Even in death, it challenges me. I fire once, twice at that hideous eye. At this range, the bullets explode with so much ferocity they reduce the entire head into silvery rice and curry.
And suddenly there is a great thunderclap as a meteorite hits the ocean not far from where I stand, sending up a wave that smashes into me like the fist of God himself. I’m picked up and flung head over heels. For once, my thoughts are cold, analytical. A new Enemy, I decide immediately as I scramble to my feet in the mud.
There’s no ceremony in its arrival. The creature shakes itself, sending beads of water back into the ocean. Its carapace is the color of burning rock. Ripples of red light dance over its shell, winking out of existence as it turns to face me.
The fear drains away. Vishnu doesn’t do fear.
Something like fangs click together like a helicopter’s blades against stone. Something like arms bare. Something like a mouth screams.
It’s a challenge. One I intend to meet. It rushes me, moving through the water with an ease that shouldn’t be possible for something with its body.
I swing Padma around, operating with the efficiency only programming and nerves of fiber optics can bring about. I fire. Twin reports ring out, deafening my auditory systems to all other noises hanging below the explosions.
The Enemy reels as plumes of fire blossom over its plate-like chest. Tails whip across the surface of the ocean in a frenzy. Silver collides with water, foaming on contact and sending up pillars of steam that vanish almost as quickly. The monster’s body cracks like it’s being pelted by a storm of river stones. But it doesn’t stop.
I take it for what it’s worth: A minor problem. Solution: Destroy the Enemy without reservation. Maximum effort and energy expenditure.
I re-prime my cannon, loading up all secondary barrels. I’m down to my last two uranium slugs. It’s too precious to fire. But I have my flechettes, tucked away somewhere in the terrible ingenuity of Padma. The gun spits once, twice, thrice, peppering the Indian Ocean with razor-sharp slugs of steel that rip through the air like a metal storm.
The feedback is terrible. A lance of cold electricity rakes the inside of my left arm as I track the creature’s movements. It surges forward, tails beating across the ocean to the sounds of wet thunder. Calculations flood my mind to answer a problem I hadn’t even considered: How fast is it closing in versus the speed of my cannon and the resulting explosion radius?
Answer: Too fast.
A part of me pauses at the results. I see the numbers and know the exact measures I need to take, but the math doesn’t add up. My vision flares. The math always adds up. Not now. The numbers make sense, but not to a man who remembers a burning building, smoldering bodies, and that he’s tottering in place.
Vishnu screams at me, clearing my vision, commanding me to fire. But I am Vishnu. And I’m torn. Something visceral manifests in my gut, knotting and writhing like a bundle of spastic eels.
I lower the cannon.
And the Enemy slams into me.
I teeter, but something keeps me from falling over. My body pivots and I feel it grow farther away. One of my fists balls and crashes into the side of the Enemy. Another thundercrack as its shell splits from the impact.
Vishnu screams at me. The cannon. The cannon. My hand shakes, and the cannon feels like a dream. I can’t make sense of it. It’s formless—an idea that a man who’s lost everything clings to. A tool for revenge that can’t come. My other hand forms a stiff shovel, plunging itself into broken shell as it tries to stitch itself back together.
A terrible warmth spreads over my fingers as I root through its insides. Its silvery mass clings to my digits, registering a series of numbers related to bodily temperature, volume, and the chemical makeup of the Enemy.
I push the data aside—push Vishnu aside. A primal scream builds in my chest, rattling its way through my throat. It’s the noise of a man who has lost everything. A man who’s nursing the fire of a burning building deep within him. The kind of fire that sets your marrow alight.
I use it to drive my hand deeper into the Enemy, rooting around inside its body. A mass, like a bundle of roots, brushes back against me. I close my fingers around them and rip. The mass resists me, sending the crustacean-like monster into a twitching frenzy.
It thrashes, trying to shake me free. One of its pincers clubs my side as it brays in warbling tones.
The impact shakes through me, registering on two levels: Vishnu takes it in with a calculation reserved for machinery. Sensors, feedback, line failures, energy pathways recalculated, recalibrated.
I feel like I’ve been hammered by clubs.
The creature yowls, mandibles clicking in staccato beat.
I ignore it as the heat inside me builds.
“Vishnu— Babaji, come in. Your readings...all over the place. We think you’re desyncing, Babaji. Repeat—desyncing. Acknowledge? Return to base. Babaji!”
Desyncing, me? My minds turn to Kali. Vishnu remembers her, a goddess. A destroyer. I remember what she’d been pushed to. What she’d done. And how she went out.
I CAN’T LEAVE NOW, I try to tell the crackling line, but nothing meets me but the hiss of static.
One of the Enemy’s tails lances overtop its body, coming down to drive the bony spear-end into my shoulder.
Instinct, not programming, drives me to reach overhead and grab hold of the monster’s tail. I dig fingers of steel, driven by man’s iron resolve, into the armor-skin. I hold tight, remembering my other arm—remembering Vishnu. I prime my cannon, load my last uranium slug, and fire point blank.
The explosion knocks me back like a ragdoll. Sensors in my arm scream. Brilliant light, too many shades for me to make out, wash over my sight. The heat prompts a series of numbers to scrawl over my vision. I tune it out, feeling the inferno instead. I’m reminded of the first time I touch my hand to a gas burner, despite my mother’s warning. The heat is of a temperature where all I feel is just the first flash. The rest is a numbing weight I can’t process. My skin is heavy. Too heavy. The Enemy is screaming. It is reeling.
I stagger back, planting my feet as Vishnu’s thoughts echo in the background.
“Babaji—” Static crackles behind his words. “—desyncing. Return—”
The words fall away, carrying no meaning to me.
Water plumes in the distance. A second pillar erupts next to the first formation. Two more creatures, mirroring the one in front of me, emerging, skins glowing red and steaming from the heat and the water.
Vishnu runs a calculation on the odds of survival.
I ignore it, fixing my gaze on the thing that staggers and screams. My chest aches. Vishnu tells me, us, that our plating is scorched. Bits of my torso are slagged to near unrepairable status. My cannon tires to prime itself, failing. The weapon’s mouth is the sort of orange you find in volcanos and metal shops. The metal warps in front of me, losing the hot and violent color as bits of globular steel fall into the ocean to send up gouts of steam.
I twist, jamming the burning and ruined weapon into the dying Enemy’s face, pressing those terrible snapping mandibles into the ocean, holding it down until the tail stops whipping and the arms stop ripping at my skin.
“Babaji, disengage. Babaji, come home! Desyncing— You’re—”
Maybe I am. But I have a duty. Then they made me Vishnu, The Protector. I/we won’t fail. Can’t fail.
“Babaji, your mind...the signals. Come back!”
I/we force my/our wrecked cannon deeper into the shattered shell, twisting the arm back and forth until it buries well within the Enemy. The weapon still pulses in accordance with our will. The knots in our stomach, the molten anger, the cold crackle of Vishnu’s resolve... We channel it all.