Alison-

Traveling with Vectress was very strange. I knew she was there because Paul had stated it, but her portal was… strained. When the ship was at the proper height, the portal formed as if she were standing beside us, although we had to rush through, since apparently in her current state she had extremely limited energy reserves.

We crowded into the storage area from the portal and knew we were on a clock. We were ill-equipped for an assault, but my senses told me that trying to lay hands on additional weaponry or space suits would increase the time factor as well as decreasing our chances to save a number of lives. We quickly split into groups and headed out into the passageways of the ship, which was much larger than the one Louis currently owned, almost half again larger.

If we succeeded, we would soon lose the metatech power supply as the individual sustaining it was capable of withdrawing her influence. Meta power was a very strange phenomenon, and I made no secret of the fact that I believed it was purely magical in nature. My own abilities, too, allowed me access to information that was beyond what even the most genius mind could predict. The idea that it was some sort of scientific phenomenon only made sense if you expanded science to include supernatural elements, like the collective unconscious, fate, or some other sort of ability that could only be placed firmly into the realm of the unapologetically magical.

Still, this was not the time to be drifting into the mental realms of potential. Louis’ team went first, with Deflector, who I knew was Antonia, heading towards the bridge. Their job was to try and keep the bridge team occupied and away from the purge mechanism until Calliope and Kyokudai reinforced them, while Aquantis remained in life support. There was a 90% chance that there was a failsafe of some sort in life support, and her knowledge of Marine Biology would be utterly vital in keeping the system running. I could almost feel the other Cassandra’s finger on events, but hopefully between Paul and I, we could minimize their influence.

Once they were reinforced, assuming that the convicts survived and the atmosphere was not purged, they needed to bring the station down into the atmosphere. Without the metatech power supply, the station would shortly become uninhabitable in orbit, not to mention that even if Vectress woke up, there was no way she’d be able to hold a portal long enough to evacuate everyone. I had no idea what Louis had planned, but I knew there was a greater than 82% chance he wanted to save everyone on the station save for the guards and Prometheans.

Sif led the way, heading towards cryo with Paul and me in pursuit. I had to assume that Lauren’s ghost, or whatever was drawing power from Paul to act outside of her body, was accompanying us.

Sif was wearing her body armor and looked like some sort of avenging angel while followed closely by Paul in a dark green jumpsuit with a brown hoodie over it. Paul was fascinating. Like the others, my instincts screamed that he was telling me a falsehood whenever he spoke about future events, but my Karmic analysis proved, repeatedly, that it was a false impression. Much like my forgetability, it was a sort of negative aura that impacted those around him, rather than a real response. If he had foreseen the sun rising tomorrow, and told you about it, you would become skeptical of its likelihood.

Louis was much larger and more muscular than Paul, although Paul was extremely fit as well, he hadn’t taken it to the extremes the way Louis had, and Paul hadn’t gotten whatever boost Louis had received from his potions to grow gigantic. Paul’s hair was much darker, and he didn’t have Louis’ freckles, but his bone structure, mouth, and especially eyes made it clear that the two were closely related.

Unlike Louis, I completely understood Paul’s actions. When you can see future events, sometimes those events push you into actions that seem harsh at the time. It had happened to me a thousand times, but Paul’s actions seemed, to me, to be entirely ethical, if not mandatory. Like Louis, he had a sense of assuredness and inevitability that was extremely appealing, especially when I was surrounded by a thousand threads of possibility and he could cut right through them with a simple statement. Not to mention that he was much more reasonably sized than Louis, and would be much more comfortable to be lying beneath, helpless, while those big hands...

I shook my head. Wrong time. Live in the moment, and save Karmic Analysis for the short term. One of the advantages we had was that wireless transmissions were impossible with the shielding that Stronghold used to keep itself from being detected from Earth. That meant that, when we encountered someone, they would have to use an intercom to communicate with the bridge. All we had to do was keep them from using it to remain undetected.

