The Perfect Run

“Unstable?” Livia finished his sentence with a chuckle. “That one was terrible, Ryan.”

“I’m keeping the best ones for later,” the courier said.

The armored duo made contact with Fallout hundreds of meters above the Gulf of Naples. Dynamis’ Red Genome appeared in all his shining glory, propelling himself through the skies by projecting two crimson streams of energy from his hands. The cyborg towered above both Ryan and Livia in size, even with their armor on. They might as well have been two GIs facing a flying tank.

Fallout’s fiery skull looked at the duo from behind its protective dome, his empty eyes burning with atomic rage.

“Out of my way!” he shouted before going straight for the kill.

The missile launchers on his shoulders activated and unleashed a volley of rockets at Ryan, who had reached him first.

The courier responded by activating his power, freezing two dozen projectiles in place. He raised his hands and activated the gauntlet weapons. To his relief, they worked perfectly in the frozen time, unleashing two red shockwaves in the cyborg’s direction. They detonated all the rockets in their way, and hit Fallout head on.

The impact and explosions propelled the surprised Alphonse Manada off his flight course when time resumed, almost making him fall in the Mediterranean Sea below. Yet though his method lacked the elegance and maneuverability of Ryan’s jetpack, he managed to stabilize his course.

“This… frozen time...” the corporate cyborg glared at Ryan. “You are Quicksave.”

“A question, tin can,” Ryan replied, as he attempted to engage the cyborg in close combat. “Is your zodiac sign Cancer?

Instead of bantering back, Alphonse Manada adjusted his flight to move out of Ryan’s way. “I should have killed you long ago,” the cyborg said, using one hand to keep himself afloat, and pointing the other at Ryan. “I will correct that mistake here!”

The courier barely had the time to blink as a dazzling red beam illuminated the sky, as a chill went down his sp—

Time skipped forward, and when it resumed, Ryan had moved to Fallout’s left. The surprised cyborg didn’t have the time to react, as Livia engaged him in melee.

Eight telescopic black tentacles surged from her armor’s back, each moving as swiftly as a serpent. They struck Fallout in the shoulders, tearing off the missile launchers integrated into his cybernetic apparatus, and in the chest. Steel claws at the end of the artificial arms tore through the Dynamis cyborg’s shielding.

“What a waste,” Livia said with a giggle. “A nuclear waste!”

Ryan wasn’t certain whether to groan or laugh.

Fallout responded by activating the energy minigun in his right arm, forcing Ryan and Livia to fly away. “You can’t defeat me!” he snarled angrily, though the courier struggled to hear him over the sound of plasma shots surging through the air. “I survived Augustus! You can’t—”

An explosion echoed in the distance, coming straight from Dynamis’ HQ.

The cyborg briefly interrupted his barrage of attacks to glance in its direction, his skull’s glowing dimming in horror. Smoke came out of the building’s top, as Enrique’s team destroyed the floor holding Lab Sixty-Six.

“No, no…” Fallout’s shock turned into despair and panic. “No!”

Instead of continuing his offensive, the cyborg flew straight towards the Dynamis HQ in a desperate attempt to salvage the situation.

“Oh no you don’t,” Ryan said, as he immediately gave chase. Fallout opened fire at point-blank range to make him back-off, and Livia activated her—

When time resumed, Ryan’s fist punched Fallout in his glass dome helmet.

The courier was intangible inside his girlfriend’s skipped time, making him invulnerable to Fallout’s attacks. Their abilities were powerful on their own, but together?

As Livia said, invincible.

Fallout’s glass dome cracked while he lost control of his flight. Instead of landing in the Dynamis-controlled district, the cyborg ended up falling into the Mediterranean Sea. The waters’ surface turned to steam when Alphonse Manada fell into the ocean, the Red Genome vanishing beneath the waves.

Though Ryan hoped that Dynamis didn’t make the cybersuit waterproof, he wasn’t naive enough to think the battle was over. “You think he’s fond of sea mushrooms?” he asked his girlfriend, hovering above the water while waiting for Fallout to resurface. An area hundreds of meters wide started to boil, though the courier couldn’t pinpoint the source.

“That would be a conCERN,” Livia replied, as she looked at the sea. She was probably trying to look through possibilities in order to locate the nuclear disaster. Cooked fish started rising to the surface.

Nice reference, though Ryan wondered if many people would have gotten it. “Hey, princess, did you know I visited their particle accelerator?”

“I’m sure they were thankful for the exposure,” she replied, before pointing a telescopic arm at a spot to her left. “Here, Ryan.”

