Chapter 137

  Augustus’s voice cut across the comms. “We’ve got company. Two orangutans just appeared on the hill. Blackish-orange. The originals.”

  Alexander’s hand tightened. Beside him, the surveillance drones adjusted their patterns automatically, responding to his sudden tension.

  Silence stretched across the raid channel.

  Julia was the first to speak. “They came back?”

  “Two. They’re watching,” Augustus said. “Same as before. Just... standing there.”

  Raelene’s voice came through, calm but edged. “Ground team. Can you handle them if they engage?”

  A pause. Alexander counted heartbeats.

  “Yes,” Augustus said.

  “We’ve got it,” Cash added.

  Sven’s voice rumbled through. “Let them come.”

  Murmurs of agreement followed from the others. Mirror. Felix. Lars. Talia’s silence spoke for itself.

  “Very well,” Raelene said. “Switch to group comms and maintain silence over raid channel unless it’s essential. We continue the hunt.”

  Alexander considered their situation for a moment. “If things get bad, retreat immediately and hold the gateway on the other side. We maintained your portals on The Nexus for exactly that reason. Guang will have no choice but to reinforce if you fall back.”

  Another long silence.

  “Understood,” Augustus said quietly.

  The channel went silent.

  Alexander released the breath he’d been holding.

  He wasn’t worried about most of the team. Augustus could handle himself in nearly any situation, and Talia was never one to underestimate. From what he’d seen, even briefly, Sven was a force of nature when he let loose. Cash was nearly untouchable at full speed. Even Mirror, for all her eccentricities, had proven herself capable already.

  Felix was another matter.

  His willingness to put himself at the center of danger had surprised Alexander. The healer had suggested being with the aerial group, close enough to assist if they were wounded.

  He admired Felix for that.

  But it had also revealed a mistake in his own leadership.

  Alexander had been understanding and patient while Felix recovered over the past few months. The alien had been through hell, abducted and tortured, and that kind of trauma didn’t heal overnight. So when Alexander had offered to teach him the details of their situation, the full scope of what Grimnir was involved in, and Felix had declined, Alexander had accepted the answer. He’d set it aside, told himself he’d revisit it later.

  He never had.

  The frustration that flickered through him was entirely self-directed. He knew better than to let things slip through the cracks. He’d always been highly attentive. Went through life without missing the details, never the fool that stumbled and slipped from carelessness. Or oversight.

  And yet, when it came to the people around him, he’d allowed sentiment to override pragmatism. Allowed his own work to blind him to his responsibilities.

  Felix was operating with incomplete information. He knew about the System, knew about the gateways and the threats they faced, but he didn’t understand the depth. Attributes. Ascension. He had a fragmented understanding about Willpower and powers in general.

  That ignorance could get him killed.

  When they returned home, Alexander would speak to Augustus and Talia about creating a formal training program. Something structured. Something comprehensive. Anyone who was part of Grimnir, superhuman or not, would go through it. No exceptions.

  There would be no more secrets about the System. No more ignorance. Everyone on the team would understand exactly what they were involved in and exactly what was at stake. Including Sleipnir’s crew, and anyone else they recruited.

  After a reasonable induction period, of course. Trust still had to be earned. But once it was, there would be no more half-measures. No more protecting people by being soft.

  Alexander pushed forward. The forest seemed darker now, the canopy thicker overhead. Less light reached the ground with every hundred meters he traveled.

  The air had changed too. Heavier. Wetter. What had been humid before was now oppressive, the moisture so thick he could feel it settling on his skin.

  The mud below had given way to something closer to swamp. Standing water pooled between the roots of the massive trees, dark and still, reflecting nothing. The smell of rot grew stronger, layered now with something else. Something organic.

  Mushrooms sprouted everywhere. Clusters of pale caps dotted the forest floor, growing in rings around fallen trunks. Larger specimens climbed the bases of living trees, their surfaces slick and glistening. Some were the size of dinner plates. Others were larger still, shelf-like growths that jutted from the bark like steps.

  And the vines. They were everywhere now, hanging in thick curtains from the canopy, coiling around branches, draping across gaps between trees. Some were as thin as rope. Others were as thick as his arm, their surfaces covered in fine hairs that caught the dim light.

  The forest had become something else entirely.

  Alexander wove between the hanging vines carefully, adjusting his path to avoid the thickest clusters. The surveillance drones spread ahead, mapping the terrain, but even their feeds showed the density increasing. There were fewer clear paths now. Fewer gaps.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  Julia’s voice came through, quiet. “It’s getting worse over here. The ground is practically underwater.”

  “Same,” Hjordis added.

  Alexander checked the map the drones were building. The terrain was sloping downward, all three of them converging toward what looked like a basin at the center of this section of forest. Lower ground meant more water. More water meant more growth.

  And somewhere, more orangutans were hiding.

  Minutes passed. The drones continued their sweeps, flagging heat signatures that turned out to be nothing. Small creatures. Birds. Once, something large that slithered away before he could get a clear look.

  Then Hjordis’s voice cut through the silence.

  “Contact. Multiple.”

  Her tone was clipped. Tight. Not panic, but something close to it.

  Alexander immediately angled toward her position, pushing more power into the oscillating wave. The drones scattered ahead of him, clearing a path through the sensor data.

  “Five,” Hjordis reported. “Ten.”

  A beat of silence.

  “Twenty.”

  Another beat.

  “Three orange. Surrounded.”

  Alexander’s jaw clenched. He pushed faster, the trees blurring past him. His senses stretched ahead, feeling the gaps between trunks, predicting each turn before he reached it. He wove through the forest at speeds that should have been reckless, clearing each obstacle with barely a fraction of an inch to spare.

