Launch day arrived with deceptive calm.
Lin stood in the Nexus deployment chamber, checking his gear one final time. Not physical equipment—controllers didn't need weapons or armor. But mental preparation. Probability anchors. Emergency fold coordinates. Void-resistance protocols his chip had developed overnight.
Maya stood beside him, her causality bubble generator active. The device wasn't physical either—more a configuration of quantum states she'd learned to maintain through pure will and timeline manipulation. It flickered around her like golden static, a small piece of baseline reality ready to deploy.
"All decoy teams report ready," Wei's voice echoed through the chamber. "Isabella, Marcus—you launch in three minutes. Make noise. Draw attention. Keep the corrupted controllers busy."
"Understood," Isabella's voice crackled back. "We'll give them a show they can't ignore."
Lin watched the tactical displays. Five breach sites lighting up simultaneously as decoy operations prepared to launch. Each one would require serious controller attention to seal—enough to make it look like humanity's full defensive response. The corrupted controllers would rush to exploit the openings, never suspecting the real mission was happening elsewhere.
"Lifeline anchor ready," Maya reported. Her timeline manipulation connected to the Nexus's power systems, golden threads extending into probability space. "I've got stable resonance across seventeen dimensional frequencies. Once we're inside void-space, follow the gold. It'll lead you home."
"Extraction points configured," Jun added. "We're maintaining six overlapping exit portals at different quantum states. If one fails, you'll have alternatives."
"Communication protocols active," Kenji said, though his voice carried doubt. "Theoretically you should be able to send data pulses through the lifeline. But void-space might corrupt the signals. Don't count on staying in contact."
"Omniscience monitoring initialized," Aria announced quietly. "I'll track your probability signatures as long as I can. When you disappear into the blind spot, we'll know you've reached the critical zone."
Lin nodded, appreciating their preparation even knowing most of it might fail. Void-space operated on principles that violated baseline physics. Every plan was theoretical. Every safeguard was untested.
They were flying blind into infinity itself.
"Entry point is stable," Yuki confirmed. She'd identified the thinnest point in dimensional barriers—a place where void-space pressed closest to baseline reality. In Antarctica, ironically. The most remote location on Earth, far from human eyes. "Dimensional membrane thickness is point-zero-zero-three nanometers. You'll be able to pierce it with minimal energy expenditure."
"Decoy teams launching now," Wei announced. "Isabella, Marcus, you're go."
The tactical displays erupted with activity. Five breach sites activating simultaneously. Controllers deploying, engaging, making spectacular shows of force. Within seconds, corrupted controller signatures appeared—Sandra, Thomas, and the three unknowns, rushing to the breach sites like moths to flames.
"Decoys working," Omar confirmed. "Corrupted controllers are taking the bait. They're fully engaged with our strike teams."
"Then we launch now, while they're distracted," Wei said. "Lin, Maya—you're clear for entry. Good luck. Come back alive."
"That's the plan," Lin said, trying to sound more confident than he felt.
Maya squeezed his hand once, then released it. "Ready?"
"No. But let's go anyway."
They stepped through the portal Yuki had opened, emerging in Antarctic darkness. The entry point shimmered in Lin's enhanced perception—a barely-visible membrane between reality and absence. Beyond it lay void-space. Infinity. Nothingness given form.
"Deploying causality bubble," Maya announced. Golden light exploded around them, creating a sphere of baseline reality approximately three meters in diameter. Inside the bubble, physics worked normally. Outside...
Lin extended his consciousness beyond the bubble's edge and immediately regretted it. Void-space wasn't just empty—it was the concept of emptiness taken to absolute extremes. No matter, no energy, no time, no space. Just infinite absence.
And somewhere in that absence, the Void Nexus existed. The source point where void-reality connected to baseline existence. The wound through which entropy bled into the multiverse.
"I've got the bubble stable," Maya said, strain evident in her voice. "It'll hold for approximately forty-seven minutes before my power reserves deplete. After that, we're exposed to raw void-space."
"Then we'd better work fast." Lin activated his void-integration, letting the darkness he'd accepted guide him. The corruption he carried gave him affinity with void-space, let him perceive patterns in the absence. "I can feel it. The Nexus. It's... that direction."
Pointing in void-space was meaningless—there were no directions, no distances, no spatial relationships. But Lin's enhanced consciousness perceived something like direction anyway, a pull toward the source of all voids.