The courier unleashed shockwaves at the target, sending splashes in all directions. The water vibrated around the point of impact, but Ryan couldn’t tell if he had hit Fallout. “Why hasn’t he emerged yet?” he asked his girlfriend. The man was as durable as Leo Hargraves, a dive shouldn’t be anything more than an inconvenience.

“I…” Livia froze, before quickly grabbing her boyfriend by the arm. “Higher!”

The duo immediately flew away from the sea, just as a crimson light erupted from below the waves.

A catastrophic explosion unleashed tons of boiled water into the skies, like an underwater volcano erupting beneath the sea. Though Ryan and Livia fled to safety, a cloud of steam swallowed their vision and obscured their sensors.

When they managed to escape from it, the duo noticed a bright crimson glow beneath raging waves of boiled water… a light moving towards New Rome’s shore.

“He’s running on the ocean floor!” Livia warned. Ryan unleashed shockwaves from above at the light’s source, sending splashes in all directions, but failing to even slow Fallout’s advance down.

“Damn, he’s using the water as a shield!” No wonder the corpo hadn’t emerged yet. “Where will he emerge?”

“The ship graveyard,” his beloved oracle predicted, the two immediately flying after the light. “He’s shedding his suit!”

Shit, that wasn’t optimal. The ship graveyard was empty, doubly so after Shroud moved his base to the bunker, but they were within walking distance of inhabited districts.

The same thought had clearly crossed his girlfriend’s mind. “Ryan, how fast can you activate the Gravity Gun?”

“Almost immediately, but I will send him to space if I do that,” Ryan reminded her. “His brother won’t be happy.”

“I would rather suffer Blackthorn’s wrath than see people die. It will happen if he’s allowed to march past the harbor.”

“You see it happen?” She answered his question with a grim nod. Damn. Ryan immediately sent a distress signal to his allies on the ground, asking them to evacuate the locals.

The duo reached the shore first, making circles above the ship graveyard between Rust Town and the old harbor. Only crabs inhabited the rusted wrecks of tankers laying on the sandy shore, and Shroud’s warehouse had been left gathering dust. After making sure no one had accidentally wandered into this perimeter, the couple waited for Fallout to resurface.

And resurface he did.

By the time Fallout reached the shallow waters, the sea around the ship graveyard had started evaporating. A dense cloud of steam swallowed the shipwrecks, and a glowing ghost emerged from the shadow of a supertanker. Alphonse Manada had shed his cybernetic armor like a snake, revealing himself in all his radioactive glory. His body had become nothing more than a black, charred skeleton with radioactive fire for flesh, and Red Flux particles for smoke.

“I recognize your power, Augusti,” he rasped while looking up at Livia, his voice sounding like smoldering fire. “Is this a declaration of war? Has your father grown so old and craven that he sends his daughter to fight his battles?”

“This has nothing to do with my father, and all to do with you,” Livia replied, even as the temperature kept climbing. The very sand turned to glass beneath Manada’s feet. “And you are misplaced to mock my father, considering you committed the same exact crime. You’ve poisoned thousands.”

This time, Alphonse Manada furiously raised his right hand at the duo. “I saved thousands!” he snarled, his fingers shining like the sun. “I gave the common people the power to defend themselves!”

A mighty, house-sized stream of red particles erupted from his palm. Ryan and Livia split in two directions, both to dodge the attack and distract Dynamis VP.

“The lab is already gone, and Bloodstream destroyed!” Ryan argued, trying to distract the maddened nuclear disaster. “What is there left for you to fight for?”

“Everything,” Fallout replied, though he focused his blasts on Livia. Thankfully, the seer leveraged her armor’s superior mobility to dodge the attacks. “We’ve got more than enough data to restart our Knockoff production elsewhere.”

“We disseminated a vaccine, Cherno Bill,” Ryan replied before freezing time and letting it resume right before he punched Alphonse Manada in the face. “It’s over!”

His Fisty gauntlet hit Fallout in the jaw.

The Red Genome didn’t even flinch. Ryan might as well have hit a steel wall.

“Can you even fathom how powerful I am?” Fallout’s hand surged for the courier’s armored fist with blinding speed, grabbing him before he could back away. The Red Genome pulled Ryan closer, gazing into the helmet’s lens with his fiery eyes. “Did you think I wore that armor for my own protection?”

Ryan defended his vital space with shockwaves, but they proved no more effective than a breeze. Fallout grabbed both of the courier’s wrists with his own hands, and started crushing the gauntlets with his sheer strength.

