Gilgamesh stands amidst the ruins of the Lethe Clinic, his sleek Myrmidon Armor a contrast to the thin layer of still-settling dust that’s covering everything around him. He wrenches his chosen weapon out of the ground. It’s at least eight feet long, with a simple metal point at one end. Maybe it’s Gae Bolga, from Irish mythology, or the Spear of Longinus. All I know is, I’d rather not end up with it sticking out of my chest.

He asked me a question. You started this. Are you prepared to finish it?

“What do you think?”

Defiance has always been a good look on me, but I can’t imagine it’s especially convincing right now. I collapsed, along with just about everything else, when that spear fell from the sky and destroyed most of the clinic, including the ground we were standing on. When Gilgamesh arrived, I’d just barely managed to get on my feet. My helmet is still somewhere amidst the rubble, and I can feel a number of cuts and scrapes on my face.

“I think you’re a child, who has no idea how many years of work he just pissed away.”

The time-looper spins the spear around and raises it up to hurl at me. I bring up my hard-light shield, already aware it’ll shatter like glass the moment the weapon’s tip touches it. But before Gilgamesh can strike, something hits him right in the chest. He’s thrown to the side by the sheer force of the blow. When I look to see who fired, I find Conrad Winters, holding his rifle. I didn’t ask what it was capable of, and he never fired it during our fight with Astro and Professor Superior, but now I know what he brought it for.

“Here!”

Winters tosses me something, and it takes a second for me to realize it’s my helmet. Swiftly, I shake the concrete fragments out and put it back on. The HUD comes alive just as Gilgamesh is getting back on his feet, and I hear Zero’s voice in my ear.

“Stall him. Vindicator and Adamant are on their way.”

She’s maintaining an impressive level of calm given the circumstances. Then again, she’s not actually in the room with Gilgamesh, and we are. He turns to face Conrad, who doesn’t flinch. At some point he put his mask back on, as much to disguise his own expression as for any real tactical reason. I sympathize.

“The Winters brat. Unexpected.”

Drawing my sidearm, Inquiry, I open fire on the old man without hesitation. He’s shrugged off gunfire before, but not Koppel bullets. I’m half expecting them to just bounce off, but instead, they penetrate, leaving sizable holes in the Myrmidon Armor. Unfortunately, it reveals what I already knew- there’s nothing inside. No body, at least. Gil’s consciousness is piloting the thing, but his physical form is displaced while the armor is active. What I did prove, however, is that the armor can be damaged. Which means all we have to do is tear it to pieces, until Gilgamesh can’t move.

Unconcerned with the damage to his suit, the Council’s founder advances on Winters, who wisely backs away. He’s aware that his suit won’t protect him from any of Gil’s weapons, if the sword that the old man used against the Andromedans is anything to go by. Gilgamesh lunges forward unexpectedly, and at speed, but Conrad leaps out of the way, easily clearing six feet with a single jump. Something in his boots, maybe. In the air, he angles the rifle down and fires, blasting Gil in the back, and slamming him face-first into the ground. I’m wary of doing further damage to the building we’re in, which could cause it to collapse completely and send us all down the mountain, but there’s no room for holding back against this opponent.

Atalanta seems to have extricated herself from the rubble, and is now digging among it for her weapon. I shout over at her, not sparing a second to worry about my tone. This is life or death, politeness and etiquette are out the window.

“Forget the gun! Cut Beringer loose!”

Ordinary bullets won’t do anything against the Myrmidon Armor, and Liv didn’t have time-locked shotgun shells with her. In retrospect, that might have been good to bring, but hindsight is 20/20. Freeing Professor Superior, who I left restrained after Geas compelled him to fight me, is more useful. She glances around, locates where Beringer fell, and rushes over to cut the bolas off of him.

Pushing himself up with one hand, Gilgamesh swings the butt of the spear in Conrad’s direction, and knocks him out of the air, tumbling into a pile of debris. Continuing to fire Koppel rounds would work, but I don’t want to make him target my gun specifically, since I’ve got virtually no other options that can hurt him. Instead, I grab a device from my belt and toss it at his back while he’s standing. A second later, it activates.