The cryostorage bay was a nightmare. Within the refrigerated steel bay were hundreds of what looked like corpses. They were rotating slowly on steel frames, not unlike a rotisserie, behind glass doors. Cryo storage was a bit of a misnomer since they were not frozen. Instead, their bodies were kept at a low temperature to retard degradation, slightly above freezing, while their organs and brains were kept functional with fluids and nutrient baths, and their muscles were occasionally electrically stimulated to prevent complete atrophy despite the lowered temperature.

The temperature was very cold, and I was grateful for my jacket, although Sif and Paul seemed to be fine with it. Sif’s armor glistened, and I said “One minute”.

We had been on board for five minutes and had one minute to get into position to take the primary medbay with, I presumed, one of the purge consoles in it. Purge would instantly expose the entire section to vacuum, and cold storage or not, it would kill everyone not in a suit, including the hundreds of helpless people stored here.

I held up one of those odd tablets Louis had made and marked it in my mind as a sacrifice for a positive fortune for my team. The amount of potential it must have had was huge, and I knew that luck was on our side as the chances of succeeding for all three terms rose by a large percentage. We were hovering at around 40% now, which was vastly better than the 12% we had had before, presumably due to the alien Cassandra’s influence.

I put my hand on Sif’s elbow as we approached the med bay, and then smiled and whispered to her, “It’s my turn.” to which she just nodded. Ironically, even though the med bay had large windows, the half dozen people inside hadn’t noticed us, due to the confluence of Paul’s memory and my fortune.

Two of the workers, a man, and a short woman, were checking over still forms on a series of beds inside the med bay proper, wearing lab coats, and four were playing cards of some sort. The card players were wearing a light sort of armor with a collapsible helmet, probably the combat vac suits, while the fourth was wearing much heavier gold and green armor. His eyes glowed faintly and I realized that this was the metahuman we would have to deal with. The other three had heavy snub-nosed weapons of some sort, probably low-velocity firearms in order to avoid penetrating the hull, but I wasn’t even close to versed enough with weapons to recognize the scifi-esque firearms.

I reached into the pocket of my own jumpsuit and activated left sock. My fingers closed around a piece of plastic, and I pulled an identification card with a magnetic strip out of my pocket and clipped it to the front of my suit by its telescoping lanyard, before leaning forward and swiping the card through the door’s magnetic reader.

Left sock was my name for an really almost silly ability. Things ‘accidentally’ came into my possession, usually something small and almost useless that someone had lost or overlooked. That ability was the reason I considered my powers truly magical, however, as somehow events in the past collaborated to produce something now that I could use.

Someone had apparently misplaced a security badge and it found its way into my pocket, probably due to my fortune manipulation. I had never gotten a weapon, or something truly dangerous or needed, but at times like these the ability was priceless.

The door slid open and I walked casually into the room, followed by Paul and Sif. No one even noticed, although one of the men said “Hey Shannon” without looking up from his cards.

I walked over to the control panel, covered with dials registering temperature, and realized that they all fed into a set of terminals, old-style with command frames displayed on the CRT monitors. The whole thing had a look of jury-rigging about it, and I realized that not only was this station larger and much older than the one Louis had taken possession of, but it probably didn’t have anything close to the expert systems that one boasted. To be honest, even if it had I doubted very much that Proteus would have allowed a smart system like that to handle the place.

I saw the four beds more clearly now, and they made my skin crawl. Several people were in various stages of disassembly, clearly kept alive by metatech life support. I almost threw up when I saw what had happened to Lauren, half of her chest was simply missing, as well as the right side of her collarbone and arm, and half of her face. The exposed organs and part of her brain were covered with clear plastic shells, tubing leading to her organs while her heart visibly beat.

I noted that the terminals had the purge command available with a few keystrokes, and I started changing bringing up help, changing the screens to highlight other areas and basically burying the primary screen in layers of trivia and available attribute screens. I was even able to start the antivirus, having it run a deep virus scan which should hopefully slow down anyone that tried to access any of the primary functions of the system.

