Chapter 32: Chapter 31 – A Higher State of Beings

The warriors, as soon as they noticed Omega’s presence, were bringing their weapons up to their shoulders. They had red, scuffed rifles, with different paint jobs and marks drawn onto them, customized by their proud owners. They were Wuulfharn coilguns. Their design was simple, crude yet easily mass producible by any of their worlds. They worked by accelerating magnetized projectiles, hurling them at their targets at a high velocity. Even though they were told to capture their targets alive, some casualties were always acceptable in a mission. 

“Hmf.” Omega flinched, his eyelids twitching for a brief moment, watching them getting slower and slower, almost slowing down to a standstill. They were trying to kill him, racing amongst themselves to see who would be the first to draw blood. Their reflexes were above that of a human but in that moment, for Omega’s senses, everything was happening at a snail's pace.

In his eyes, everything was changing around him. Color quickly left the world, turning it into a contrast between black and white. It was overlaid with thousands of hair thin, continuously color changing strings. They were part of everything, making up not just the ships, the excited warriors, Omega himself, but they were also part of the air and the vacuum of space behind them all. These strings were all connected, intertwined yet at the same time, independent.

“I…” Omega whispered to himself, momentarily being lost in the experience.

He knew that he had always been seeing these strings. They were part of the universe, connecting everything into one, endless matrix on a quantum level. When he was not focusing his mind on them, they simply blended into the background, becoming invisible. Yet when he truly looked at them, everything else lost its focus and became nothing more than an object in the background. By now, he was watching the Wuulfharn warriors. They were aiming their weapons at him, moving ever so slowly. For a second he only saw them as an amalgamation of many, colorful strings, like a biological AI and its continuously changing codes.  Looking back at his hands, he saw that he was holding onto a bunch of strings, connected to the fragments of the Dawn. All of them were a piece of metal which was torn off from it by the impact of the Bloodhound. 

“...” Omega said nothing, only raising his hand, pulling on them and forming them to his liking. They did not resist and let him manipulate them as he felt like.

What he was doing at that moment was turning the spinning metal chunks of the Dawn into sharp blades, pulling them into his own hands. Doing it was second nature to him. It was the same feeling when he modified the computer in the doctor’s office or when he grabbed onto an Astropath, dragging the Dawn out of it while he was floating in the emptiness of space. From  Wuulfharn warriors’ perspective they only saw that seemingly from nothing, two swords had appeared in the man’s hands. As if he was always holding them, they just didn’t notice it before. None of them truly bothered with it because their fingers were already pulling on their weapons’ triggers. Every one of them wanted to claim the first kill for themselves. 

For Omega, all this was new yet also not. He knew that he was always capable of doing this yet he only realized it now. Raising his hands, watching them holding the slightly curved blades, without any handle or decoration, made him feel as if he was already proficient using them. It was not the first time for him to hold a weapon like these, facing many enemies at once. He watched as some of their weapons flashed in a blinding, white light in their coroless state. Small, metal projectiles were spinning towards him ever so slowly. He just turned his head, watching the many different strings for another moment before looking downwards and stepping onto one of it. Its color quickly changed from a peaceful, bright green color into a deep blue, then into crimson. When Omega looked back up, he was already standing in the middle of the wolf pack. They were still facing forward, their fingers squeezing the triggers, shooting and aiming at where they still perceived him. 

Raising his arms and swinging them, his blades were slicing through them without any resistance. He was cutting not their flesh nor their armors. He was aiming at the colorful strings that connected them with reality itself. His ‘swords’ left no visible mark on the bodies but their strings, like those of puppets, were cut off. Their colors quickly faded as their connection was severed to the universe itself. Next, Omega just stepped onto another string which changed color and by the next moment he was inside the Wuulfharn’s ship. 

Back on the Dawn, for the slavers, everything happened at a speed they couldn’t even perceive. They were dead before their thoughts could take form in their brains. Those who managed to pull their triggers, their weapons did fire but they hit nothing. Their hands were going limp as they fell forward, their bodies already lifeless. All of them wore their excited, snarling expressions under their vicious helmets but their eyes were without any light. Omega didn’t even look back. He was discarding his swords, letting them turn back into torn off pieces of the Dawn as he was walking forward on the Wuulfharn’s ship, following a string, walking atop of it. 