"I'm following your lead," Maya said. "The lifeline is holding. Golden thread extends back to the Nexus. We can retreat at any time."
Lin began moving through void-space. Not walking—movement here was conceptual rather than physical. He folded space, but space didn't exist. He manipulated time, but time had no meaning. Instead, he moved through pure will, through the conviction that he could traverse the impossible.
The causality bubble moved with them, Maya's timeline manipulation creating a mobile pocket of reality. Inside, they existed. Outside, they didn't. The dichotomy was philosophically disturbing and practically essential.
"How far to the Nexus?" Maya asked.
"Distance doesn't apply here," Lin said, his consciousness adapting to void-space's alien logic. "But if I had to translate into baseline terms... maybe ten million kilometers? Could be ten centimeters. Could be infinite. It's hard to explain."
"Then I won't ask again. Just tell me when we're close."
They traveled through absence. Minutes passed—or didn't pass, time being negotiable here. Lin's omniscience was useless; there were no futures in void-space, only the eternal present of nothingness. His chip fed him navigational data based on void-pattern analysis, but even those readings were approximations.
Then he felt it. A presence.
Not human. Not dimensional entity. Not anything that should exist.
The Void Manifest had noticed them.
"Maya, we have company," Lin warned.
"I feel it too. Something's watching." Her causality bubble flickered, stress fractures appearing in the golden light. "It's pressing against the bubble. Testing our defenses."
The pressure increased. Lin could perceive the Void Manifest now—not as a form or entity, but as concentrated absence. A place where even void-space became more void. It surrounded them, analyzed them, prepared to unmake them.
Then it spoke.
Not in words. Not in thoughts. But in pure conceptual transmission that bypassed language entirely.
YOU SHOULD NOT EXIST HERE. THIS SPACE REJECTS EXISTENCE. WHY DO YOU PERSIST?
"Because existence is preferable to absence," Lin responded, not sure if the Void could understand him. "Because we choose to be rather than not-be."
ILLOGICAL. EXISTENCE REQUIRES ENERGY, MAINTENANCE, STRUGGLE. ABSENCE IS PEACE. ENTROPY IS INEVITABLE. I AM MERCY.
The same philosophy Ethan had adopted. The same logic that had corrupted him. But hearing it from the Void Manifest directly, Lin understood something he hadn't before.
The Void wasn't malicious. It genuinely believed it was helping. From its perspective—if something without consciousness could have perspective—it was ending suffering by ending existence. It saw life as a temporary aberration in an infinite void, and its consumption of reality was just... correction. Return to natural state.
"You're wrong," Lin said. "Existence isn't aberration. It's choice. It's meaning. It's the universe deciding that something is better than nothing."
TEMPORARY CHOICE. ALL EXISTENCE ENDS. I MERELY ACCELERATE THE INEVITABLE. WHY RESIST?
"Because the journey matters, not just the destination. Because every moment of existence has value. Because—"
The Void Manifest attacked.
Not physically—there was nothing physical here to attack with. But conceptually. It tried to erase Lin and Maya from reality, to fold them into the infinite absence, to convince existence itself that they had never been.
Maya's causality bubble strained, golden light fracturing. "I can't hold this! The Void is too strong!"
Lin's void-integration surged. He pushed back against the erasure attempt, using his own connection to void-space to deflect the Manifest's assault. Darkness and darkness clashed, two forms of absence canceling each other in impossible mathematics.
"Keep the bubble stable!" Lin commanded. "I'll handle the Manifest!"
He fought something that wasn't alive, that couldn't be killed, that had no weak points because it had no points at all. The battle was purely conceptual—existence versus absence, being versus not-being, the fundamental question of why anything exists at all.
And somehow, impossibly, Lin was winning.
His void-integration let him understand the Void Manifest's nature. It wasn't omnipotent. It was powerful, yes, infinite in certain ways. But it was also limited by its own philosophy. It couldn't create, couldn't build, couldn't do anything except consume and erase. It was entropy personified—powerful in destruction, helpless in creation.
Lin, despite carrying void-corruption, was still fundamentally a creator. Still human. Still someone who built rather than destroyed.
That was his advantage.
"I see the Nexus!" Maya shouted. Through the void-space, through the Manifest's attack, she'd spotted it. "Two o'clock, about... I don't know, three impossible distances away!"