Paul pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and tossed it on the floor, where it slid for a moment as I started doing the same on the second terminal. The man with the glowing eyes glanced up as a red light lit on the wall, the light bright enough to alert the gamblers that the life support system had determined that there were new drains on the system requiring acknowledgment.

“Hey Shannon, could you check the…” He stopped and glared at me for a second, “You aren’t Shannon! Alert!” he started to yell, slamming up from the table and kicking back his chair as the other three started fumbling their weapons.

In a moment, Sif moved almost too quickly to see, her sharp spearpoint stabbing deeply into the chest of one of the guards right through his armor while the other shaft racked a second guard across the face with a splash of blood and a nasty crackling noise. Paul dived sideways, and the meta stomped forward his hands starting to glow.

With a crack, the meta stepped on Paul’s phone where it lay on the floor and his foot slipped, sideways, almost causing him to do the splits. Waves of blue, incredibly loud barks of force came from his hands as he slid, one of the waves smashing the uninjured guard through the glass into the bay we had just exited, while the other wave shot through the space where Paul had been standing a moment earlier, impacting against the bulkhead behind him with a crunch that caused a massive dent in the steel wall.

Sif stepped forward into the thrashing meta’s space, and with a swish, slit his throat, almost his entire neck. She grunted a little with the strain, but the glowing-eyed individual put both his hands to his throat, collapsing as blood spurted out from between his suit fingers. When he collapsed, she stabbed the end of her spear down into the back of his neck, and the crack implied that she had cut his spine. Apparently, she was not too confident of her spear’s ability to penetrate his heavy armor.

Paul sighed a little and looked at Sif while I tried hard not to throw up. I knew that we were going to have to kill people, but I hadn’t expected it to be so….visceral. I coughed and looked at the floor, and could see a trickle of blood crossing it.

“Sif, I was going to put on Stereotype’s armor, but now it’s all covered with blood,” he stated matter-of-factly. I guess Stereotype was the meta’s name, but I didn’t really follow the Prometheans, I’d always been more interested in the Protectors. Now the guy bleeding out his life had a name, and I wished I didn’t know it.

Sif stepped toward the two lab-coated individuals and glared at them. “You two. I don’t like killing unarmed opponents, but if you make any move that looks like a threat, you’ll be joining Stereotype and the three stooges in Hel. Stereotype was a class C, and you see how long he lasted.”

The female doctor, a heavyset brunette in her forties held up her hands and said “But… they will depressurize the ship! We have to get to our suits!

Paul put an arm around me comfortingly and looked into my eyes for a moment. “You’ll be okay,” he said and started walking with me towards the beds. “We have to take care of Vectress now, or she and the others will die when we lose metatech power. We need to use the regen potions on them, and you need to give her as much fortune as possible and try to assign it to Louis. He has something he can lose, but if you try and do it yourself it will take your life as payment.” He smiled a little, “We have already gotten farther than I could before, lucky thirteen. We are going to win this.”

I nodded. “They must have retrieved and resuscitated her body seconds after Louis left. This is really going to hurt, I hope Lauren can handle it, and that we get incredibly lucky.”

He grinned at me, “Fortunately, Lucky is what you are best at.”

Louis-

Antonia and I headed for the bridge. There was no alert yet, but we only had six minutes. That should, just barely, be enough time.

The guards, and probably the crew, were going to be armored. That was… unfortunate. Normal people I could knock unconscious with a few hits, but wearing armor, I was going to have to strike for a deadly purpose. Mostly, unless you had enhanced durability, it was better to just rely on not getting hit. Against people with metahuman strength or fighting ability, unless the armor was truly spectacular, it just forced them to hit you a lot harder.

We were running, and when a guy wearing armor appeared in the tiny metal passageways, I just used a wing to flatten him against a bulkhead. I hit very, very hard, and I am pretty sure that it was a human, as he collapsed and I was pretty sure he was dead. It didn’t help that he wasn’t wearing a helmet, and the smashing blow left a trail of blood down the wall from where his head hit it.