A certain metahuman scientist specializing in gravity-manipulation tech made the device that I use to slow down while falling. But his real passion was for doing the opposite. Increasing gravity. To that end, he built a massive cannon capable of flattening people at random, intending to blackmail the city of Pax into paying him a great deal of money. After shutting him down, Jason and I repurposed his technology in a number of ways. The slow-fall modules are one. The device I just attached to Gilgamesh is another. While active, it’ll magnify the effects of gravity on his body by a factor of ten. Already, I can see him struggling to move, to even lift an arm. He’s withstanding it better than most, because his actual body isn’t suffering under the strain, but even the Myrmidon Armor is subject to gravity.

Back on his feet, Conrad draws his own sidearm, and starts firing, surprising me by unloading Koppel bullets of his own into the armor. He intuited my strategy without words. Smiling grimly, I do the same, careful to avoid hitting the gravity amplifier. Gilgamesh lumbers towards me, back hunched, but I continue to fire as I back away. He’s slow enough that both Winters and I can target his legs, which are the obvious place to start. If we can detach them entirely, it won’t matter that Gil’s body isn’t inside the armor. He won’t be able to move. Unfortunately, our bullets aren’t leaving wounds as big as they might on a human, because they’re piercing metal rather than flesh.

Shifting the spear to get as much range as possible, Gilgamesh sweeps it towards me, forcing a pause in my onslaught as I throw myself backwards. With the other hand, he laboriously reaches for his back, trying to grasp the device, though lifting his arms is nearly impossible thanks to the heightened gravity. Finally, he gives up, and slams himself to the ground, back first. The gravity works in his favor, making the impact more powerful, and when he gets back on his feet, it’s clearly with the device destroyed.

“You!”

The accusatory shout doesn’t come from Gilgamesh. He turns to look to the source just as I do, and we both find someone expected. Astro, fully armored and awake. The tranquilizer Conrad hit him with should still be in effect, but I don’t have a hard time believing that his alien armor purged it from his system. Nor am I complaining, considering his wrath seems to be directed towards Gilgamesh at the moment.

“Blake,” he replies, sounding more resigned than anything. Then Astro charges him, arms transforming into cannons. He’s been a part of the Council longer than anyone here except Beringer, so he has to know conventional weapons won’t work. But instead of firing, he just runs up to Gilgamesh, avoiding a thrust of the spear, and presses the barrels of the cannons to his chest. It’s only then that they activate, with a shockwave that nearly throws me off my feet. Gilgamesh is launched into the air instantly, like a golf ball struck by a perfect drive.

All is silent for a moment. Then the spear appears in Astro’s chest. There’s no explanation except that Gilgamesh threw it, but it would take titanic strength to launch it with such speed, from such a distance, while in midair. It doesn’t make the building collapse, but it’s served its purpose. A second later, lightning strikes the spear again, and Gilgamesh appears beside it, one hand holding the shaft. He pulls it out of Blake’s chest slowly, eliciting a scream of agony from the space pioneer, who collapses to the ground. Selene, his living armor, writhes around him, sealing Astro in some kind of cocoon. Maybe it’s capable of healing a wound that grave. Maybe not. Either way, Samuel Blake is out of the fight.

There’s no gloating. Not even a ‘I wish you hadn’t made me do this.’ Just a sigh. Then he turns to me. Conrad and I have been firing since the second he reappeared, of course, but the continual perforation of his armor seems to be of little concern. A few of our bullets even left holes in his blank faceplate, but since he’s not really seeing through it, I doubt he’s even noticed.

None of Astro’s blood is on the spear as he draws it back to throw at me. I keep firing, preparing myself to move the moment he releases the weapon, and not a second before. I can already tell it won’t matter. He hit Blake from over a mile away and there wasn’t a second between it leaving his hand and entering his target. Behind Gil, Winters is firing with one hand and tossing grenades from his belt with the other. Napalm, liquid nitrogen, and ordinary shrapnel fail to do anything, but the fourth one is different. Nothing explodes out as it detonates- space just distorts for a second, and when it snaps back, I can see a massive chunk of armor is missing from his back. Some sort of antimatter attack, maybe? Whatever it is, I hope he has more.

Gilgamesh turns around slowly, intent on killing Conrad before he can pull anything else from his bag of tricks. Unfortunately, I don’t think I have much left that could help- maybe the time-locked knife, but using it would require being in close proximity, and cutting a few gashes in the armor seems unlikely to be of much use. With enough time, I could cut one of his legs off, but he’d run me through before I got the chance.