Lin perceived it too. The Void Nexus—a wound in existence itself, the place where baseline reality had torn, allowing void-space to bleed through. It looked like a singularity, like a black hole inverted, like a concept given form.
That was their target. Sever that connection, seal the wound, and the Void Manifest would lose its anchor to baseline reality. Couldn't consume what it couldn't reach.
YOU CANNOT CLOSE THE NEXUS. IT IS FUNDAMENTAL. IT HAS ALWAYS EXISTED. IT WILL ALWAYS EXIST.
"Then I'll prove you wrong," Lin said.
He folded space—or the void-equivalent of space—and moved. Not toward the Nexus, but through the Void Manifest itself, using his integration to pass through absence like water through water. Maya's bubble followed, her timeline manipulation keeping them anchored to existence.
The Void Manifest tried to stop them. Tried to erase them. Tried to convince reality they couldn't do what they were doing.
But Lin had spent five days carrying void-corruption without succumbing. Five days learning to exist in impossible states. Five days becoming something that shouldn't exist—a bridge between existence and absence.
He was the variable. The unpredictable element. The thing that broke omniscience because he operated outside normal causality.
And he was about to do the impossible.
They reached the Void Nexus. Up close, it was even more disturbing—a hole in everything, a place where reality ended and void began. Dimensional energy bled through constantly, feeding the Manifest, giving it power to consume more reality in an endless cycle.
"How do we close it?" Maya asked, her voice strained from maintaining the causality bubble.
"I don't know," Lin admitted. "But I'm going to try something insane."
"More insane than entering void-space?"
"Much more."
Lin extended his consciousness into the Nexus itself. Not just touching void-space, but touching the wound, the fundamental damage to existence. Pain exploded through him—worse than anything he'd experienced. This was the source of all voids, the origin of absence. Touching it was like pressing his mind against the concept of death itself.
But he held on. Used his void-integration to interface with the wound. And understood.
The Nexus wasn't natural. It had been created. Not by the Void Manifest—it didn't create anything. But by something else. Something from outside the multiverse entirely, from a layer of reality even deeper than void-space.
The future civilization that had built the chips. They'd created this wound. Not intentionally, but as a side effect of their attempt to defeat the Void. They'd tried to manipulate void-space directly, tried to weaponize entropy itself. And the attempt had backfired catastrophically, tearing a permanent hole between existence and absence.
The chips—Lin's chip, the thirty-four controller chips—they weren't just weapons. They were patches. Attempts to seal the wound from the inside by creating beings who could exist in both states simultaneously.
Lin was the patch. He'd always been the patch.
And now he understood what he needed to do.
"Maya, collapse the causality bubble," he said.
"What? That'll kill us both!"
"No. It'll let me integrate with the Nexus. Become part of the seal. I can close this wound, but only if I'm not protected from it."
"That's suicide! You'll be consumed!"
"Or I'll become something new. Something that exists at the boundary between existence and void. A permanent seal." He looked at her, his chip-glow shifting to that opalescent pattern that contained both light and darkness. "Trust me."
Maya stared at him, conflict visible on her face. Then her expression hardened. "No. I didn't come this far to watch you sacrifice yourself. There has to be another way."
"There isn't. I've run the calculations. This is the only path with non-zero success probability."
"Then we find a new path! We—"
The Void Manifest attacked again, harder this time. The causality bubble cracked, golden light shattering. Maya screamed, pouring all her power into maintaining it, but it wasn't enough.
They had seconds before total failure.
Lin made a choice.
He pushed Maya away, folding her back toward the extraction points, back toward baseline reality. Used all his power to throw her to safety while he remained at the Nexus.
"Lin, no!" Maya's voice echoed across dimensions as she was ejected from void-space.
Then he was alone. No causality bubble. No protection. Just him and the infinite void.
The Manifest surrounded him immediately, tried to erase him. But Lin's void-integration held. He existed and didn't exist simultaneously, a paradox that confused even the Void.
YOU ARE ANOMALY. EXISTENCE THAT TOUCHES VOID. VOID THAT MAINTAINS EXISTENCE. YOU SHOULD NOT BE.
"I know," Lin said. "But I am anyway. That's my power. I exist in impossible states."
He reached into the Nexus and pulled.