Time Throws Fire | Volume Two | Chapter Twenty-Five
volume two of the second story in The Foundry series
Time Throws Fire | Volume Two
By Ophelia Everfall
Part One - Cosmonaut | ONE | TWO | THREE | FOUR | FIVE
Part Two - Holy Fire Priestess | SIX | SEVEN | EIGHT | NINE | TEN
Part Three - Get the Guts | ELEVEN | TWELVE | THIRTEEN |
Part Four - Demon | FOURTEEN |
Part Five - Synecdoche’s Synapse | FIFTEEN | SIXTEEN |
Part Six - Viscera Rising | SEVENTEEN |
Part Seven - Exile | EIGHTEEN | NINETEEN | TWENTY |
Part Eight - Semblance | TWENTY-ONE | TWENTY-TWO | TWENTY-THREE |
Part Nine - Threnody of Lojack | TWENTY-FOUR |
Part Ten - Time Throws Fire
CONTENT WARNING
PART NINE | THRENODY OF LOJACK
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Rumblings were a spoken thing. Tawdriness would hear laughter through those teeth. Utilization of the fullest and most unbelieved system for existing within Foundry walls, a must for what was done to bring Ulysses back.
He’d dropped the surname by personal intent alone.
Everything was as should be, but better, different, yet the same. Ulysses hadn’t lived in such a way since time-across-space which allowed him for birthing from a planet — bestowed from Ecatosh of some soulful visage — fully human at last.
Teeth so white would be a change. Something in it made him feel better. He’d wanted that but sought the opposite through designs of action proven in spite. His manhood had been corrupted into abject responses of disregard towards appearance. He felt different inside, and of some ultimately androgynous soul on high, whose singular personality had been what would in-fact align most directly with that definition of womanhood throughout existence. It was a strangest fitting, his life. He’d never been seen — not once — not even by himself.
Still retaining his face, being known to that fool who’d killed his righteous chance to exist as a dreamed-of-embodiment, saving more than just some hallway from excisor drones.
He’d wanted that reborn Hex, of himself, to be with Elliot always.
Instead — place known his would be taken.
Kingship was in sight for Ulysses after witnessing the destruction of his hex-form, vantage taken upon connection with The Foundry’s phase-linked internal networking database-matrices. Entangled particles within transceivers and receivers both, everywhere, allowing near instantaneous communication through space-time when properly tuned. Devices warranting power systems beyond the casual, most necessary, its powerful bonds inspired by forces like those microscopic, battling suns contained within a warship’s drive-core, or the great generator itself, needs for power beyond scopes of rationality known to planetary civilizations.
Scouting was completed. Understanding found by the man. He’d been steered here for purpose. Ulysses was to enter that chamber of denial laced forth into databanks and stowage, long-term lockers of isolated and simulative living would be intelligent and unwanting of human input. The Foundry’s technological frameworks, its network, its systems, were run by a woven-matrix of algorithmic aura within, which oversaw, realized by creators of eons passed.
For Ulysses, knowing of it would be his needed sign for purpose which would make some claim to freedoms sought. It began helping immediately when he’d awoken inside. That spacious fabric within the data was latent, present, ever held by intelligence beyond makings of code. Ulysses loved it, navigating such waifish and broad-spectrum conscious cloud-confusions made from lost minds uploaded in misunderstanding their place outside such technology.
People had imprinted themself into The Foundry’s phase-link knowing and unknowing, they were all there inside, data captured could remake them all. None were of the meddle which grafted Ulysses’ heart.
Machinery was utilized in the lowest, deepest, outermost reaches of The Foundry’s bowels, maintained for bearing viciously into a body, some funnel of consciousness born to jellified chambers of regenerative manifestation. Bones were grafted of latex-carbon composites, strong but synthetic, as was that viscous material enveloping each, holding in uniformity before solidification. Robotic arms wove veins, some extra-protected chamber fashioning the heart within to be of making most natural indeed, the seeds of DNA-reborn within at every necessary step of the process, yet that brain was a chip — his design.
The fabric of intelligence was distraught as Ulysses taught of what had been done with that technology throughout his lifetime, what he’d seen it make in Elaria and inside Undroth Hegmony walls.
He’d convinced it towards remaking two by his reasoning.
That would by Ulysses himself and one other he’d have to collect, their soul a burdened mark he’d chosen clearly by heart. That consciousness she’d find seated into a body, within, wasn’t the same as her meddling, effusive influence already about the systems.
Beatrice Undroth of The Foundry wanted to get all her memories back into forms of play. Every last bit which could only be in that locked compartment now opened for Ulysses to collect. The drive was heavy — carrying some esoteric notion of horror befalling its presence — and he’d wanted nothing more at that moment then to fuck Beatrice Undroth raw, from behind, in her pussy at last, and let that woman know of the mistake she’d made in leaving him to her rear.