Before I get a chance to decide, the cavalry arrives. Adamant hits Gilgamesh like a missile, carrying him through the few clinic walls that are still standing, and right into the side of the mountain. When the cloud of dust and snow clears, I can see her pinning him down, one hand holding his arm with the spear in place, while the other has fingers jammed inside the holes in his helmet. She seems to be trying to tear the armor apart, and more incredibly, she’s succeeding. Haley’s metal form is the only thing I’ve ever seen exhibit durability equivalent to that of the Myrmidon Armor, and it seems that makes her capable of damaging it. Using his free hand, Gilgamesh is jackhammering her skull, but she doesn’t even flinch, just continues to twist and tear his helmet until there’s a massive hole in the faceplate. With that done, she doesn’t waste a second in moving on to the rest of his body. Grabbing the other arm, she locates a bullet hole and begins attempting to wide it so that the entire arm can be torn off.

While Adamant is doing that, Gilgamesh is shifting his grip on the spear, until he’s got the very end in his palm. Then he tosses it weakly, unable to make it a proper throw thanks to the way Haley’s got his arm pinned. But it’s enough. The spear lands inside of the clinic, and he pulls the lightning-teleport trick again, escaping her grasp entirely. When he reappears, he’s on his knees, helmet still bent out of shape, one hand on the spear.

Adamant turns around, ready to attack, but Vindicator strikes first. He arrived seconds after Haley, hovering above the ruined clinic, and now that he’s got a clean shot, he starts to fire. Each of the projectiles is a Koppel bullet, but he’s not firing them one at a time like Conrad and I. He’s like a machine gun, with one difference- the bullets he’s firing are ten times faster. The force of their impact is like being hit by a truck, and he makes sure to strike at different parts of the armor, leaving hundreds of holes in a single second. Clay’s expression is pure, grim fury. When Gilgamesh manages to hurl the spear at him, he catches it effortlessly within his telekinetic field, and then immediately launches it straight up into the sky. Knowing Vindicator, there’s no chance of it falling back down- that thing will leave the atmosphere within seconds.

Over the sound of Clay’s shots, I hear a voice. Eric Beringer.

“You took me out of hell,” he says, voice surprisingly firm, “and I’ll always be grateful for that. But this has to end.”

Professor Superior is standing behind Atalanta, bracing himself against one of the few walls that’s still standing. Liv’s got a gun in her hands, built from components I recognize. The barrel of my sonic rifle, the focusing dish of his pain-ray, and scraps of other tech that was destroyed during the fighting. It looks fragile, like it won’t survive being fired once. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t dangerous. For all his quirks, Beringer is still a member of the Council. To have earned that dubious distinction, he has to have ended the world at least once. I don’t doubt that he could have made a weapon capable of piercing the Myrmidon Armor with just the scraps he had on hand. The only problem is a power source. Fortunately, he has an infinite one. Atalanta isn’t just holding the weapon, she’s powering it. There are a half-dozen wires trailing out of the barrel and leading into her arm. She’s channeling the excess energy of her body through them, and into the gun.

There’s a loud hum, as the weapon cycles up. Then it fires. A crackling blue beam pours out of the makeshift barrel, bright enough to be nearly blinding. It washes over Gilgamesh, burning like a supernova for a split second. Then it vanishes. The gun’s gone, front end melted away in an instant. Liv collapses, and Beringer hobbles over to her side as quickly as he can, swiftly yanking the wires out of her. She’s never expended that much energy that quickly- she’s burned out. But it looks like that one shot might be all we needed.

The Myrmidon Armor appears to be melting, slowly but surely. Already riddled with holes, it’s now barely recognizable as a suit of armor. The legs are ruined, and Gilgamesh drags himself forward as the metal continues to slough away. But despite the fact that his helmet is a misshapen mess, his voice is unmistakable as he roars.

“Enough!”

The red stone in the armor’s center, which survived the entire onslaught undamaged, pulses bright crimson. When my vision clears, Gilgamesh stands tall, armor completely restored, spear once more in hand. Everyone in the room is on the ground, some still awake but seemingly unable to move, others unconscious. Nobody looks dead, but neither are they in any shape to fight. He walks over to me, and I realize I’m on the ground too. The sheer unfairness of a nearly-indestructible suit of armor that can also instantly regenerate all damage irks me for a second, before Gilgamesh plants a boot on my back, and I suddenly have much bigger concerns.