  A roar erupted somewhere to his right, followed by the crash of something large tearing through the underbrush. He ignored it. Hjordis was the priority.

  The surveillance drones fed him her position. Half a mile.

  Hjordis yelled verbally over the comms, the words lost to the sounds of combat. Fire roaring. Something screaming.

  “Arriving in ten seconds,” Raelene’s voice cut through, sharp and clear. “Hold on.”

  Alexander could see the glow of flames through the trees now, flickering orange light cutting through the gloom. A thick curtain of vines hung between him and the clearing, dense enough to obscure everything beyond.

  He sent the drones ahead.

  They spun into the curtain, blades whirring, carving a path through the tangled growth. Vines fell away in sections, dropping into the water below. But not all of them. Some resisted the blades, fibers holding together despite the cuts.

  Alexander ignored it and pushed through the gap the drones had cleared.

  One of the vines clipped his cheek as he passed.

  He reached up without slowing, fingers brushing the wound. They came away with a small smear of blood.

  A shallow cut, but clean.

  He frowned.

  Then he saw Hjordis.

  She stood on one of the fallen trunks, knee-deep in grey bodies, flame wings spread wide. Her sword carved arcs of fire through the air, each swing trailing embers and ash. For every minion she cut down, two more threw themselves at her. They grabbed at her arms, her legs, anything they could reach. They latched on and held tight even as their fur ignited, even as their flesh blackened and peeled.

  She appeared to be struggling. Overwhelmed.

  But Alexander saw the truth.

  Hjordis was holding back. Her movements were slow and deliberate, controlled, doing just enough to keep the minions from dragging her down. She could have unleashed. Taken to the air even with them hanging off her. But if she did, the others might flee before the rest of the team arrived.

  She was buying them time.

  Alexander’s eyes swept upward, past the swarming grey bodies, past the chaos of the fight below.

  He found the real threats immediately.

  Three larger shapes lurked high in the trees, well above the fighting. Their fur was darker than the others, that familiar blackish-orange that marked them as their true targets.

  One dangled from a trunk, long arms wrapped around the bark, watching the battle below with intense interest.

  Another swung lazily amongst the vines, moving from handhold to handhold, circling the edges of the fight.

  The third sat on a thick branch higher than the others, legs folded beneath it, utterly still.

  It was grinning.

  Alexander recognized that grin. He’d seen it before, at the treeline, right before the creature had vanished into the forest.

  They weren’t attacking. They were observing. Directing. The minions below moved in waves, pressing Hjordis from multiple angles, and now Alexander could see the pattern. The orangutans above would shift their attention, and a moment later the minions would adjust, flowing toward whatever gap had opened in Hjordis’s defense.

  This wasn’t a random swarm. It was a test.

  Unfortunately, the beasts had underestimated them. Lacked context to properly gauge their enemies.

  The emerald dragon crashed through the canopy above, showering the battlefield with broken branches and leaves. Annie was already leaping from its back, her body stretching into her monstrous spinosaurus form as she fell.

  She hit the mass of grey minions like a bomb, scattering bodies in every direction.

  The dragon slammed into the side of one of the massive trunks, claws digging into the bark, gouging deep furrows as its momentum bled away. It slid down several meters before catching itself, wings folding tight against its body to avoid the surrounding branches.

  Maximilian was already attacking. Chains erupted from platforms of light he conjured in the air around him, streaking toward the orangutan dangling from the trunk. He ignored the grey minions entirely, his focus locked on the real threat.

  Alexander didn’t slow.

  He sent his drones spinning ahead and rushed the grinning one.

  The creature saw him coming. Its grin widened, lips peeling back to reveal teeth that were too large, too sharp. It unfolded from its seated position on the branch with a fluid grace that belied its size, rising to its full height.

  Then it dropped.

  It fell straight down, catching a lower branch with one hand, swinging its massive body in a tight arc, and disappeared behind the trunk.

  Alexander pursued.

  ***

  The network stirred.

  Deep beneath the waterlogged soil, signals pulsed through threads finer than hair. Information traveling along pathways older than memory. A web of filaments stretching for miles in every direction, connecting root to root, tree to tree, vine to vine.

  Something had changed.

  A taste. Rich. Dense. Unlike anything the network had encountered in cycles beyond counting. The signal had come from one of the outer threads, a brief flare of contact, then nothing.

  The network reached for the source. Traced the signal back through a thousand upon a thousand branching paths. Found only emptiness where the taste had been.

  Gone.

  But the memory lingered. Echoed through the filaments.

  The network began to wake.

  It was not a fast process. Consciousness, such as it was, moved like sap through frozen wood. Awareness crept outward from the oldest, deepest nodes, traveling along pathways that had lain dormant for generations. Signals that had been automatic, instinctual, began to carry something more.

  Intent.

  Vines shifted in the canopy above. Movement. With purpose, however slow, however blind. They reached outward, trailing through the air, brushing against warm bodies.

  Some found prey.

  Creatures shrieked as tendrils wrapped around limbs, pulled tight, carving them open. Small things. Insignificant things. Not what the network sought.

  But it didn’t matter.

  The network was patient. It had slumbered for ages and could wait ages more. The taste was out there, somewhere among the things that moved and bled and inevitably fed the jungle. Sooner or later, it would find its way back.

  They always did.

  The network settled. Watched. Waited.

  It was just a matter of time.

  The Machine God! Please consider rating if you haven't already. I appreciate all of the support you've given!

  Continue the Dream.