Dory raised an eyebrow, “I suppose. What this thing does and what we built are completely different. We made holes and then we made permanent tunnels to connect the holes. This thing does something else. Let me guess. This is something you came up with when the madness was in full swing?”

She wasn’t wrong there. It was different. There was no tunnel or slide of light to ride connecting you to another plane. This was a true portal. A superimposing two points together in different planes. This might not seem like a considerable achievement given the kinds of things the Mantles or high-level ascendants could do. That assumption would be incorrect.

Shifting was only possible due to the Feed. Any passage through the Feed would leave traces if you had the know-how to find them. This portal orb also did not use the Ways, which was the tunnel most planes used to travel. Thus, there were no traces to track.

Atom’s portal orbs worked on a higher set of concepts based around the Law of Space and the attributes of the Void. Atom had been mad as the hatter when he created it and while he understood how it worked. The mindset you needed to imagine things working this way wasn’t something he could repeat on demand.

Four silver-white lights shot out from the orb piercing the air at a singular point. Glyphs on the ceiling and floor previously not visible blazed to life five meters in front of the orb. At the four corners of these two lines of glyphs, one shown more brightly than the others. The silver-white beams began to rotate from the orb. The rotation moved faster and faster. There were no magic lightsaber sounds or electric arcs of thunder. It was a silent thing, but the power it gave off could be felt in your bones.

A light pop was all that signaled the portal had superimposed two different areas of space and time. The beams of light moved towards the four brightly lit corners. As they moved away from the center, it created a box that opened wide like a curtain, as the beams of light connected with the glyphs.

Atom wiped a trickle of sweat from his temple. Opening this thing was not easy. It didn’t precisely fatigue him, but it did get his juices flowing.

He turned to Dory and motioned to the open portal, “Welcome to facility forty-two. Ladies first?”

Dory eyed the opening before softly snorting, “You’d just be upset if I did. Really, Atom, you are quite the delicate creature when it comes to your little clubhouses.”

Tess guffawed, and Atom’s eye twitched. He ignored the women and strode into the dark landing with an annoyed expression. He had wanted to see if Dory could walk into his personally crafted pocket realm or not. Atom doubted that she could have done it without at least some visible effort. She had the right of it, though. If Dory had just walked in like it was a public bathroom or something, he would have… well, he wasn’t sure what he would have done, but it would not have been manly.

The landing was similar to the access point, with no visible doors or exits of any type. A white stone altar stood waist-high in the middle of the glossy white room.

Upon the altar stood a singular object bathed in blue light. It was a seemingly simple wooden recurve bow without a string.

Atom walked over and put his arm into the blue light and retrieved the bow. He turned around and started walking back out of the portal. Dory cleared her throat, and Atom looked at her. He narrowed his eyes at the woman.

Atom looked incredulously at the woman. He shook the bow in his hand like there was no way anything else would be needed.

Dory just laughed at him and said, “We’ll be needing one of the other things as well.”

His shoulders dropped in defeat. Atom had hoped he could get away with just the bow. But he knew that she was probably right.

Pulling out an old square grey controller, Atom pressed the select button. He then entered a button sequence that Contra fans would be very familiar with.

‘up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, Start.’

When he finished, a piece of the floor disappeared, and a white altar rose up just to the right of the bow’s stasis field. A glass box sat atop the altar. In the box stood a thirty-five-centimeter-tall all black figure. It would be easily mistaken as a high-end large action figure on Earth.

Atom walked over to the box and opened it with grudging resignation, retrieving the figure. He couldn’t store the bow or the action figure in his storage. Why he couldn’t, had to do with the grade of the items being above his own realm. He wasn’t sure why higher realm items worked that way since he could store higher-grade materials. But anything that was considered complete and named by its creator was treated differently. The system had odd quirks like that. If he tried, all he got was an error code explaining it wasn't possible.

Atom looked down at the items in his hand. Mentally activating a script, he read the notifications that popped up in front of him.

Bow of The End

Artifact Type: Weapon

Artifact Quality: Named

Artifact Grade: ????

Artifact Creator: Lord Brahma

Artifact Traits:

Unlimited Shot - Item can produce unlimited ammo.

Unblockable Shot - Capable of piercing anything in existence. Dependent on user’s realm of Ascension.

Unstoppable End - Arrows are infused with the Laws of Desolation and Oblivion. Anything struck by an arrow will find its end. Effects dependent on user’s realm of Ascension.

Description:

The Bow of Brahmāstra was created by the great Lord Brahma in their youth. Despite the destructive power of the bow, Lord Brahma was displeased with the item and eventually cast it away as a failure.

Deus ex Mechina

Artifact Type: Custom

Artifact Quality: Named

Artifact Grade: ????

Artifact Creator: Atom

Artifact Traits:

Hero - item has the ability to rise to the challenge under any circumstance. Dependent on the amount of anima invested.

