The transition through Maya's fold was different from Lin's crude teleportation. Where his had been abrupt and nauseating, hers was smooth, practiced—like stepping through a door instead of being thrown through a window. Reality peeled back in layers, and Lin caught glimpses of the spaces between: infinite darkness punctuated by threads of light, dimensions stacked like pages in an endless book.
They emerged in a place that shouldn't exist.
Lin's enhanced perception struggled to process what he was seeing. They stood in a vast circular chamber that extended in impossible directions—up was also down, walls curved inward and outward simultaneously, and the space felt both cathedral-huge and intimately small. The architecture obeyed geometries that made his human brain ache.
"Welcome to the Nexus," Maya said, watching his reaction with amusement. "The Fold's headquarters. It exists in a pocket dimension—technically between all dimensions. Neutral ground. Safe ground. Nothing can reach us here unless we let it in."
The chamber was populated. Lin counted seven people, each radiating the same dimensional signature he'd come to recognize as controller presence. They all looked up as he entered, conversations halting mid-sentence.
"Everyone," Maya announced, "meet Lin Da'is. Controller Unit 28. Activated six hours ago."
The silence that followed was profound.
"Six hours?" A man stepped forward—Asian features, military bearing, early forties. His chip's glow was a steady blue behind his eyes. "And he already mastered spatial fold enough to answer your summons?"
"He folded from orbit to Shanghai," Maya said. "Fifteen thousand kilometers. First try."
Whispers rippled through the group. Lin felt their attention like physical weight, their enhanced perceptions analyzing him, measuring him, calculating his threat level.
"Impossible." This from a younger man, maybe mid-twenties, with aggressive posture and chips glowing an angry red. "It took me three weeks to fold across a city. Either he's lying, or—"
"Or his integration is proceeding at an unprecedented rate," interrupted a woman with an accent Lin couldn't place—Japanese, maybe? She was small, precise, with silver-white hair despite appearing to be in her thirties. Her chip's glow was a calm violet. "Fascinating. His neural architecture must have exceptional plasticity."
"Or his chip is different," the aggressive one said, suspicion thick in his voice. "Could be a trap. A Void construct wearing human skin."
Lin's omniscience activated automatically, showing him the conversation's branches. In forty-two percent of futures, this turned into a fight. In sixty percent, he won. In the remaining thirty-eight percent where he lost, the entire Nexus was destroyed in the conflict.
"Stand down, Marcus." The voice came from deeper in the chamber, and everyone immediately straightened. A man emerged from the impossible geometry—tall, broad-shouldered, with silver temples and chip-glow so intense it looked like stars burning in his skull. Authority radiated from him like heat from a furnace. "If he were a Void construct, I'd know. My specialization is detection and analysis."
He stopped in front of Lin, studying him with eyes that saw through matter, time, probability itself. Lin felt naked under that gaze, every secret laid bare.
"Commander James Wei," the man introduced himself. "I lead what's left of us." He extended a hand. "Your chip is genuine. Generation Final, same as ours. Welcome to the war, Lin Da'is."
Lin shook his hand. Wei's grip was firm, and Lin's omniscience showed him fragments of the Commander's past—battles fought across dimensions, impossible victories, crushing defeats, the weight of dead friends and failed timelines.
"Maya briefed you on the basics?" Wei asked.
"Thirty-four controllers. Twelve dead. Three corrupted. Five hiding. Fourteen active." Lin recited the numbers that felt like death sentences. "And something called the Void Manifest is eating reality."
"Close enough." Wei gestured, and the chamber's geometry shifted. The walls became transparent, showing views into other dimensions—some beautiful, some terrifying, some simply incomprehensible. "Let me give you the complete picture."
The transparent walls filled with data, images, tactical displays. Lin's chip automatically processed and categorized the information flood.
"Six months ago, dimensional breaches began appearing," Wei explained. "Small at first. Barely noticeable. But they've been accelerating. Each breach weakens the barriers between realities, making the next breach easier. It's exponential growth. At current rates, we have approximately forty-three days before cascade failure."
"Cascade failure?" Lin asked, though his chip was already feeding him the definition.
"Total dimensional collapse," the white-haired woman—Dr. Yuki Tanaka, according to the nameplate now hovering in Lin's enhanced vision—said clinically. "All realities collapsing into a singular point of non-existence. The Void Manifest consumes everything. Then there is nothing. Not even void. Just... absence."
The weight of that statement crushed the room into silence.
"Forty-three days," Lin repeated. "That's all?"
"Give or take," Wei said. "Could be faster if a major breach opens. Could be slower if we successfully seal enough of them. But the trend is clear." He brought up a graph showing breach frequency over time. The curve was exponential, terrifying. "We're losing."
"What about the corrupted controllers?" Lin asked. "Can't they help?"
Marcus laughed bitterly. "Help? They're making it worse. Corrupted controllers don't just fail to fight the breaches—they cause them. Something about the corruption makes them destabilize reality just by existing."
"Which is why we have to put them down," Wei said quietly. "No matter how much we might have cared about them before they fell."
