I find myself still staring at the Fracture four days later, once again as dawn breaks. Fantastic and wonderful shades of infrareds, red, oranges, and ultraviolets streak across the sky, and I have eyes for none of it.

  Just one more day, I tell myself. Then you’ll understand.

  Still, how could one ever hope to understand infinity? There’s something so strange about these Fractures, how they violate some rules while sticking rigidly to others. I’m not sure math and science will ever be able to fully explain these things.

  With the dawn comes Sergeant Callisto and 2nd Squad. She steps up next to me, like she’s done every day for the past five days. She sips on a cup of coffee, steaming in the March morning chill.

  “Anything new?”

  “You’re not gonna like it.”

  “It’s a Fracture. I don’t like anything about it.”

  “I think it’ll rupture today, though the DARPA team doesn’t agree with me.”

  “When?”

  I shrug.

  “Don’t know. 90% chance within twelve hours, 40% within two, 10% within one. DARPA doesn’t agree with those predictions, but that’s my intuition, anyway.”

  She takes another sip.

  “What kind of predictions do they give?”

  “Well… none. They don’t give any. They’re too unsure about everything Fractures are to actually be able to say anything concrete about them. To them, Fractures are a car we don’t know anything about. We don’t know what it looks like, how it works, or even if it ‘moves.’ Trying to predict a rupture, in their minds, is like trying to figure out how long a car will take to get here if we don’t know how fast it’s going and we don’t know where it left from, or when it left at all.”

  Callisto hums.

  “I could see how that’d make a prediction difficult, yeah. How come you’re giving one?”

  “Well, I can see the shadow of the car. We don’t have math that can describe its movement yet, but I can tell you that it is moving, and it’s getting awfully close.”

  Callisto throws back the rest of her coffee in one.

  “Does the Captain know?”

  “Yes, I told him earlier.”

  “Good. I’ll go get the boys ready. Stay loose, yeah?”

  I watch her move amongst her squad, readying them for battle.

  She’s good.

  They’re all nervous as hell, even the stoic Thor. But they’re ready to face down monsters no one knows they can even kill. Here they stand regardless.

  Here we stand, I correct myself. I’m here too.

  Sergeant Callisto’s rounds are repeated throughout the stronghold. Tankers check their vehicles again and again, nervousness held at bay by muscle memory. The soldiers dotting the roof lay ready, unsure of when exactly the Fracture will rupture. I wish I had better answers for them.

  Callisto returns to my side, sitting down behind the forward-most barricade, rifle in hand. She gives me a grin, but I can see the fear hidden in her eyes.

  “Lead from the front, yeah?”

  Thor, Jericho, and Eric all slide in farther along the barricade, and she turns to look at them.

  “The fuck are you three doing up here?!”

  Eric laughs.

  “Couldn’t let you be stupid by yourself!”

  He catches himself before sputtering, “U-u-uh, ma’am!”

  She claps him on the shoulder, the grin still present, but the fear banished.

  “Yeah, yeah. It’s a nice sentiment, shut up before you ruin it.”

  She turns back to me.

  “So, got any ideas on—”

  I hold up a hand as the shadow collapses. What was five dimensions, is now four. Then three. Then two. Then none. The feeling of shattered glass washes over my chassis.

  “It’s rupturing! Now!”

  Callisto jerks before coming to a knee and readying herself on the barricade.

  “UP! UP! UP!”

  2nd Squad readies themselves across multiple lines, and the click-clack of hundreds of rifles echoes out over the whole fort. The heavy vehicles shout their readiness in their bone-deep clunk-thunk as they rack rounds the length of a man’s forearm.

  I kneel by the edge, in between the tanks and the infantry, ready to support whoever needs it. A clenched fist creaks like groaning, flexing stone before I slacken my grip.

  I have no weapon, my fingers and hands are too large for any of the rifles or machine guns around, and even if we had time to modify an autocannon, it wouldn’t work anyway. My fighting style, as primitive as it is, is close combat.