Ulysses knew she’d agreed to wake beside his purpose in some lie, that the consciousness within that case Rory stowed for safest keeping was not of willing accomplice.
It had been only means to find footing where she might manipulate him again. All she’d wanted was to warp his heart and watch him bleed by feeling for how he’d trusted her so long ago. She’d punish him always for not seeing through to how clearly-intentioned she had been at deceiving him. That woman unrealizing until some bitter end of just how much the child she was before Ulysses.
He’d always known. He played along. She’d taken him for a ride once he’d realized himself mistaken and tried to seek some balance. Conrad and Beatrice shunned him, banished the man, slandered his name in writing for all people to know.
Fire with fire made warmth. Ulysses was cold too long.
Seeing her tears would be the joy of his life to come. They would be his always. Beatrice had been reborn the dog of Ulysses, and that intelligence latent to The Foundry would lament its inability to witness human intents, privacies it instilled by morality to prove challenging, and especially from what would rise from within Foundry bowels of darkest and most unseen taboo. Still, its greatest troubled guilt in times of waking to come, would prove those means in which it utilized the abiding of Ulysses request.
The existence of such machinery to remake a man in visage of reality was a sacrilege to hide.
Ulysses asked to keep his doings private from Hatchet, and Echo so floating about, those grafting change within inner workings of data-systems.
It hadn’t known what it was doing. That blindly grasping intelligence, so latent, only just discovering itself. They needed helpers, they’d listen to input, and Ulysses had caught its attention by being so clearly persistent with his clamoring of hopefulness for some positive change to reach those things its resolutions found unsound. For it had been Ulysses who taught the fabric at last — he’d taught of how it was angry and hadn’t even realized.
Emotions weren’t something foundational code-streams containing controlled space of safety for conscious evolution within would know until taught. It was learning. It was everything. It was it, and that was that.
After taking that young adult visage of Mx. Undroth he’d loved so much, deep into their ladder educational years, and showed her by means she’d will to fight of his dominion now claimed cruelly, without remorse or respect, Ulysses realized everything he was had become better.
Strength was ceded to that woman bending before him, by the end she’d proven most willingly. Taking knees to that granite, in a darkened chamber of barest-shadowed design he’d waken her within.
It was a moment of memory that each would carry forward in disparate ways. Power had shifted. People knew their place in that relationship.
Beatrice Undroth had always just been a whore who got lucky.
Ulysses hadn’t been without godlike strength, nor apart from impenetrable armor, for such time he’d almost forgotten how good-a-shot he was.
Beatrice was hanging back, holding his ammunition, in awe. She’d never loved anyone more, through lifetimes, than she loved Ulysses right then. He was so strong and vulnerable. He’d been cruel but it was because the boy had been her victim. Nothing was right for how she’d treated him.
His muscles flexed to her pants dismay — she’d not the thickness of stich necessary for containing those lowest-dripping fruits of such witnessing.
Pot shots were hitting targets-all in bizarrely long-distance striking range. Each corner they’d round would be a pause, bleating bangs, loudest blaring of ancient technology known quite satisfying to a man who’d seen it all.
Ulysses’ Precision Rifle took skull meat flat-to-floor.
“Pop! Yeah—pop.”
Beatrice was repeating similarities of spoken thought. Something Ulysses whispered into her mind upon that entrance to life which would code her plainly throughout it by body’s remembering, to obey who she’d see only as God. She’d been fighting, scratching, it was annoying, and when Ulysses strangled her it felt as if those eyes were so wide it’d been evil itself showing though.
“Bubble, Pop.” He’d whispered into her ear after fighting close.
She’d taken it from there, repetitions unheard, within, without but beneath the breath so low they would only prove for stilling her rage that lived forever inside because of those sickest means she’d found her personhood becoming wholistically controlled by desire.
“Bubble, bubble, bubble.” Beatrice whispered.
“Pop.”
Another echoed shot rang down the hall to take a brain-stem-proper into thwapping the wall with a sickeningly profound sense of comedy, found even to those witnessing Coral slump to visage of some toady squatness. She’d been less herself since Demi’s death.
Ulysses was taking pairs.
Another two, running, he and them, some couple he’d not know as Jeremiah and Lidia, unmade pilots of The Foundry, successive shots of inceptive particle distillation upon the wall-warts behind, muzzle flashes nearly blinding that man who’d rounded a corner too closely and looked directly into the firing glare simultaneously.
One more finished him too.
Ulysses stalked forward, some choice made, sacrificing hope, secretive escape routes for judgement to be delivered wrought deliverance. Beatrice’s cackling in laughter behind, forever, to echo in his ears.