MC - like the tropes of old, this item blesses the user with reality-bending fate. The user has no control of the trait and is subject to the whims of the Laws of Probability.

Description:

The Deus Ex Mechina was created by Atom while in a fugue state of paranoic madness. The artifact gained its name under dubious intellectual humor. It is unknown what this item is capable of as the creator, with his tinfoil hat, became too suspicious after its creation to thoroughly test its abilities.

Atom blinked twice as he read the description of the DEM. Had the system always been that cheeky? Hero? MC? He couldn’t recall it saying that the first time. The traits were just supposed to be about growth and increased luck. Was he being trolled by the system?

He looked up at the two women waiting patiently for him to exit the facility. He frowned in suspicion. Had one of them changed it?

Tess had a bored look as she brushed some of her purple-black hair out of her face. Dory, the picture of a Southern bell off at college, gazed at him innocently as she took a bite of something. Wait a damn minute. Was that one of his pirouline cookies?

He fought back the urge to check his inventory. Atom shook his head trying to get control of himself. No. No, it couldn’t be. He was slipping. The situation was getting to him, and seeing his nightmares come to life earlier was not helping.

He clutched his creation a little tighter as the sliver of paranoia reminded him why he had created something like this. Atom was strong by all standards. Even in the Divine Realm, he could go toe to toe with those above him. The synergy of his path and Mantle gave him that ability and some.

The number of beings who could end him was small in the scheme of things. It was almost not worth thinking about. He was essentially a walking talking apocalypse for any planet if he chose to be, yet there were more extraordinary beings out there. Their power eclipsing his own so far that he might as well lay down and die if they decided it was his time. How something like that wouldn’t make anyone feel paranoid was beyond his thinking.

Stepping out of the facility, Atom used his will on the orb, closing the portal. The two artifacts he had retrieved were very dangerous. One was direct proof that a divinity had influenced his home plane in some way. The other, a mad creation that would have nerds creaming their pants while probably getting him sued for copyright infringement if Earth’s corporate lawyers had a say on the matter.

Dory wiped her mouth, and crumbs fell to her shirt and the floor, “Are you ready?”

“How hot of a situation are we going into?” Tess said. Speaking for the first time in a while.

Atom could sense through her bond that she was concerned and a tad nervous. She hadn’t been there when they ventured out into the Void. While she could see his memories, it just wasn’t the same as experiencing them firsthand.

He sent a pulse of strong assurance and confidence across their bond. It didn’t matter if he actually felt that way or not. Because she needed it. In a way, Tess had been sheltered from how things had been in the beginning. Atom no longer took the risks he used to take, so they hadn’t been in any legitimate danger before together. He had complete confidence in her ability regardless, and he needed to let her know that.

Dory looked down at something neither of them could see. Most likely reading her personal screens granted by the system. He wondered what her screen looked like. It was probably some type of God Admin version. A few strokes of her finger and Atom would be deleted from existence.

He shuttered internally at the thought, and he began cursing his curious mind. It would do him no good to go down that line of thinking.

Looking up, Dory gestured in a wishy-washy manner, “It depends. We should be good, but we could arrive in the thick of it. Our other companions are already there monitoring the situation, but communication around the anomaly is almost nonexistent. We will have to see when we arrive.”

Atom frowned at her answer, “I think I’m going to need some more details about what exactly is going down. We also need to have a talk about why you have been spying on me.”

This was feeling way too half-cocked for him.

Dory walked over to Atom and patted his cheek, “Little Atom, relax. I predict that we have only a fifty-seven percent chance of perishing in this breach. That’s really good odds. We can talk about the other stuff afterwards.”

Atom’s mouth opened in horror. Those were terrible odds. This woman was about to get him killed.

Dory smiled at him and pointed at the action figure. “Just be ready to go all out and keep your Mantle in check. We can’t risk widening the breach. We are back up. So, technically, I don’t know where we are going yet. Breaches are opening in multiple locations. This is the only reason I decided to bring you in on this. It doesn’t happen too often, but it happens from time to time.”

“But why are the breaches happening at all. I thought it was impossible. Doesn’t the firmament repel them?” Tess asked.

Atom thought that was an excellent question. He’d obviously seen the thing come through, but how was the real question.

Dory looked at them. His expression seemed hesitant, but she eventually spoke, “The crystal has the answers you seek but the short of it is that we created something during the war, and it had lasting effects. Eventually a plane was sacrificed to contain the event.”

Dory ran a hand thru her hair, letting out her breath. A pained expression evident on her face, “We thought everything had been destroyed in the sacrifice, but something survived. It not only survived but has been helping these beings breach the Plane's protections. And not just any Plane either. It is almost always the lower Planes.”

That made Atom raise his eyebrows, but when he thought about it, he suspected he knew why, “It’s because they have less protection, right?”

Tess looked confused, so Atom explained, “Don’t get me wrong. The Lower Planes are heavily protected because they are so heavily protected. What do they lack or, should I say, whom?”

