As soon as the Pineapple Express, the name of the C-5 ultra heavy lift aircraft that’s been dedicated to me comes to a stop, the rear cargo door opens. A Chinook, only a small distance away, is already spooling up. McKinley follows me to the edge of the cargo ramp. She has to use her headset to be heard over the C-5’s engines slowing down and the Chinook readying itself for take off.

  “I’ll be here, coordinating whatever you need! We’ve got ourselves a little command center up on the crew deck. You’ll have helicopters ready to go at all times. We should have some people here ready for the material hand offs in three hours. Any questions?”

  “Nope! I’m stepping off!”

  I jog towards the Chinook, now fully ready for me. I quickly step in, and we’re in the air just seconds later. I splice into the pilots radio channel.

  “We’re flying towards the Navy Yard! That’s the closest Fracture, formed eighteen hours ago!”

  “Roger, sir! Are we landing or are you taking the express route down?”

  “Landing, it’s near Naval Sea Systems Command, fragile stuff!”

  After just a few more minutes, we touch down in a clearing. As I jog towards the Fracture, just along the Anacostia Riverwalk near the NAVSEA command center, I see some familiar faces among the soldiers preparing a defense.

  “Sergeant Callisto!” I call out.

  She turns around, along with 2nd Squad, a smile on their faces.

  “Mr. Ryans! Glad to have you here!”

  I give her a glance as I slow to a walk.

  “You can call me Seth, you know.”

  She shrugs.

  “Well, trust me, you deserve the honorific, no matter what you think. Between DC and New York? You’re a big damn hero, yeah? On TV and everything.”

  I shake my head, refusing to argue the point.

  “Fine, fine. I’m surprised you were called up again so soon, though.”

  She gives me a sly grin.

  “Well, after our valiant defense of the White House, it seems the brass thinks we’re the best. So, here we are.”

  I continue to chat with Callisto as I make my way to the Fracture, now clearly a Category-2.

  “Happy to see some friendly faces.” I tell her.

  “Well, these friendly faces are happy to see you, sir.”

  I stop a few strides from the Fracture, and look down at her.

  “Well, time to get to work.”

  I hold out my hand, and my greatsword forms in my grip.

  Callisto steps back with a nod and a salute.

  “Don’t worry, sir. We’ll be here when you get back!”

  I step into the Fracture, and the world shifts. Again I fall into somewhere else. Instead of the unusually sunny March morning, the Fracture is deeply overcast. Though, on a deeper look, the sky looks to be clogged with smoke, rather than rain clouds. The red brick buildings of the Navy Yard, normally clean, are instead caked with soot.

  Glass windows are so heavily discolored that I imagine a normal human wouldn’t be able to see through them. The once clear glass is tinted a deep, chemical yellow. Even I can barely see through them, and I’m only able to catch the barest glimpse of strangely distorted hallways.

  The alternate version of the Anacostia River is deeply polluted, with thick oil slicks shimmering in my vision. Huge clumps of brown, thick, foam slowly move downstream. The river is less a liquid and more of a toxic sludge. The air is smoky and acrid. Without some kind of respirator, someone else would pass out in minutes. Fortunately for me, I don’t need to breathe.

  With my sword resting on my shoulders in a loose, one handed grip, I move through the NAVSEA Command compound. A flash of movement from one of the roofs draws my attention. A strange, octopus like monster is trying to camouflage itself against the soot-streaked brick building, moving slowly inch by inch.

  Its body is the size of a motorcycle, and the tentacles are at least eight feet long. Despite its bulk, its ability to camouflage itself is incredible. If I hadn’t been able to see the entire electromagnetic spectrum, it might have eluded my notice.

  While studying its behavior could prove useful, my time is extremely limited. Every second counts. Every Fracture is a ticking timebomb, each one ready to pour bloodthirsty monsters into our world. I move towards the octopus-like monster, intending to put it down and move on as quickly as possible.

  As soon as I close the distance, it abandons attempts at stealth and jets forward. It sounds almost like an engine failing to start in the cold, and leaves behind a disgusting greenish-black cloud of smog that quickly drops to the ground. As it lunges for me, it spreads its strange plastic-like tentacles for me. Vicious barbs rest inside suction cups, and they all drip with an oil-slick like venom.