The implications of that hit Lin hard. These people had been friends, allies, fellow survivors of impossible circumstances. And now they hunted each other.
"How does corruption happen?" Lin asked.
Yuki pulled up medical scans, brain imagery, quantum state analysis. "Multiple vectors. Psychological breakdown under the weight of omniscience—seeing too many terrible futures breaks the mind. Physical degradation from overuse—the human body wasn't meant to channel this much power. Void contamination—exposure to breach energy infects the chip's systems. Or..." she hesitated, "some simply choose it. Power at this level corrupts. Some controllers decide they should rule rather than serve. That humanity needs gods to guide it. They're wrong, of course, but try telling that to someone who can rewrite reality."
"Could it happen to me?" Lin asked.
Everyone looked away except Wei.
"Yes," the Commander said bluntly. "It could happen to any of us. Some of us show early warning signs." His gaze flicked briefly to Marcus, who scowled but didn't argue. "We monitor each other. The moment someone starts sliding toward corruption, we... intervene."
"Intervene how?"
"Depends on the case. Sometimes we can pull them back. Therapy, reduced power usage, isolation from breach energy." Wei's expression hardened. "Sometimes we can't. Then we do what's necessary."
Execution. He meant execution. Lin's omniscience confirmed it—he saw futures where Wei personally killed corrupted controllers, mercy and murder blurred together.
"Cheerful introduction," Maya said, breaking the tension. "But he needs to know what he's signing up for. This isn't heroic. It's ugly, desperate survival."
"Agreed." Wei clapped his hands, and the chamber's geometry shifted again. The transparent walls became opaque, reforming into something resembling a tactical operations center. "Which brings us to current operations. Lin, you're new, powerful, and untested. Normally I'd put you through weeks of training before field deployment."
"But we don't have weeks," Lin finished.
"Exactly. So we're doing this the hard way." Wei brought up a holographic display showing a location—looked like somewhere in South America, mountainous terrain. "Three hours ago, we detected a major breach forming in Peru. It's being deliberately widened by Controller Unit 19. Corrupted six weeks ago. Specializes in dimensional erosion—he can eat away the boundaries between realities."
The display showed a man, late thirties, with hollow eyes and veins of black corruption spreading across his skin like cracks in porcelain.
"Ethan Cross," Wei said. "Used to be one of our best. Saved twenty million lives in the Tokyo Crisis. Then he saw too far into the future, saw all the ways we lose, and something broke. Now he's decided if we're going to lose anyway, he might as well accelerate the process. Says he's being 'merciful.' Ending it quickly instead of drawing out the suffering."
"Insane," Marcus muttered.
"Corrupted," Yuki corrected. "There's a difference."
"Not one that matters when he's trying to end the world," Marcus shot back.
Wei raised a hand, silencing them. "Lin, I'm sending you to Peru with a team. Your mission: seal the breach and stop Ethan. Capture if possible. Eliminate if necessary."
Lin's omniscience exploded with possibilities. He saw hundreds of futures branching from this moment. In some, he succeeded. In others, he died. In a few terrible branches, he became corrupted himself, joining Ethan in his nihilistic crusade.
But in the majority of futures—fifty-eight percent—he stopped the breach and saved millions of lives.
Those were acceptable odds.
"I'll do it," Lin said.
"Good." Wei gestured to three others. "Maya, you're team leader. Marcus, you provide offensive support. Aria, you're on omniscience watch—track Ethan's probable movements."
The third person Wei had indicated finally spoke. Lin hadn't even noticed her until now—a young woman, Korean features, sitting so still she might have been a statue. Her eyes glowed with chip-light so intense it looked painful.
"I've already seen thirteen futures where we fail," Aria said, her voice barely a whisper. "In seven of them, Lin dies. In three, Marcus turns on us. In two, I go blind from looking too far ahead."
"Cheerful as always, Aria," Marcus said sarcastically.
"But in one future," Aria continued, ignoring him, "Lin does something I can't predict. Something outside my omniscience. That's the future where we win."
She turned to look at Lin directly for the first time, and he nearly staggered under the weight of her gaze. She wasn't just looking at him—she was looking at every version of him across all possible timelines simultaneously.
"You're the variable," she said. "The unpredictable element. That's why your integration is so fast. Your chip isn't just Generation Final. It's something more. Something even the future builders didn't fully understand."
The room fell silent. Everyone stared at Lin.
"What does that mean?" he asked.
"It means you're either our salvation or our doom," Wei said. "And we won't know which until it's too late to change course." He straightened, military authority reasserting itself. "Team, you deploy in ten minutes. Gear up. Maya, brief them on Ethan's capabilities en route."
The meeting broke up, controllers dispersing to various alcoves and chambers that hadn't existed moments before. The Nexus's geometry accommodated their needs, rooms appearing and disappearing as required.
Maya touched Lin's shoulder. "You okay? That was a lot to absorb."
"I've absorbed six and a half billion years of technological development," Lin said. "I think I can handle office politics."