“What happened?” Wakatu asked as his eyes shrank into the size of pinheads. The audio feed from the boarding party was suddenly cut off, without any notice. One moment they were listening to their leader, Quatu’s message that they have boarded and… And the followup sentence never came. They only received dead silence. No matter if they called out to them, there was only a static noise coming back, echoing out from the bridge’s speakers.

“I have no life-signals coming in…” Evin said, with an uncertain voice.

“It has to be our sensor's mistake. After ramming another ship, it can easily fail! It was a hard impact so I wouldn’t be surprised if that is the case!” Osha added, quickly rationalizing a reason or else it just wouldn’t make any sense.

“Wait!” Evin exclaimed. “We have someone on the ship! His movement… no, this can’t be right!” 

“See?” Osha said again, switching to the same feed her sister was looking at. She saw a point, indicating an unidentified intruder, zigzagging through their ship, like a wild electron. “Our sensors are faulty after the impact! It shows it to move through-” She said, now much more confident of her hypothesis. 

“Through what?” Evin turned towards her but what she saw was a man standing between them and Osha's lifeless body which was leaning onto her own console. Her mouth was still open in mid-sentence but there was no light in her eyes. 

Omega was not even looking at her, just grabbing onto one of the other strings, connected to Evin’s body and snapped it with his fingers. Her last thought was only a question; Who the hell he was? But she just collapsed with the question marks still visible in her enlarged eyes. Wakatu had a somewhat better reflex as he was already standing up from his chair when Omega reached out, pinching in the air, making him fall backwards, dead. The last one to go was Zezu. He tried to say something but he never managed to push the air through his vocal cords, going limp in his chair.

“Now… the ship…” Omega murmured, thinking about what to do with it. “Let me first dislodge it from the Dawn…” He said to himself. He didn’t do it with the Bloodhound’s own controls, but by, from its bridge, grabbing onto the entangled strings that were connecting the two vessels. Gently straightening them out managed to simply pull back the shark-like ship, without doing any more damage to the Dawn. It was at that moment, when his personal communicator beeped. “Yes?” He asked calmly.

“We are being released!” Sylen’s voice came through with excitement. “What is the situation down there?”

“Already dealt with.”

“Huh?” She asked, at first thinking that he was just trying to calm her down.

“As I said. Already dealt with.” He repeated.

“I… You know what? I don’t want to know!” She groaned, not about to start complaining that they were not in immediate danger anymore. “But you should come up, who knows what they are planning to do next!” 

“I am on their ship.” He added.

“WHAT?!” Sylen shouted. She thought she wouldn’t be surprised by him anymore, yet it happened again. “Damn it! Can you get back somehow? Wait…” 

“Mmhm? What is it?” Omega asked, tilting his head, looking around the silent bridge with the four corpses surrounding him.

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“Another ship has appeared… I don’t recognize its design… it looks like a teardrop. Also, the Dawn says that we lost the connection to all Astropaths… She can’t transmit the opening sequence!”

“...” Hearing her words, his body suddenly shuddered, completely involuntary. “Go! Leave towards the nearest one!”

“What now?” Sylen asked, once again, surprised. And not in a good way. She never heard him like this before. She even assumed that it was an error in the voice transmission. His voice was… shaking. He sounded afraid.

“Just go! Dawn!” Omega ordered and the ship, unlike Sylen, obeyed. It was turning its acceleration to the maximum and it was leaving the Bloodhound behind, with him still on it.

He was turning towards the source of his dread. He knew that what he was feeling was real and pure fear. His hands were shaking and he felt his heart ache. He could swear he was also hearing countless people’s cries for help from a distance. He had to force himself to calm down and he started to focus on the strings in his vision. He was once again expelling the colors from the world around him. Yet in the next moment he was no longer alone on the ship. Another, lanky figure, in a white, hooded robe stood before him.

“Found you.” He said with a hoarse voice, looking at him with silver eyes, glittering under his hood. He was standing on the same string as Omega was at that moment. “I may not have the same strength as a Pure One but I am still a being that the Creator itself brought to this world. I am more than enough to capture something that was made by… lower lifeforms.” He snarled, for the first time, showing real emotions as he was reaching towards a multicolored string, attached to Omega’s body.