Antonia’s ability to project kinetic deflection fields would be useful, but for right now I was more concerned with getting to the bridge as quickly as possible. I was wearing my armor, as was Deflector, but we had the toughness to back it up.

We headed through officer’s country at a run. The passageways here were slightly larger and were painted in warm creams and browns instead of the gray that the lower levels sported. Unlike Camilla’s ‘body’, the bridge and officer’s country had a very definite superstructure. Apparently, Cadmium had decided in a later version that having all of the control areas extended away from the hull was a poor idea, and later versions of the platform had the bridge and control inside the most heavily armored section. A decent view was less important than good protection.

We got to the bridge with almost two minutes to spare. I had forgotten just how much my new form could move despite the cramped confines, and Deflector’s kinetic ability allowed her to zip along with serious speed… I am certain that, if it came to a flat-out race, she’d stomp me even if I flew. The only thing slowing her right now was me.

The bridge was large and well-lit, and there were over a dozen people there, many of them on watch, but it was not as busy as I had expected. The bridge was vastly larger than I had expected, almost thirty feet across, and decorated a bit like a space drama on TV, with low railings and a pair of control panels in front of the captain’s chair with the crew sitting at them. A man in a skintight blue and gold costume was in the captain’s chair, and he spun to face me in the chair as I stepped onto the bridge.

“Ahh, right on time. Quintessence told me you would be here, but you made better time than I expected.” He was tall, dark-skinned, and bald, but his face was covered with a thin blue mask. The stars and Earth could be seen through the thick glass windows at the front of the bridge, and I realized that it was an actual view rather than a screen… real glass, however thick that might be.

I shrugged a little, pushing my wings out a few feet to keep Antonia’s presence somewhat masked. “I take it Quintessence is your Cassandra? I was actually sort of hoping to catch you by surprise, but the best laid plans etcetera.”

He shrugged and stood from his chair. “Well, that’s what I am here for. We have a file on you, you know. I can vent the atmosphere of any part of the station, or all of it, instantly. According to the peacekeeping article 16, I hereby place you under arrest by the authority of Proteus. Surrender, or I will be forced to use lethal force.”

I shook my head, “Seriously? Do you want to play cop, while you are surrounded by people who are stealing powers, cutting people up, experimenting illegally, creating monsters, and setting them loose in Siberia, while you hide behind Proteus and pretend it’s Warlock back from the dead? Who the hell do you think you are?” I scowled, playing for time.

He smiled broadly, “The guy who holds your life in his hands. I sort of expected you to be bigger. I have all the authority here, and you have just moved from the suspect list to the most wanted list. Everything is being recorded, and will be shown at your trial, edited to avoid the unpleasantness, of course.”

I chuckled, “Oh, did you drop the signal scrambling? Otherwise, any recordings you have are not going anywhere.” I felt Antonia brush my back slightly and assumed that meant she had figured out where the purge functions were, and temporarily disabled them. “Let’s turn it around, shall we?” I felt a slight tremor through the floor and assumed that meant that engineering had been taken. The vessel should be slowing and dropping into the atmosphere soon.

“I noted a vessel in international space committing slavery, torture, and other crimes against humanity. I am taking possession of this vessel and all of its chattel. Surrender yourself and your crew or I will be forced to engage.” I stated and then smiled broadly as my sensitive nose detected just the hint of a blend of jasmine scent mixed with fox.

He chuckled, “So are we going to just stand here and demand each of us surrender? That will not end well. I am faster, stronger, and tougher than you are. My name is Ouroboros, and I am a class B. I am faster than you, stronger than you are even in your monster form, and I can cut you into pieces before you can blink. Do you really want to tread this path?”

I nodded, “Yep. I was just waiting until I had the rest of the ship. Would you like to clear out your crew so they don’t die from proximity to an epic battle, or would you like me to monologue for a while first? I have been practicing long-winded speeches about inevitability and destiny and the fall of Proteus, I’d love to share them with you.”

I am not sure about stronger or tougher, but Ouroboros was definitely faster. He moved quicker than thought, quicker than I could even see, and I felt a crunch from my left side right about where my ribs would be. He was laying on the ground and started screaming as he held up a mangled hand.