She laughed. "Fair point. Come on, let me show you the armory. We don't actually need weapons when we can fold bullets through someone's skull, but some of us like the psychological comfort of holding something."
They walked through corridors that bent in non-Euclidean ways. Other controllers passed them, nodding acknowledgment or studying Lin with open curiosity. He was the new variable, the unpredictable element that even omniscience couldn't fully parse.
"Question," Lin said as they walked. "Why haven't I met all fourteen active controllers? I've only seen about seven."
"The others are on missions. We're stretched thin—too few of us, too many breaches." Maya's expression darkened. "We lose ground every day. Even if we could seal every breach, we'd still be falling behind because the Void Manifest keeps punching through. It's learning. Adapting. Getting better at breaking into our reality."
"Then how do we win?"
Maya stopped walking, turning to face him. Her chip's glow intensified as she activated her own omniscience, looking at futures Lin couldn't see.
"Honestly? I don't know if we do. Every timeline I can see ends badly. Either we lose slowly—grinding defeat across years of desperate fighting—or we lose fast in some catastrophic failure. The only futures where humanity survives are..." She trailed off.
"Are what?"
"Uncertain. Clouded. There's something interfering with far-future sight. Some event or decision that creates a probability singularity—a point where predictions become impossible." She met his eyes. "And that singularity is connected to you, Lin. Whatever you're going to do, whatever choice you're going to make, it's big enough to blind even the most powerful omniscience."
Before Lin could respond, an alarm shrieked through the Nexus. The walls flashed red, and Wei's voice echoed from everywhere at once.
"All teams, priority alert! The Peru breach just escalated. Ethan's not alone—he's got two other corrupted controllers with him. Repeat, three corrupted controllers are actively destabilizing the breach. Estimated time to cascade failure: forty minutes. Deploy immediately!"
Maya swore in Spanish. "So much for prep time. Come on!"
They ran, the Nexus's geometry shifting to speed their passage. Within seconds, they reached what Lin assumed was the deployment chamber—a vast space filled with shimmering portals, each one leading to different locations across the planet and beyond.
Marcus was already there, along with Aria. The quiet Korean woman looked even paler than before.
"I can't see anymore," she said, voice shaking. "All the futures past the next hour are black. Whatever's about to happen, it's big enough to break my omniscience."
"Mine too," Maya admitted. "We're going in blind."
"Not entirely," Lin said. His own omniscience was still functioning, though the futures were increasingly chaotic. "I can see fragments. Enough to navigate by."
"Then you're on point," Maya decided. "Marcus, standard combat formation. Aria, you're on support—even if you can't see the far future, you can still predict movements in the immediate present. Lin..." She looked at him, really looked at him, and he saw fear in her eyes. "Don't die. Whatever you are, whatever that chip makes you, I think we're going to need you before this is over."
The portal to Peru blazed open, showing mountain terrain under storm-dark skies. Through it, Lin could hear the sound of reality screaming—dimensional barriers being torn apart, the Void Manifest pressing through.
"For what it's worth," Marcus said, cracking his knuckles as space warped around his fists, "if you are our salvation, try not to get killed in the first five minutes. Would be embarrassing."
Lin stepped toward the portal. His omniscience showed him the chaos waiting on the other side—three corrupted controllers, reality coming apart at the seams, millions of lives hanging in the balance. He saw the futures where he failed, where he succeeded, where everything fell apart in ways he couldn't prevent.
But he also saw that one future Aria had mentioned. The one where he did something unpredictable. Something that broke omniscience itself.
He had no idea what that was.
But he was about to find out.
Lin stepped through the portal.
Peru waited on the other side, along with monsters that used to be human.
The war had found him.
Now it was time to see if he could fight back.
The mountain air was thin and cold, but Lin barely noticed. His enhanced physiology had already adapted, optimizing oxygen usage, regulating temperature. What he couldn't adapt to was the sight before him.
The breach was massive—a wound in reality itself, stretching hundreds of meters across the mountainside. Through it, Lin could see the space between dimensions, and worse, he could see it. The Void Manifest. Not fully present, not yet, but pressing against the breach like a vast hand pushing through paper.
It was hunger given form. Absence made manifest. The complete annihilation of existence, and it was beautiful in the most terrible way imaginable.
Three figures stood before the breach, and Lin recognized Ethan Cross immediately from the briefing images. But the corruption had progressed faster than expected. His entire body was covered in black veins now, and his eyes had gone completely dark—not the darkness of night, but the absolute absence of light that characterized the Void itself.
The other two corrupted controllers were strangers, but equally horrifying. One was a woman whose body seemed to flicker between dimensions, never quite solid. The other was a man whose corruption had turned his flesh partially translucent, revealing impossible geometries beneath his skin.
Ethan turned as Lin's team materialized. A smile spread across his face, wrong and too wide.
"You must be the new one," he said, his voice layered with harmonics that hurt to hear. "Controller Unit 28. I've been watching your futures. So many possibilities. So much potential." The smile widened impossibly further. "Good. I was getting bored."
Reality shuddered around them.
The battle was about to begin.