“I destroyed a city the day I took my Elixir,” Alphonse Manada said, the light around him growing more and more intense. The Saturn armor’s sensors quickly issued heat and radiation warnings, Orange Flux spreading through the shielding to increase its resistance. “Wiped it from the map. I couldn’t control my power, and I killed thousands. Even now, it takes all my self-control not to burn this city to ash.”

“No, you madman!” Livia attempted to rescue her boyfriend from above, sending her telescopic tentacles to restrain the maddened corpo. Their steel, weaker than the Saturn armor’s, melted before they could even touch him. “There are thousands living nearby!”

“I swore all these deaths wouldn’t be in vain,” Fallout rasped, his face blinding. “That I wouldn’t stop fighting for the good of all, no matter what I was up against. No matter what I had to do.”

He’s going to blow himself up, Ryan realized in horror, as the Red Flux around Fallout turned into a cloud.

Putting all available power in the jetpack, the courier pushed Alphonse Manada backward in an attempt to put as much distance between the living bomb and New Rome. The cloud became blinding, and Ryan felt a shiver go down his spine as Fallout exp—

The explosion was still ongoing after the timeskip.

To Ryan’s perception, an ocean of fire swallowed him from all sides. Though the improved Saturn Armor’s shielding had been designed to resist hits from Augustus, the courier still felt it buckle against the sheer power of the blast. Some of the heat bypassed the Orange Flux-powered steel around the chest and burnt the skin beneath. Ryan hit something hard head-first, his vision blurring.

When the fires died down and the courier could see again, he found himself at the heart of an enormous crater.

Alphonse Manada had devastated the entire graveyard, annihilating the nearest tanker, turning the whole beach to molten sand, and vaporizing all water in the vicinity. Shroud’s warehouse had been blown away, a ship husk sent flying more than fifty meters closer to the shore. Ryan heard alarms and Private Security sirens coming from the old harbor, the blast’s shockwave having shattered all glass windows over a vast radius. An enormous pillar of smoke rose a few meters away from the courier, darkening the skies.

And at the edge of the crater, Ryan noticed Livia’s armored hand sticking out of the molten glass.

At this moment, the courier’s brain stopped thinking, and his body moved on autopilot. “Livia!” Ryan hastily rose to his feet, his armor’s servos grinding in the knees. He immediately attempted to fly to her, but the blast had damaged his jetpack.

He froze, upon noticing movements inside the smoke pillar.

“Still alive?” Though his fiery radiance had dimmed, Alphonse Manada emerged from the smoke unscathed. In this moment, he looked so very much like a demon rising from the depths of Hell. “I will need to kill Vulcan too, and make sure she never creates something like this armor again.”

“What did you do?” Ryan hissed, struggling to hear his own words. His ears felt off, muffled.

Alphonse rolled his shoulders. “What good is seeing the future, if you can’t avoid it?”

Livia’s ability was limited in its duration. The madman had sustained his blast for at least half a minute, preventing her from escaping its radius.

No.

She could have escaped, but she couldn’t see Ryan. Couldn’t make sure he would survive.

She had stayed for him.

If it hadn’t benefited from the timeskip’s intangibility, the Saturn armor wouldn’t have survived the explosion. Even now, the blast had annihilated the paint job and most of the outer shielding, revealing the circuits beneath the metal plates.

Ryan’s fists clenched as a wave of Green Flux overwhelmed his vision. The pain from his burnt skin vanished and his ears worked normally again, as his armor’s secondary systems repaired his flesh. Though the courier wanted to rush to his girlfriend’s side immediately, Fallout clearly wouldn’t let him.

“You could have blown up the whole district,” Ryan accused the corpo with fury, as he adopted a fighting stance.

“I would rather burn half this city than give an inch to your kind,” Alphonse replied callously, his left hand shining with Red Flux. “And once you are dead too, I will dissect your sister, make her cough up that precious blood of hers, and repair the damage you caused.”

If Livia’s condition hadn’t made Ryan want to see the corpo dead, that comment sealed his fate.

Fallout let out a snarl as he lunged at the courier, his left hand aiming for the chest. He would tear through what remained of the Saturn armor, and incinerate the organs underneath.

“Do you know what your mom and a nuclear reactor have in common?” Ryan asked, right as he activated his own power.

Blackness shrouded the courier’s hands as time froze to a crawl, devouring Red Flux particles like a black hole consumed light.

“I don’t get in without protection.”

Ryan’s right hand met Fallout’s left, the Black Flux disintegrating the corpo’s fingers, palm, and entire forearm.

When time resumed, Alphonse Manada didn’t immediately register what happened… until the pain made itself known. Fallout let out a roar, as he suddenly registered the damage. His fiery gaze dimmed, as he looked at his severed arm. “W-what?” he could only say.