  The crunch of Urban Ants in my grip. The pop of a Jellyfish Balloon in my fist. The crack of a Glass Spider underfoot.

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  Lieutenant Jang’s mangled corpse. No. Not again.

  The first monster that leaps from the garish wound in the universe is a strange, chittering bug. It’s a massive, ten foot tall praying mantis, taller than even me. It’s made up of dozens of traffic lights melded into a long insectile body, all blinking chaotically. Legs are silvery steel poles, the kind used in street lights. The claws are jagged red stop signs melded together into a brutal, serrated knife. Their eyes are blood red orbs of hatred, and they latch onto me.

  They let out a terrifying, chittering, clicking scream. Soldiers across the stronghold slam their hands over their ears as they try to resist the psionic pressure. The scream tries to tell them, tell us, that we’re prey. Lower on the food chain. Something to be hunted, not feared. I roar back in defiance, and the fire inside roars with me.

  I stomp forward through the barbed wire like an avalanche on the loose. The soldiers regain their footing quickly, but the Traffic-Mantids use the few seconds of grace to their advantage.

  Three, then six, then a dozen are all charging at me. A Bradley hammers one into shrapnel, and one of the AT teams blows another apart. I crash into the horde, and they crumple before me.

  I slam a fist into the first one’s chest, knocking it to the ground. A brutal stomp to its metal skull leaves it dead in an instant. They surround me, clawing at my armor. Jagged claws skitter off, and I retaliate by stomping on a mantid’s leg. A kick shatters a second leg, and sends it spiraling away. I point at it.

  “Get that one!”

  I reach up, grab a mantid by its shoulders, and bring it down into a vicious knee, hitting it so hard fragments explode out its back in a fan of metallic, wiry, gore. The explosion echoes out over the stronghold, drowning out the gunfire for just a moment. A rocket hits the mantid I tossed aside, blowing it apart.

  Another mantid claws at my face, and I backhand it so hard I rip its head off. It blindly twitches for a few more moments before it falls to the ground, quickly trampled by its allies. I grab another and tear it in half. It screeches in pain, sounding exactly like tortured metal.

  I punch another in the chest and it goes flying. A Bradley blows it out of the sky. A slice with a flatten hand tears a head off, I rip the arms off a second and slam them into a third’s skull. I bring a forth down in a savage headbutt, and its skull shatters on mine.

  More monsters pour from the Fracture, faster than we can kill them. One tries to leap past me for 2nd Squad, and I lash out with a punch that sends it flying into the wrought iron fence around the White House. It wraps around the mantid’s broken body, restraining the still twitching monster.

  “Someone kill it!”

  A second one tries to leap past, and I grab it. With a heave I slam it down at my feet, and trample over it as I push forward into the horde. A mantid swipes at my leg mid stride, and it sends me sprawling to the ground. The rest of the horde, dozens of them, dogpile me.

  I rip a grasping claw off, and shove another into the air, only for the reclaimed space to immediately be taken back.

  There’s too many. I watch, held down by dozens of monsters as more charge 2nd Squad’s line. I watch Thor, a snarl on his face as he holds down the trigger on his LMG.

  I watch a squad in Seoul fight to the last through a dozen traffic cams half a city away. They call in an artillery strike on their own position as the Glass Spiders swarm over their wrecked APC. They go out with a scream of defiance in their throats.

  A mantid lunges for Jericho, murderous claw outstretched. His brother barely drags him away in time as it tears through where his head would have been.

  A Trash Wolf leaps onto a civilian, jaws wide and stained with blood from past victims. If only I was a little bit faster.

  I pull on the fire, and it answers me. Pure destructive force lashes outwards.

  “ENOUGH!”

  I vaporize a dozen mantids on top of me, and send a dozen more flying away in pieces. The blast of blue fire and lightning arcs out in a blast that roars out in a tidal wave of raw fury. I come to my feet, fire and lightning crackling over my armor. The blue fire that filled my face plate now pours out in gouts of flame. The mantids are left twitching from the blast, stunned.