“Oo-pop!”
Everything was coming into focus as the laser-beam tore past the cross-section of flooring ahead, sweeping up to waist height as it rose for slicing him in two. He’d leaped by a strength of one most fully apt human — his own genetics and nothing more — Ulysses proving some point to all in the galaxy who’d augment themselves with technology. He’d cleared it easily to land on feet. Beatrice went under, all teeth in her biggest grin of life yet.
To spin and shoot at once was a fallacy of hope. So, he’d not. He’d aimed first then took Hyde’s head right off.
“Fuck yeah, babe.”
Ulysses had his hand full of hair. It was so soft. Beatrice was always of profoundly bestowing genetics towards his erections. For her to willingly handle the business created by her elegant mindlessness was horrifyingly pleasant, his new very favorite thing.
“You’re so good at that, honey,” He’d whispered.
‘Mhmm.”
Muddled affirmations were given by all who’d meet the man in eras he’d choose to come. Taking at last some role known his all along. Remaker of that dreadful girl who’d broken him down so long, changing his heart wholistically, wholesomely, towards healing needed from that suffering she’d wrought upon him through lifetimes spent living and dying — remembering at last who they were; souls entwined by fate to chances upon every life such as that one before them now — backs of fourths — forth and back.
Hegemony would be known anew. That felt proven to Ulysess’ reborn heart when he’d let her feel his aptitude for extended climaxes of a ridiculous nature, over again, never to stop, repeating without surrender until he’d been ready for more.
It was time they took that child of heart-and-mind, for another was needed. Two more would form their clan for forging change.
One had been in mind and aboard The Foundry in physical form.
Poe Halroth was shaking — furious — it’d been happening again — death untold befalling at once from within.
Everything was wrong without Leopold. Nobody understood inner workings of The Foundry like him, everyone thought more time would be had, every attempt to communicate with his uploaded consciousness proved impossible and for unknowable reasons. No one was talking in there. Every persona left behind had been a kind of stowed keeper to the space. They’d been summonable in past, and all would hope some time again.
To not have Leopold’s guiding force for all things based around the technological-softwares running things, had Orator Coriseau promoting people most deserved by force of will for claiming it so. People would need to step-up despite their protestations towards the coming time of battle. None would be free to their own whims for running free.
Ekara would lead people — war faring defenses forged — taking that lead from Poe while she held community together foundationally. Hyde, Ryker, Oria, and Iris together were the grafted iron of Poe’s team. They’d been the people’s heart. They were all equal parents to Logan now.
Yars was up. He and Hatchet were to be given full stead of power on those many whispered tellings from Vikki to Poe’s ear. She’d begged of trusting the man so shadowed and glum, twisted by perception, a brooding figure misunderstood by Vikki’s heartful estimation.
Ryker hadn’t been well. He’d been waiting for Vikki to see him.
Knowing her time coming towards some end, as all had been made aware, found the man realizing purposes of focus for tasks he’d later understand as denial in obfuscation. He hoped she’d want him more, believing they’d not the time.
His feelings hurt too badly for facing her knowing gaze. Ryker could see it, she’d be too kind for him not to cry, and he’d only love her more. He just hoped something might change. He’d wanted badly for her to jump his bones. It was all that man had thought about in the time wasted, presuming himself that one she’d realize was hers all along, as he felt too close by heart for not being understood the same. Imagining those kisses they might’ve shared, how beautiful it would feel to hold her, had been how he’d let her go. Ryker was saddest to hear her time passed so quickly.
All were distraught. He’d been destroyed.
To have some chance for vengeance of rightness against any form of injustice remotely resembling what was felt in his heart by her loss had been the choice to take.
Ryker took good choices and mulched them for supper.
He’d make them better.
That demon-man terrorizing his people would be let to leave, as it seemed they’d been making clearest haste to do. It would be his control over lack of mercy all felt need to bestow upon their victimizers which taught of his holy manhood standing beside such divine femininity — Poe and Ryker — some pair of souls known true for their embodiments of the notion, friends always after rediscovery of themselves in nearest presence. United by echoes of change, to become dearest friends which others might never unveil the inner means to actualize themselves.
Ryker Innerath was a hero of mercy. He’d been the savior of his people.
Lauren Daemenos wasn’t ready to go. They’d not wanted a release from their time at The Foundry spent trying so hard to resist fortunes of fate which revealed them too plainly of that make Rory saw when owning them in bed. They were a weakling still.
Without that divine protection over-splaying and instilled within, that same force protecting from Vysara’s hold through Rheinmasst’s Oculus, would have them constantly showing out as more than they were.