“Give me an inch, I’ll take the arm,” Ryan said with a cold voice, before raising his hand in a karate chop and freezing time again. “You destroyed a city when you gained your power.”

His blackened palm hit Alphonse’s right shoulder like a scythe, severing the whole arm.

“I destroyed time.”

Fallout let out a scream of pain as time resumed, his severed right arm collapsing into a harmless shroud of red particles. Ryan suspected that much like Sunshine, the atomic disaster had a solid core somewhere.

The time-traveler would just have to peel him like an apple, until he found it.

“How? Even Augustus…” The now armless Fallout took a step back, his ghoulish jaw twisting into a new expression.

Fear.

“On your knees, before I cut off the legs too,” Ryan warned. “I swore not to kill you, but you don’t want to know what I can make you live through.”

Fallout clenched his teeth and glanced at his severed arms. His stumps shone with a crimson glow, but his arms didn’t regrow. “Fine,” he said, the rest of his body brightening to explode once again.

“Enough,” a familiar voice said from above the two combatants.

The light in Fallout’s body died out, as a new duo made its presence known.

Wyvern was flying above the graveyard, holding an unmasked Enrique like a blushing bride. She slowly descended on the glass ground, before letting her on-and-off boyfriend walk on his feet.

“We will take it from here,” Enrique told Ryan. As he spoke, enormous roots broke through the crater’s edge, gently excavating Livia from below the debris. “She will need immediate medical attention.”

“If she is dead, he will follow,” Ryan warned, a finger pointed at Fallout.

“I know,” Enrique said with a sigh. “But let me try.”

Ryan glared at Fallout, before deciding Livia’s life was more important. The courier left the Manada siblings and Wyvern to settle things, while the roots gently laid his girlfriend on the ground.

Thankfully, she had been at a healthy distance from the blast’s epicenter and the armor was top-notch quality. The flames had seared the shielding, but Ryan could hear her breath underneath.

“Livia?” Ryan immediately removed Livia’s helmet, letting her platinum hair flow out.

“I’m…” Livia’s eyes fluttered, and she couldn’t look at Ryan straight. She must have had a concussion. “I’m alright…”

No, she wasn’t.

But she was alive, and Ryan immediately gave her first aid.

Meanwhile, Fallout’s temperature had fallen down to a hot summer’s heat and his Red Flux particles had become no more than a faint glow around his bones. “Enrique?” When he realized that his brother and bodyguard would make no move to stop Ryan, Alphonse Manada realized the truth. “What have you done?”

“What I should have done years ago,” Enrique replied, unflappable. “Father has been arrested for trafficking with the Meta-Gang, and Freddie Sabino has been permanently destroyed. His daughter saw to it.”

Fallout’s jaw clenched so tightly that Ryan wondered if it would break. “You let her?!”

“I did.”

“You acted behind my back!” Fallout snarled at his brother, smoke rising from below his feet. Though Ryan let Livia’s head rest on his lap, he glanced in the Manada siblings’ direction, just in case it degenerated.

Though Enrique remained outwardly calm, the rose on his suit lost a few petals. “Like you did once. It is not a pleasant thing, you will agree.”

“Why?” Alphonse’s voice turned from anger to sorrow. “Why betray our dream?”

“I betrayed our dream when I didn’t blow the whistle on the Knockoffs,” the CBO replied. “I betrayed my conscience when I let this mess fester. But enough is enough. I’m setting my foot down.”

“It’s not too late,” Fallout said, in complete denial. “We have Knockoff caches left in Spain and Sicily. With Tyrano’s help, we can recreate—”

“We will recreate nothing,” Enrique said. “I already sent orders to have the caches destroyed, and Dr. Stitch’s vaccine will make those you managed to hide useless.”

“The Carnival?” Fallout looked up at the semi-unconscious Livia in shock. “Impossible... they would never work with her.”

“We all worked together on this case,” Wyvern said with an angry frown. “Don’t you see that this was madness from the start?”

“A better world cannot rise as long as their kind,” Alphonse glared at the wounded Livia, “holds all the power. When some can summon lightning and others don’t, the world becomes unjust! Only when everyone is a Genome will we have equality!”

“Says the guy selling his Knockoffs at fifty thousand euros a bottle,” Ryan replied dryly, not even sparing the corpo a glance. Livia managed to form a smile on her lips, her boyfriend caressing her cheek.

“That time will come by itself,” Enrique argued. “I have seen the data. Children of normal people and Genomes always get superpowers. In time, everyone will have them.”

“In time, but Augustus is here now.” Alphonse shook his head. “We have to fight him, using all the weapons at our disposal.”