  A single slash cuts the octopus in half, and out pours a wave of toxic fumes, vaporized oil, and chlorine gas.

  An octopus made of smog and pollution. Smog-topus!

  As I make my way into the building itself, I’m ambushed by more Smog-topi. My blade hisses through the toxic atmosphere, the singularity in the pommel visibly gobbling up the brown smoke that permeates the entire Fracture. The Smog-topi die one by one.

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  After butchering my way through over four dozen Smog-topi, I finally make it deeper into the building. At this point, it’s become increasingly clear that the warped version of the NAVSEA Command building is much, much larger on the inside than the outside. The building, now rivaling a town in size, is a distorted maze, with hallways and rooms that make little sense.

  I spend hours sprinting down hallway after hallway. I even slam through a few thin walls, all for nothing. Time is more valuable than ever. I can’t afford to waste it finding my way through this office-like labyrinth.

  I stretch my senses and dive into the world of data, stripping out all the qualia I spent a painstaking amount of time weaving back in.

  This world of data points, numbers and statistics is cold. It is completely devoid of the warmth that human interpretation can often give things. I do not mind it, if anything, I welcome it. That same warmth can cloud my senses, the way I interpret things.

  Humans struggle to interpret things objectively, without bias or adding their own emotional reactions and desires into the mix. Stripping away my humanity for tactical advantages should be concerning, I think.

  But who wants to be human, anyway?

  Despite my moment of introspection, I am still moving forward, analyzing and categorizing. The floorplan is a chaotic mess, a maze of strangely warping hallways and oddly shaped, randomly placed rooms. While nothing seems to conclusively indicate any particular important place a boss might be, it stretches far off beyond the reach of my various sensors. That being said, there are a few interesting points that may be worth checking out.

  One room, only slightly larger than the average, is full of unidentifiable objects. Every other one of the two dozen rooms I can see are completely empty short of a few unidentified monsters. The monsters are more than just Smog-topi as well. Some of them are smaller, fluid-like blobs. My sensors are unable to determine the material they are made of, though.

  The first order of business is to check out the point of interest. There is only a 36.5% probability it could be the boss. That analysis is quite poor, though, given how little we actually know of the inside of Fractures. Time to collect some data. I move off at a decent clip towards it.

  Once I arrive, it becomes clear that this is a poor approximation of a Command and Control room. The command stations look like arcade cabinets, oddly enough. Strange and nonsensical keyboards replace the joysticks and buttons arcade machines normally have. None of them have the same set up, nor do they have any recognizable symbols from any language that I know of, at least in passing. Some of them have only a dozen keys while others have hundreds of tiny keys, each the size of a ball-point pen tip.

  The monitors are equally disorganized, some stations having what appear to be CRT monitors, OLED monitors, and others have what looks like plates of ice, though it refuses to melt in the warm, muggy air. A few monitors are plain glass sheets that let me see inside the command cabinets.

  Inside those ones are bundles of wires and green boards that only visually resemble a circuit board. Though, these ones look like they were drawn by a child. The traces are curvy loops that intersect each other, while varying in both thickness and color. Surface mounted components like resistors or capacitors only vaguely resemble real ones. The solder is gold, with an oil-slick like reflection instead of a silver or dull gray like conventional solder.

  I put a fist through one of the window panes, shattering the glass. I rip out a few false circuit boards, and store them away. I rip into the base of the same command station, only to find bundles of wires that are tangled up into balls that go nowhere. Some of them connect to the keyboard haphazardly, though most are disconnected pieces of what appears to be copper wire tangled up in balls of metal. I rip a few of them out as well, along with a few keyboards.

  It is possible that analysis of the components could provide some information on what parts of the environment the Fractures copy, and what they seem to make up. The other Category-2 Fracture I entered, one that formed on Long Island in the middle of a refugee camp, had no objects or non-Euclidian geometry. Hopefully, one day, we will be able to understand what Fractures are, and how they operate.