“Do you know how many times I’ve done this before? Understand this: you never had a chance of winning. Not even close.”

He raises the spear and sighs again. There’s no regret or remorse in it. Just annoyance. All of our weapons have failed. There are no more contingency plans left. But I knew better than to go into this without an ace up my sleeve.

“What if... I could show you something new? Something you’ve never seen before?”

There wouldn’t be any point in begging. He’s heard every variation possible already. Probably given more than a few of them, too. But I’ve got one last card to play. He might be right. Maybe we never had a chance of winning this fight. But I didn’t beat Grendel, or Machina, or even Geas through brute strength. I’m not on par with any of them, to say nothing of Gilgamesh, in terms of strength or intelligence. But I can be pretty clever when it counts.

“You have nothing to offer me.”

“And you’ve got nothing to lose,” I wheeze, “by hearing me out.”

He considers that for a second, and removes the boot. The spear remains inches from my neck, even as I slowly get to my feet. He makes no move to stop me. Why bother? There’s nothing I could do to hurt him.

“All of the effort you put in, you think it’s gone to waste. But it hasn’t. We didn’t do this to get rid of the Council. Just to get rid of O’Connor, Robards, and you. Kill us, and you’ll have to start all over. Let us live, and we’ll take over. All of us want to keep the world safe. We just aren’t willing to countenance the methods you used.”

Gilgamesh doesn’t move. It’s slightly disconcerting to speak to a man with no face, but I do my best, keeping my gaze fixed on where his eyes should be.

“I won’t be moralized at by the likes of you. And I have no interest in sitting idly by while you make a mess of things. All this would accomplish is making my task harder.”

At least he’s willing to hear me out. That’s a start. Because at the end of the day, all he wants is a world where he doesn’t have to constantly fight. The whole point of the Council was to outsource the world-saving, and relieve some of the burden. Protecting humanity is only important because it maintains the infrastructure that allows him to live comfortably. Letting us run the show just means risking the chance that we’ll fail, and he’ll be stuck in a post-apocalypse with no toilet paper or clean drinking water again.

“You wouldn’t be. I said I could show you something you’ve never seen. While we took over, you’d go into cold storage at Avernus. All of your different timelines, I bet you’ve never seen anything much past the end of your natural lifespan. Because if you tried to go into cryo and wait, something would ruin the world. But if you leave us in charge, we’ll do all the hard work, and unfreeze you a hundred years from now. If we succeed, you’ll wake up in a totally unfamiliar world, one where you won’t know exactly what’s coming next, and where you won’t have to fight all the time. If we fail, we’ll cut off your pod’s life support, and you can start from scratch in a new timeline.”

It might have been better to lead with the start-from-scratch part and finish with the brave-new-world part, but what’s done is done. Gilgamesh is silent, his spear unmoving from its position at my throat. Part of me is still certain he’s heard this exact offer before, and that he’s about to run me through for wasting his time. But eventually, he speaks.

“Two hundred and fifty years. I want to be certain that all of you are dead when I wake up.”

Unless I’m hearing things, that sounds suspiciously like acceptance. I don’t quite believe it’s possible, but while most of my brain is processing it, some part that’s operating mostly on autopilot responds.

“That can be arranged.”

Another long stretch of silence. Then Gilgamesh reaches up and presses two fingers to the gem in his chest. The Myrmidon Armor folds up into an amulet, and he catches it with one hand, sticking it into a pocket. His spear vanishes in a flash of lightning.

“Your terms are accepted. Let’s go. Before I change my mind.”

Still in shock that this seems to be working, I activate my implant, and select Avernus as my destination. Gilgamesh does the same, and we depart together, leaving the others behind. I feel some level of guilt, but they’ll get over it. As the old man said, it’s imperative we get this done quickly, before he decides he’d rather just have his revenge.

When we arrive at Avernus, the same body is inside the guard booth. He scrambles to grab a rifle off the wall, and keeps it trained on Gilgamesh as he steps out. This is the first time I’ve seen Network look confused, though there’s a certain amount of fear mixed in there too.

“Graves? What are you-- what is he--?”

“He’s agreed to go into cold storage,” I say swiftly, raising one hand slowly to calm him down. Even without his armor, I’m sure Gilgamesh could kill the body before he even had the chance to pull the trigger. All that it would do is potentially fuck up the deal.

