Ryan made his choice. It was the only one he had. He walked to the main control console of the giant psychic machine. A single, ominous-looking port glowed with a soft, gray light.
It was a neural interface, a direct plug into the collective mind of the entire planet. He took a deep breath and connected the port on his own suit to the machine.
The world dissolved.
One mont, he was standing on a tal platform high above a humming engine. The next, he was... nowhere. He was floating in a vast, gray, endless space.
There was no up or down, no sun or stars. It was a world made of fog and quiet thoughts, the collective dream of millions of sleeping minds.
The ground, if you could call it that, was a soft, spongy gray material that seed to absorb all sound. The sky was a lighter shade of gray, with no clouds or features.
In the distance, he could see faint, blurry shapes that might have been buildings, but they had no sharp edges, no windows, no doors. Everything was smooth, rounded, and monotonous. It was a world designed to be as uninteresting as possible.
He was an intruder here. A splash of bright, vibrant color in a world of gray. His very presence was a disturbance. He was a loud thought in a quiet library, a chaotic dream in a world of perfect, dreamless sleep.
Almost imdiately, the dream-world reacted to his presence. The gray ground beneath his feet began to ripple, and strange, shapeless forms rose up from it.
They weren’t monsters with claws and teeth. They were far stranger. They were the dream’s defenses, manifestations of pure contentnt and peace, and they moved to deal with the noisy intruder.
One of the shapes flowed toward him and wrapped around his leg. It didn’t hurt. It felt... warm and comfortable, like a soft, heavy blanket. It whispered a single thought into his mind, a thought that felt like it ca from his own head: Rest. You are tired. There is no need to struggle. Just rest.
Another shape, a floating cloud of gray mist, drifted in front of his face. It showed him an image, a vision of a quiet room with a comfortable chair.
The vision was incredibly tempting. It promised an end to all his worries, an end to the constant fighting. Peace, the cloud whispered. Everything is fine. Let go.
Ryan felt his eyelids grow heavy. The desire to just lie down in the soft, gray ground and sleep for a thousand years was overwhelming.
This was how Valerius controlled them. Not with fear, but with comfort. He was trying to be pacified, to be gently absorbed into the dream until he was just another quiet, sleeping mind.
He had to fight back, but his usual powers didn’t work here. This was a world of ideas, not of matter. He couldn’t punch a feeling. He had to use his mind, to hold onto the one thing this place didn’t have: a sharp, clear purpose.
Back in the physical world, in the citadel’s core chamber, Ryan’s body went limp. His connection to the machine was complete, and his consciousness was now gone, lost in the dream of Asylum. He slumped forward, held up only by the thick cable connecting him to the console. He was completely vulnerable, his eyes closed, his body as still as a statue.
Lord Valerius watched, a cruel, triumphant smile spreading across his face. His trap had worked perfectly. Ryan had walked right into it. The great and powerful god Shaper was now just an empty shell, a sleeping man ripe for the killing.
"So predictable," Valerius sneered, his voice dripping with contempt. "Always trying to be the hero, always choosing the most sentintal, illogical path. And now, it ends."
He created a blade of pure, crackling energy in his hand. It humd with a deadly power. He raised the energy blade, preparing to strike the killing blow, to finally rid himself of the one man who had ever defeated him.
He took a step toward Ryan’s slumped form.
WHOOSH.
A flash of red and silver light suddenly appeared between him and Ryan. The light solidified, and there stood Scarlett, her twin daggers already in her hands, her body in a low, defensive crouch. Her eyes burned with a cold, murderous fury.
WHOOSH. WHOOSH.
Two more flashes of light appeared on either side of her. Zara stepped out of one, a swarm of tiny, buzzing combat drones already circling her like angry hornets. Ilsa Varkov erged from the other, her heavy armor clanking as she landed, a massive energy shield already humming to life on her arm.
Valerius stumbled backward, his eyes wide with shock. "How?!" he sputtered. "My apathy beam... The ship’s teleporters should be offline! No one should have the will to operate them!"
The three won ford a living wall of flesh and steel around Ryan’s vulnerable body. They were a trinity of righteous anger: the assassin, the scientist, and the soldier.
"You forgot about the power of a good song," Scarlett snarled, her voice a low, dangerous growl.
Seraphina’s song had acted as more than just a shield against the apathy. It was a beacon of pure life, a psychic lighthouse in the gray storm.
Back on the Odyssey, Zara had been able to use that beacon, that pinpoint of pure, emotional energy, to get a temporary lock. It was just enough to bypass the apathy field’s interference for a split second and teleport a small team directly to Ryan’s position.
Valerius stared at the three won standing before him. His perfect plan was falling apart. He had neutralized an entire fleet, but he had forgotten to account for the fierce, stubborn, and completely illogical power of love.
"You think you three can stop ?" he snarled, trying to regain his confidence. "I am a god here!"
"You’re just a man in a fancy room," Scarlett replied, her eyes never leaving his. "And you’ll have to go through us to get to him."
The battle for Ryan’s body was about to begin.
anwhile, deep inside the dream-world, Ryan was fighting his own, quieter battle. He was pushing back the comforting gray clouds, trying to find the heart of the dream, the central point from which all this placid energy was being controlled.
After what felt like an eternity of wading through the thick, sleepy fog, he found it.
In the very center of the gray landscape was a single, perfect object: a flawless, gray crystal, the size of a house. It pulsed with a soft, gentle light, and with every pulse, a wave of calming, peaceful energy washed over the entire dream-world. This was the core of the collective consciousness, the source of the dream.
He knew he couldn’t just destroy it. The crystal was the linked minds of every person on the planet. Attacking it would be like setting off a bomb in a crowded hospital. It would cause catastrophic, unimaginable harm to the very people he was trying to save.
He couldn’t use force. He had to be clever. He couldn’t shatter the dream. He had to wake the drears up.
He stood before the giant, gray crystal and closed his eyes. He reached into his own mind, past all his powers and battles, and found a simple, pure mory. A mory from a ti long ago, on a world he could barely rember.
It was the mory of a child’s laugh.
It was not a polite, quiet chuckle. It was a loud, ssy, joyful belly laugh from a little girl who had just seen a puppy chase its own tail. It was a sound of pure, chaotic, unrestrained happiness. It was a completely imperfect and illogical sound.
He took that mory, that single, perfect drop of joyful chaos, and he gently projected it into the surface of the calm, gray crystal.
For a mont, nothing happened. Then, the crystal shuddered. A tiny, hairline crack of bright, golden light appeared on its smooth, gray surface.
The single, joyful mory was like a drop of bright ink in a glass of clear water. The perfect, monotonous peace of the dream had just been infected by a tiny, beautiful virus called joy. And it was starting to spread.
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