A light bulb lit up in her eyes, “They lack other ascendants. An infant Plane only has one or two powerful Mantles serving as guardians. While an ascendant Plane would have an untold number of powerful individuals.”

Dory gave her a wink and made two-finger guns, “Bingo, little lady! That’s what we think at least.”

Dory’s Southern drawl was really throwing Atom off. “Don’t you think you are leaning a little too much into your persona?”

Laughing, Dory waved him off, “Atom, honey, I’ve never spoken any other way—,”

She cut off as she looked at her screen in alarm.

Turning her head back to Atom and Tess, she said, “Get ready and don’t hold back because we’re coming in hot.”

Atom wasted no time as he threw the figure to Tess. His eyes went black as the twin blue-white stars of his path blazed to life. He took a firm grip on his power and removed the safety bracelet helping him keep control. Where they were going. He wouldn’t need to worry about that.

The air in the access point began to shimmer and distort around him.

He looked at Dory and nodded.

Without another word, they shifted.

The glowing eyes watched the portal close behind the little Divine realm.

“Something about this place feels off.” One of his eyes squinted in thought.

“Should I follow or explore? Hmmm. Let’s have a look around and then catch up.”

He gazed around at the room before phasing through the walls. He passed through metallic corridors and large rooms that looked like engineering access areas. Gargantuan mechanical structures dwarfing small mountains dwelled inside. They lay dormant but looked well maintained and ready for action at a moment's notice. He couldn’t fathom their purpose, but he assumed that all these places were part of a larger, more uniform structure.

“Is this place some type of titanic ship?” Clicking his tongue at his inability to sense the next rooms. The burning pink eyes quicken their pace. He did want to see what was here, but he also didn't want to miss the excitement that was to come.

Rooms and walls flashed by as he made haste to exit the structure. He eventually came to a wall that gave him difficulty in passing. He probed the metallic wall with his senses.

He focused on the changes, delving for its pattern. It was clever in its simplicity. He found a chaos-based algorithm that he hadn’t encountered before. As he gathered more and more information, he couldn’t help but appreciate the level of paranoia that went into creating the thing.

“Ah. The frequency is constantly in flux.” He snorted derisively. Something like this would not keep him out.

It was no wonder he was having difficulty sensing anything past each room, though. Every wall in this place had a different frequency and pattern that constantly changed. He hadn’t noticed since his power of phasing through objects was a passive thing. His power hadn’t deemed it relevant until it needed his active assistance.

Devoting a small fraction of his mental power towards the algorithm. A network of glowing pinpricks of light, representing nodes. The lights spread out around him. He observed as the frequency moved through the model like a busy little sprite. At first glance, there seemed to be no recognizable pattern. The light sporadically changed paths, flitting from node to node. Sometimes changing directions at the last second to ping another node.

He eventually cracked the algorithm as the glowing eyes watched the model play out. True chaos could not exist inside the Planes. It was subject to the Laws of Probability and Order. Given enough time, a pattern would emerge. It might not make sense to a squishy mortal mind, but that didn’t matter. His mind was neither squishy nor mortal.

A glowing smile split the air as he adjusted his energy state to match the frequency pattern and continued through the little chaotic wall. This all happened in seconds as a task like this was simple to a Sovereign Eternal.

He burst out from the facility, and his senses expanded to fill the area of this remote pocket realm. What he found shocked him to his core. A feat that happened very rarely to someone of his age.

He chuckled lightly, “Dory would have a fit if she knew about this. Actually, considering that woman, she probably already suspects.” He moved several thousand kilometers away from the structure and took it in with his burning turbine-like eyes.

“What in the nine Asuras was this kid thinking when he created this… thing? It’s madness. What is it even for?”

He grudgingly had to admit, though, that this Master Neutron, or Atom, had an impressive imagination. Thinking about the two hazardous items that the kid had taken possession of had him excited about the future breach.

They were always dull, and he rarely watched them anymore, but it had been a long time since he had seen one of Braham’s little toys in action. He had thought they had collected them all, but universes were enormous, and they hadn’t always been observing things so closely. Things were bound to be hidden in natural forming dungeons shielded by its core or in pocket realm inheritances.

He withdrew his senses and made a note of the artifact in front of him. If you could even call something rivaling a star in size an artifact. Either way, this Atom was officially going on a watch list. Several if he had anything to say about it.

He took a peek at what was going on with his little potential. She was still safely passed out in her sack. Good, he wouldn’t need to worry about her for now. He could tell that several Masters were monitoring the situation.

Turning his attention to the access point, he latched onto the infinitesimal traces of the shift left behind. He wondered if they would need to get involved in this one. He doubted it. Not with Dory there watching over everything.

Finally, following the traces to their destination, he took a peek.

“Oh my. How curious. So many. Hmm. I believe I’ll go watch this one in person.”

The Sovereign Eternal’s eyes faded away as he slipped into the Eternal Stream, leaving no traces of his presence or where he was going behind.