Unfortunately, while Deflector’s kinetic inversion was enough o turn back the force of his blow and wreck his own knife-hand blow against me, as well as put me against a wall with enough force that I saw stars, enough had gotten through that I think several of my ribs were broken, despite my armor and innate toughness. Overconfidence, thy name is Louis.

“Blow it!” Ouroboros screamed, “Purge!” as he cradled his shattered hand. I stood up, protests from my rib cage ripping painfully through me, but I had been in worse pain.

“We can’t sir? Someone in environmental has frozen the output lines. We are almost cut off, and I cannot even touch the keyboard.” one of the crew members said, his hands hovering about an inch from the keyboard.”

I started charging toward the man on the ground, intending to do my best to stomp him into oblivion, and he glanced at me and vanished.

Not entirely. I saw a hint of motion behind me for a moment and threw up my wings to protect my back. I was tossed into the control panel, unfortunately catching one of the crewmen, but my wings blunted the force of the impact into my back and probably saved me from a broken spine or worse.

Overmatched, definitely. Not out-gunned, though, I hoped. He was standing there, shaking out his hands as I watched them straighten and heal. Apparently hitting me the second time had intercepted Antonia’s shield, and he was taking a break while both of his mangled hands repaired themselves. Of course, a super-speedster would have rapid healing.

“That hurt.” he stated. “But you said something about inevitability?”

I nodded as I struggled to my feet. “Yeah, we are both regenerators. The question is, how fast can you regenerate? Or is it just healing? I mean, I can take a pounding from you all day. It won’t fix your atmospheric systems, does hurting me make you feel better about your failure?”

I could try to hit him, but with his speed, I was unlikely to hit anything. The best I could do right now was keep him occupied and wait for reinforcements.

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one waiting for reinforcements as a huge figure stumbled through the door. “Regeneration takes time, and no one can survive dismemberment,” Ouroboros stated, and I didn’t feel it necessary to correct his misunderstanding. “Hitting you hurts, but Rampage is even tougher than I am. I am reasonably certain he can take you apart with relative ease.”

I felt something in the back of my mind. Something was asking for a sacrifice, a big one.

Crap. I needed them, but Lauren needed them even more. I could feel twisting pain curling inside and my wings slowly folded back, and I lost them, as well as my true form’s size. Everything I was wearing was suddenly too large as I returned to my original height.

Ouroboros suddenly cackled, “Aww… did someone run out of energy for their shapeshift? I promise that you won’t feel…” He made a sudden, odd gurgling noise and his head fell on the deck, followed a few moments later by the rest of his body.

The cavalry had arrived. Interestingly enough, despite losing my true form, I still had my aura, and I noticed that Rampage was looking at the body on the floor. He was huge, probably the same height as me in his true form, but with his width fitting through the passageways must have been a chore. He was ugly with orange skin, with a tiny head that seemed to be set forward of the grotesquely oversized musculature of his shoulders, his hairless bulk barely restrained by a pair of green trunks and his hands curling and uncurling.

Kayokudai was still concealed, and Antonia was barely visible at one corner of the room, half-hidden behind an instrument station. He looked at the body and then looked at me, and with a roar that was surprisingly high-pitched for his bulk, he charged at me.

From outside, I got a good look at the station. It was descending into the atmosphere, but both I and the bulk were flying away from it. A crystalline blue shimmer of Deflector’s kinetic shield was over the huge hole we had ripped in the side of the bridge. I was not descending, not that falling and burning up on re-entry would do much to help the eventual shards of flaming me that might eventually touch the ground. Somewhere behind me, I was pretty sure Rampage was thrashing around, trying to figure out how we wound up in space after he hit me hard enough to tear through the wall and outside of the ship.

I was going to die. It sucked, but at least Toby’s mom would live. Hopefully, they could also save some of the other people in cryo. Lots of information, Proteus was going to have to answer some hard questions, I only wish I could be there for it.

The thing is, why was dying taking so damned long?