“He what?”

“You heard him,” Gil says, his voice hard. The man clearly isn’t happy about this arrangement. I’m not thrilled either, but there is one big advantage. I wasn’t entirely certain what would happen if we actually succeeded in killing him. The best option is that life would go on as normal. Either he’d wake up in another timeline, or it would turn out that his power actually just simulated an uncountable number of fake lives in his head when his powers manifested. But the other option is that reality would just blink out of existence the moment his heart stopped. It seems implausible when phrased so plainly, but the only way to find out would be to actually do it, and I’m not especially eager to find out. It was worth the risk considering he’d have killed us all otherwise, but now that another option is on the table, I’m not about to complain.

Thorn drops the gun and hurries through the doors to go get a pod ready. Hopefully the process won’t take long. The sense I get is that Gilgamesh is willing to see this through for as long as it remains simple. The moment it requires more effort than just killing all of us and starting over, he’ll just do that instead. He strides after Network, unconcerned with whether I follow, which I do.

No words are spoken on the way down to the Stasis wing of the Council’s secret prison. I’m grateful for the carpeting, because otherwise our footfalls would be deafening. Once we get downstairs, the carpet ends and the concrete begins, but by then, the sound of a cryo-pod opening up drowns everything else out. Everything feels slightly more heightened, and I’m not sure if it’s the adrenaline or having taken one too many hits to the head over the past day. There’s a touch of unreality to the whole process.

Two more of Network’s bodies, wearing white lab coats, stand next to the pod. One of them is working the controls, while the other is just looking on nervously. Its voice is appropriately high and reedy.

“How long will he be, ah, staying with us? If I might ask?”

It’s a little disconcerting to see Thorn this rattled. He always gives off the impression that he’s doing something more important, somewhere in the world. But I suppose this is the most important thing happening on the planet, right now.

“Two hundred and fifty years,” Gilgamesh repeats. “Minimum. I suppose you’ll still be alive by then. Just as well. Someone will need to let me out.”

Thorn nods, taking that in. I hadn’t even considered the fact that he’ll probably live forever. Unless his original body dying will kill all the rest, but that seems unlikely. For all I know, ‘Axel Thorn’ is already long-dead. All he needs to do is continue acquiring new bodies at a rate faster than old ones can die off or be killed, and he’ll be set.

“Very well. It should be ready momentarily. Would you like to change into something more comfortable for your stay?”

His composure is returning rapidly. Gilgamesh shakes his head.

“These will be fine.”

Cargo pants and a plain white t-shirt. As far as I know, the Myrmidon Armor medallion is the only thing he’s carrying. Maybe he’ll be able to summon all his special weapons the second he wakes up. Maybe he doesn’t care. He contemplates the pod for a moment, then turns back to me.

“If you’re still alive when I wake up, I will kill you," he says bluntly.

“I won’t hold my breath.”

He barks out a laugh, then hands me a smooth metal disc with no markings of any kind. ““If you’re going to take over for me, you’ll need this. It contains all my notes. One of your people should be able to access the data. Or not. It doesn’t matter.”

Apathy is better than anger, given the circumstances. I tuck the disc away and nod. Thanking him probably wouldn’t do anything except get on his nerves.

“The unit is ready,” Network informs us. “We’ll have it placed under heavy security once you’re fully frozen.”

Gilgamesh nods in his direction, still facing me.

“Good.” A pause. His expression is no more readable than it’s ever been. Then turns towards the cryo-pod, and situates himself inside. No instructions necessary. As the unit seals itself around him, I see something in his eyes that resembles calm. Then there’s a pneumatic hiss, and he’s gone.

Nobody speaks. All of Network’s eyes are fixed on the pod. So are mine. The readout is static for a moment, then turns green. I take it to mean he’s completely frozen. No chance that he’ll burst out and start slaughtering us. Only then do I dare breathe a sigh of relief.

“Should we... kill him?”

I shake my head, suddenly feeling indescribably exhausted.

“No. Too much of a risk. Unless the situation changes, we do exactly what we said. Keep him as secure as possible, and let him out in a few hundred years. In the meantime, we do our best to create a society capable of handling him.”

Thorn considers that, and seems to find it acceptable. Then it’s his turn to be relieved.

“I suppose this means that we won. Doesn’t it?”

“Yeah. I guess it does.”