“The ends don\'t justify the means, Al,” Enrique replied. “I see that now. The reprehensible means you would employ will discredit the good end we seek to achieve. I sent you reports about Bloodstream’s instability—”

“We can patch it out,” Fallout argued. “We have the Geniuses—”

“You are not cloning me again,” Wyvern said with a dangerous tone. “If it were up to me, I would have dragged you in the same cell as your father. You both disgust me.”

“Do you think I liked it?” Alphonse replied angrily. “While you were playing heroes for the cameras, I was fighting Augustus’ armies in Malta. Without the Knockoffs, we can’t hope to challenge his forces head on!”

Blackthorn sighed. “Brother, you sacrificed so much for this project that you won’t even consider better alternatives.”

“There is none.” Fallout’s skull flashed with bright red light. “Step aside, brother. If we capture Augustus’ daughter, maybe we can salvage this.”

“No,” Blackthorn replied calmly.

“Enrique…” The living meltdown’s voice turned threatening. “Step! Aside!”

In response, Enrique pointed a finger at his forehead.

“Then kill me,” he said softly.

This made Wyvern flinch, and Fallout pause. Ryan checked if his Gravity Gun still worked, and immediately armed it when the Saturn armor’s sensors confirmed it.

“Brother, you don’t know what you say,” Fallout said, surprised by the reaction. He must have expected his brother to go along with his plans, instead of setting his foot down.

“I know, and I won’t budge on this matter.” Enrique kept pointing an index finger at his forehead, his gaze strong as steel. “If you want to continue this madness, Al, then you will have to kill me. If you want total control of Dynamis and recreate that damned project, you will have to step over my corpse.”

“You’ve gone mad.” Fallout said. “For the love of the mother who bore us—”

“No,” Enrique replied, gently, but firmly. Behind, Wyvern looked at him with newfound respect. “Al, when we were children, before the Elixirs… you told me it was us against the world. I never forgot. Unlike our father, deep down, I know your heart is in the right place.”

“Then you know my cause is just,” Alphonse replied.

“Yes, but not the methods. But there is still hope for you.” Enrique offered his brother his hand. “I want us to work together towards a brighter future, Al. Towards a world ruled by law, not by strength or money. With our allies and Geniuses, we can find a better, healthier way to give people the power to defend themselves. We could even drag Augustus down from his throne. Together, we can do anything.”

The heavy silence that followed felt heavier than a mountain. Both brothers faced each other in silence, neither willing to make a move. Wyvern tensed up, and Ryan prepared to fire his weapon at any moment.

“Please,” Enrique pleaded.

As he lacked any facial expression, Ryan couldn’t guess what went through Fallout’s head. Most probably, he suddenly realized how much he would have to sacrifice for his dream, and if it was even worth it.

Continuing down this path would mean losing his brother, but Alphonse Manada had never flinched at atrocities to see his vision come true. As his jaw clenched and unclenched, Ryan remembered something very important about the elder Manada sibling.

“All for the dream,” Fallout said, his body releasing a cloud of Red Flux.

He never knew when to stop.

Ryan tried to freeze time and attack, but someone beat him to it.

A ‘click’ sound echoed right behind Fallout. The living meltdown barely had the time to look over his shoulder, as a black sphere materialized in his back.

An invisible force pulled the former cyborg towards the device, alongside the glass shards in close proximity to him. Wyvern had to grab Enrique by the shoulder to prevent him from joining his brother, as Fallout’s spine impacted on the black sphere.

The black object immediately surged towards the skies at a blinding speed and took Alphonse Manada with it. By the time the nuclear meltdown understood what was happening, it was already too late; in the blink of an eye, he vanished beyond the clouds. Ryan looked up to watch red flashes and explosions in the skies, each more distant than the last.

Shroud dropped his invisibility, a layer of glass covering a technologically advanced rifle. Dynamis’ Gravity Gun.

Alphonse Manada had funded the weapon to defeat Augustus, and now ended up as its victim.

“I’m sorry, Enrique,” Wyvern said, as she attempted to comfort her manager. “I’m deeply sorry.”

“It had to be done,” the corpo said with a sorrowful sigh, his eyes trailing after his brother’s comet tail.

“Is she alright?” Shroud asked Ryan, glancing at Livia with genuine concern. “I already called Stitch for reinforcement.”

“I’m…” Livia squinted. “I’m fine…”

“You will need rest,” Ryan replied. As a Genome, her enhanced metabolism had spared her brain damage, but it would take her time to recover. His eyes wandered to Ischia Island in the distance.

They had cured New Rome of one poison, but another remained.