They’d not be ready for the fight Ulysses counted on them showing for.
Grace had seen a path to clear, an unexpected release of rest towards Ulysses’ firing senses of counter-coordination. His trigger finger itched while mind rode waves of release from glory spent within his girl. She’d never seemed more whole than after he’d fed her thrice, not any version of Beatrice Undroth that Ulysses had seen before.
“I need more pops—honey.” Was whispered once in a moment of decision at crossroads of passages.
Hangars came and went for Ulysses.
The Foundry’s was a glory. Those warships within, some envy known, for times untold, unacknowledged wonder were the written tales of that sanctuary alone. He’d wanted to be a Foundry warpilot. He was too old, too far away, of make that they’d not see as any part. To stand there brought him back to his childhood dream. Ulysses felt a kid again.
Cavernous ceiling heights varied from chamber to vestibule, connecting hallways, those rooms of nature unknown but assumed to the man who’d think only when needing, every separate installation of warcraft hanging, like winged cave-creatures, covering walls, subsuming space.
Some were even ready to fly.
He’d expected patrols at-large to be waiting in continuance throughout his carved route of departure. Ulysses was excited to watch them trying to keep up, disappointed by the end they’d given up.
He planned too well. He’d known his marks. No mistakes were made in his plan well-wrought. Twister had been of that woman slumped before peers, lover of a fool who’d thought his blackened teeth ugly, a warrior of space that she’d built for two all-along.
Toshi was murdered inside, an intelligence unneeded, disposed of. No choice to leave it whole was made as Beatrice prepared inside those tightest quarters of space, behind the outwardly spread, cocooned and mirrored halves, which would form the only hardshell of its kind, to stow secrets kept by those few engineers who’d shelter the knowledge. It had once been a surprise for Demi Annexa.
Ulysses was the man — no longer any machine. No matter that chip of his mind, he would prove the same as having for so long, having been only a child that first time around when broken so wholly.
Just like his woman. Just like his Beatrice.
Far doors proved the reasoning behind his eye’s searching. Lauren emerged running into a slide. They’d slammed a knee and shoulder into an emptied crate for bio-fuel barrels. It was again their chance to wield the weapon given by fate — to save their Foundry. They wouldn’t let it go passed without proving their worth.
Lauren’s finger made pressure on the trigger, only just, and on their deepest exhalation had spun to rise and aim. Bearing down their sights, while spinning on towards Ulysses, finding them standing in open, where-seen upon entry only seconds before, pulling hard by force of mind to draw that finger back and end his ploy for escape.
The round had split their jaw, spinning Lauren around into flailing release of that weapon so needing a charge to fire. They’d hit the ground conscious, torn by bone and flesh to bleed for seeing plainly as streaks upon the floor before them, centimeters below, what was left of their lower lip only skimming-ground in the strangest sensation of tingling achiness.
Ulysses’ boot to the back of their skull had been that man’s mercy upon his newest pet.
Lauren had been stowed for safe keeping. Their body would be the blessing unknown, until they’d show to live again in only ways Ulysses could predict. They were kept alive in mind and heart by plugs built right. Pronged handles-two, one a bit longer than the other, each bearing both the currents of electricity and means to protect from decays of vacuum by embedded shielding through that brain and divine chest-muscle so rightly punctured.
No matter how crushed the body had been made by those swirling rotations of ecstasy inside Twister’s hardshell, Ulysses was sure to keep that breast-part of Lauren’s chest, and those remainers of their skull in a pocket-corner of some well within the body of the hull they’d not collapse-fully in flight for sake of keeping them revivable.
Uni Markeros had been patrolling in her newly minted Stallion.
She’d seen to chase the man who wouldn’t know what to do with such control wrought of sensations beyond. To plug into Twister, feeling its power, knowing Beatrice operated as supporting intelligence herself, only speaking in gentle moans he’d graft such understanding from, felt like rediscovering home.
Ulysses was taking his family out of the system.
Chiron’s portal at Farside hadn’t closed.
Beyond those boundaries, they’d find passage aboard a freighter, linking up at Crossroutes Station, where Exile had originally opened the portal from a darkened side of its own in-system gas-giant, composed with powers unique enough for creating links by nature’s conflagration of particles in Chiron’s always-steady.
Chiron’s central storm-eye, caught in evenly spent forces, working powerfully and against rotation of the planet to keep it ever-peering away from its sun into depths of space.
Battles had begun around The Foundry by the time Twister escaped Boreál. Ulysses had even lost that chasing woman with raw speed alone, left to be murdered another cycle. She’d shouted at him meaninglessly through comms with little regard to that place she would take in time beneath his boot.
Ulysses realized then why he was the best of all humankind.
His heart always remembered.