  I need a weapon. I have one. All I need to do is give it a shape. I reach out. In my grasping hand forms a massive sword, longer than I am tall and with a blade as wide as my arm. The sword itself is less of an object and more of a hole in space. Stars can be seen inside, twinkling in paradoxical peace. A twirling, blinking, blue pulsar makes for a cross guard, dancing in the black. The pommel is a deep orange tinted, strangely warped vantablack orb. The light bends around it, and I watch as infinitesimal motes of gun smoke fall into it, disappearing forever.

  The monsters recover as I grip my sword, chittering and screeching as they resume their assault on 2nd Squad. A claw spears out, aiming for Thor’s chest. With a thunderous explosion that carves out a huge crater in the lawn, I leap forward, twelve foot slab of space-time leading the charge in a two handed thrust.

  My blade bites deep into the mantid’s shoulder, then chest, before finally tearing the arm away. The monster finally shatters into hundreds of tiny pieces as I swipe up and the shockwave of my charge slams into it. Fragments bounce off Thor’s armor and helmet, and 2nd Squad is knocked to the ground, though otherwise unharmed.

  As 2nd Squad unsteadily comes to their feet, I look down at them.

  “It’s not over yet! Come on!”

  Another mantid mindlessly throws itself at me, and I chop downwards. My blade slices it cleanly in half before embedding itself in the ground. Its upper body twitches once before falling apart. I heave the sword up on my shoulders, dash forward into the horde once more.

  Just before reaching them, I slow down, digging a trench into the lawn as I slide to a stop. I let the weight of my blade continue in a long, sweeping slash. It carves through half a dozen mantids, and they fall into pieces, wire-like visceral spooling out of them. One of the tanks, Nap Time, blows one of the few remaining monsters in front of me apart, spraying me with metal shrapnel, wiry entrails, and molten copper. Nap Time’s commander calls me over the radio.

  “Shit! You good!?”

  My laugh booms out, reverberating over the White House.

  “Never better!”

  The Fracture pukes up a few more mantids. It’s throwing out fewer and fewer with every minute.

  “Keep it up! Almost there!”

  The gunfire from the soldiers amplifies, as every single one of them pours it on. One mantid goes down to Thor and his LMG spitting out hate at 850 rounds per minute. An AT team on top of the White House blows a second in half, and Eric pulls a huge, antique revolver from a holster before leveling it at a half dead mantid crawling for him. He pulls back the hammer with one thumb before firing. The booming gunshot echoes out, and turns the metal bug’s head into powder. The revolver, a Colt Walker chambered in .44, kicks high into the air. He gives me a sly grin as the battlefield goes silent, the final monster dying at his hands.

  “It’s a family heirloom! Ma wouldn’t let us go off to fight monsters without it!”

  I give him a nod and a chuckle before turning back to the Fracture.

  It starts to heave, one final cataclysmic motion.

  “Last one! Here it comes!”

  The Fracture shudders, and out comes a massive spider, as large as a tank and just as tall. Its legs are pillars of steel that flex and move like flesh, and its body is made up of concrete. Rebar sticks out like hair, and the spider shivers before its eight eyes, made from flood lamps from a stadium embedded into its concrete head, land on me. It chitters at me.

  I charge forward before slamming my sword down in a brutal chop. Despite its size, it swiftly leans back before flashing forward again. One massive steel leg slams into me, and I go flying back digging a deep trench with my bulk. I smash into the barricade 2nd Squad is holding. Callisto peaks over the edge, sweat caking her hair to her forehead.

  “You good?”

  I stand up, barbed wire tinkling and clattering with each movement. I stride forth, ripping the razor wire off me. The spider hisses at me, and bunches its limbs underneath itself.

  “Yeah. Just getting started.”

  It launches itself at me with blinding speed, and I leap forward to meet it.

  We slam into each other with a boom that echoes over the whole city.

  Not one step back.