  After spending a few minutes ripping various items out of command stations, including taking a standard office chair, I leave the room behind. I go hunting for the boss, moving deeper into the building. I weave through corridor after corridor. As I go farther into the strange building, the structure becomes increasingly chaotic. Hallways become warped and uneven, empty rooms cut into hallways at strange angles.

  After nearly a mile of twisting, distorted hallways, I finally come into range of a much larger open area, a massive hanger rather than a room. Strangely, I am unable to detect any particular monsters inside. I move towards it quickly. Out of everything I’ve seen for far, this seems the most ‘boss-like’, for lack of a better phrase.

  The hangar itself is huge, rivaling Hangar One at Moffett Airfield in California. In center of a floor larger than six football fields side by side is a massive crater, nearly forty feet across and filled with a disgusting sludge.

  Multiple toxic gases, and even chemical weapons pour out from it, crawling across the ground with murky, vaporous tendrils. I detect mustard gas, hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, and even traces of Sarin gas. Petrochemical fumes waft upwards, towards the two hundred foot tall vaulted ceiling.

  As I walk towards the horrific mixture of petrochemicals, it twitches. Waves slowly ripple across the sludge for a few seconds before it pulls itself together. Slowly the boss comes to its full height, its size dwarfing a two story house.

  I dash forward, leaving another crater behind in the oil stained concrete floor. A wide slash sweeps clean through, barely even slowing my blade. The Petro-Horror doesn’t even seem to notice. A downward chop ends the same way, sword passing through harmlessly.

  The heat I’ve tried to keep at bay slowly creeps back in. I growl in frustration after a few more ineffective swipes. The Petro-Horror slaps at me with a noxious, vicious tendril. I try to counter attack with my sword, but it’s like trying to stab a lake to death. It sends me flying across the hangar, and I land with a crunch as I shatter concrete with my bulk.

  I stand up while dismissing my sword, and it returns to the fire inside. When another tendril lashes out for me, I try to grab hold of it to scoop chunks of it away. I only partially succeed, tossing away huge chunks of more solid materials. This time it only sends me sliding back, and I grind two gouges in the concrete floor.

  I stomp forward, hammering divots into the hangar floor. As another tendril comes flying towards me, I lash out with a rage-fueled punch, my mother’s words guiding me.

  “Wrist straight, twist with your hips. Punch forward and through them. Hit hard, even if it hurts. If they hit the floor first, you win.”

  The entire half-liquid-half solid sludgy tentacle explodes, pieces flying far off into the distance. The shockwave echoes throughout the hangar, over and over again. The Petro-Horror screams in agony, the high pitched gurgling screech barely drowning out the thunderous explosion. As it wobbles and ripples in its throes of agony, I crouch down, readying for a powerful leap.

  “Fuck this and fuck you!”

  I hit Mach 2 and explode half the hangar. The walls of the building fall away, all distorted and warped from the non-Euclidian geometry, and I dig a trench large enough to swallow a Jumbo-Jet. I slam my shoulder into the monster fast enough that hitting it is like impacting concrete, and I blast it into pieces that splatter over the shattered remains of the hangar.

  The glowing orb with the exit appears. I grab both crystals and exit, and as soon as I’m through, wave everyone back. I try to move slowly to prevent from flinging the noxious slime coating my armor.

  “Get back! Get back!”

  Sergeant Callisto doesn’t waste time, and clears everyone out.

  “Come on people, you heard him, let’s fucking move it!”

  Everyone clears out in seconds, and they don’t stop until they’re over a hundred yards away. I call Callisto and McKinley over the radio.

  “The Fracture was heavily contaminated with toxic chemicals. The boss spewed chemical weapons, including small traces of sarin gas. I need a decontamination team over here.”

  I see Callisto twitch upon hearing ‘sarin’ and she drags everyone farther away.

  “Stay exactly where you are, sir,” McKinley says. “CBRN decon team will be there in twenty minutes.”

  I look up at the sunny sky. Neurotoxic sludge slowly drips off me, and sizzles into the concrete.

  What other fresh hells lie inside Fractures?