Omega was simply frozen in place by his own fear, unable to react in time. The bald figure pinched it with ease, siphoning the color out of it before snapping it into two. When he did so, Omega felt like his whole being was shaken by the hands of death itself. He felt himself turning into nothing. Literally. He was losing his own thoughts and feelings while the figure before him just watched, amusement flashing in his eyes.

“I can’t fathom why the Pure One couldn’t kill you, if it is this easy… Maybe he got old? Maybe I should be made into a Pure One. After I bring your ashes back, the Creator may just do that!” He smiled, watching Omega fall backwards.

“Alfy!” Echoed a happy laugh in Omega’s eyes as he felt his whole being shudder once again. This time, it was different. It was expelling all the fear from him, just by hearing that playful, happy voice. 

“What?!” The bald man exclaimed, involuntarily stepping backwards. He was seeing something that should not be possible. The cut string was reconnecting itself with the others, even stronger than before. Omega’s body also started to glow in a colorful hue as he blinked his eyes, standing firm once again.

He instinctively grabbed forward, holding onto the two hands of the white-robed man. Or more precisely, he was holding onto the strings that were making him up. It was a much, much more complex structure than what Sylen, Miyon, Keshnar or anybody else Omega had met so far has had in them. The man’s reaction was simple and primal; A fearful scream came out of his mouth. He tore himself from his grasp, stepping onto a flashing, orange string and disappeared but not without injury. What he left behind was his two arms, quickly turning into dust after they were severed from his body. Omega, with a determined look, followed suit, stepping onto the same ‘line’ chasing the fleeing man.

“Dawn, what is happening?!” Sylen asked as they were shaking, traveling through the swirling clouds of the nebula. 

“It is like… a storm on an ocean.” She answered. “There are ripples in space itself that are constantly throwing me around! I am trying to compensate but it is hard.”

“Ripples in space itself? I only heard about that when black holes are colliding!” She groaned.

“I detected that matter was being… destroyed. But also created. I can’t tell you more as I do not understand the readings myself. I am sad to say, my sensory capabilities are lacking right now.”

“What about Omega? Can you locate him?”

“Sorry, I can’t. The ripples are too powerful. I can barely deal with them as it is. I am unable to ‘look’ past them.”

“Damn it! What the hell is going on?! What about the Astropaths?” Sylen moaned, being almost thrown out of her seat when another ‘wave’ hit them. 

“No response yet!”

“Damn!” She repeated the only word she felt appropriate for the situation they found themselves in.

Outside, Omega was still chasing his fleeing adversary. The ripples in space were caused by them clashing against each other. The white-robed man tried to destroy the many strings around him, obliterating matter itself, to slow down or thwart Omega’s advances. In response, he simply recreated them, reconnecting all that was once severed. Their back and forth created violent fluctuations in space itself, spreading through the whole system. 

In the end, the man managed to return to his ship. He knew that Omega was just about to step onto it himself. He now realized why the Pure One said they should only stall him and wait for his arrival. But it was too late to send out a message. What he could do is to leave a clue for them, if nothing else. Without any hands, he was using his own essence to connect with his ship, tying his own strings into it, setting it to detonate.

“I am returning into the Creator’s realm yet you are just going to disappear forever!” He laughed, sensing the Omega was only one step away to arrive. Yet it was too late. “I won.” He grinned as the ship was already set to explode and not even a Pure One could stop that. 

Omega also sensed the violent change. The ship that, in his eyes, was made out of pure, white strings, started glowing with such a strength, it was hurting his eyes. He knew what was happening immediately. He quickly turned around, facing towards the Dawn. Even from where he stood, he could feel the Astropath before the Dawn. He didn’t hesitate and grabbed onto it, moving his fingers, as if typing away on a keyboard, opening it for them so they could escape.

The dawn entered the blue mouth of the Astropath at the last moment, missing the spectacle of an explosion, on par with a supernova. The orange clouds of the nebula were blown away just as if someone would blow dust off of a table. Omega’s body was consumed by the blinding light, gone from view, swallowed by the white abyss. He felt that he once experienced something similar to this… or even… more than once? He couldn’t tell, but he heard a voice calling out to him once again. It was soothing his mind, calming him down as he fell into unconsciousness with a smile on his face.

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