---

  // John 1230 - 87 minutes since impact. //

  ---

  I blink, confusion filled my mind, I felt myself respond without much thought. "Well yeah, I'm alive?" I said, my voice laced with the same confusion I felt.

  Genesis spluttered, seemingly not expected such a bland response. "No that's not it! You are true meat! Not false!"

  "False? How can meat or well, flesh in this case if we are talking about me. Be fake?" I ask, Genesis huffs.

  "Me? Did you not see my corpse? Did you not see what it was made of? That is false meat, hold on." She suddenly paused, if I could hazard a guess it felt like she was looking at me intently. "Why don't you know this?" She suddenly asked, suspicion filling her words.

  I swallowed, oh right. "well uh..." I mental swore, exactly how do I explain this? I wasn't sure if there was some cultural issues with not being from this reality and I didn't want to find out.

  "I'm not from here, I kinda just wandered in." I say, my tone even and calm, but my heart was racing out my chest. Hopefully genesis couldn't see that through the suits limited sensors.

  Her voice trickled in, slow, measured. It still held the suspicious tone. But it was different in a way I couldn't quite describe. "Not from around here?" She muttered slowly. "Nothing can't be from around here. Beyond is the void, are you saying you are from that? Impossible. Not unless you came from beyond that-"

  She paused, I felt a sense of unease grip me. It was clear in that she understood I wasn't from here and had naturally worked to the fact I that I really wasn't from here. "John." She said, the use of my name making my nerves increase tenfold.

  "Yes?" I said, unable to keep the nerves I was feeling from leaking in, I felt jittery, like I needed to move, to walk or pace.

  "Are you from outside of here? Beyond the void that is?" She said slowly, I felt the knot in my gut tighten, but she didn't sound angry, almost interested.

  "Perhaps." I said, giving a half answer, although it was clear what I truly meant was yes. I just couldn't bring myself to say it. "What about it?" I said slowly, but my nerves made me crush the words together, so it came out as almost a spew of noise.

  "Nothing is just..." She starts to say but takes a long pause, its so long I felt some of my nerves unwinding, relaxing just a bit. "Things like you, living things. Don't just... enter here. There are layers, shields, they keep things from just... wandering in. Which makes your presence here odd, I thought at first maybe you where just a creature from below, interested in me and unknowing."

  I held my silence, a shield? It would explain why in all other experiments with the gateway project that the objects made it safely through without being sucked into a place like this as I had been.

  "But you... you don't just lack the knowledge programmed into something from below, your physically wrong. Nothing of you is... truly efficient, you are not constructed with designs of the intelligent. You have faults, vestigial structure that do not aid you." She mutters, mostly to herself as it making sure what was seeing was truly there.

  "Most of all you lack a source-well. You have no link, to connection back to the flow of intelligence, which should leave you a beast without a mind. But... yet you speak, words which are both familiar and unfamiliar, it took the flow source a few instants more then it should to decrypt it... impossible unless has never been heard before in all of time." She explained, and I felt my brow furrow as I realised something I didn't notice before.

  How had I understood Genesis? While at first her voice was weak, barely understandable and with static and an electronic undertone present throughout I had still understood it. She'd spoken plain english.

  I waited for Genesis to continue but it was as if she was waiting for something, or perhaps waiting to receive something, from whatever a source-well was. I licked my lips, feeling how dry they were. I desperately needed something to drink.

  "I'm not from here as you guess, to be exact... I think I'm from another reality... I don't know how I got here, at least not in full. I was apart of a manned experiment using a experimental technology called the gateway." I explained, my line of thinking was that with Genesis having basically figured out what I was, not telling her would just breed distrust. I really didn't need something that was both currently powering my suit and clearly had a degree of access to it deciding to work against me.

  "A gateway? Explain." Genesis said, the suspicion returning to her voice. I swallowed before doing as she'd asked. "Well, I'm not privy to the exacts. But the gateway is as its namesake. It is physically two gate-like structures in space. But through a process that its too long to explain, these gates are able to be connected and a bridge built between them."

  I could hear Genesis thinking, quite literally as a steady hum filled my ears, like static but not quite so jarring on the mind.

  "I see, but that still doesn't explain how you got here, even if I accept your gateway as being real. It would have to leave reality and that is foolish, far simpler methods of travelling great distances exist, although admittedly they are not used any longer due to the cost." Genesis said, the bite in her voice told of both how stupid she found the idea of building a bridge outside of reality to be.

  I cringed as I spoke the next words. "Well uh... that is exactly what we did and I'm pretty sure somehow it locked onto your reality instead of the gateway we prepared." I said slowly.

  Genesis spoke right away. "Impossible, as I said shield and layers are present throughout, they would make your passage here impossible, unless somehow they were turned off-" She halted, going silent a moment.

  "Unless they were turned off and in the perfect moment you slipped through... tell me John did you willing come here? Are you an invader? Do you seek to destroy the city?" She suddenly asked, I felt sweat building up on my forehead and dampening my hair.

  "No! Of course I'm not here willingly and I don't want to destroy whatever city it is you speak of!" I say hurriedly, concern flashing through my mind. I tried to move, but found my suit immobile. Concerned turn to alarm but with several ton suit I was wearing reduced to a metal coffin I was unable to do much but wait.

  And so I did, minutes turned by as I waited, I could heard the hum from Genesis as she mulled over my words. I felt the alarm turn into a uncomfortable dread as she didn't respond. Thankfully I wasn't waiting for too long.

  "I would like to trust you John. And I should. I'm currently without a body, condemning you to death would only serve to condemn myself to a fate worse then death." She muttered, conflicting feelings mixed within her voice.

  I felt the suit become mobile again and I let out a breath I didn't realise I was holding in as some tension released from my shoulders. I swallowed. "I... look, Genesis I don't want to destroy anything you speak of I just want to leave..." I say with some amount of desperation in my voice.

  Genesis reply made me feel both hope and despair. "There is a way out, or in your case back to wherever it is you have come from. But the shields around the city will keep you within its boundaries as long as they are on. If you want to leave you will have to leave their limits or disable them" She explained.

  "So how do I leave or disable this shields?" I asked, hope filling me. But it was dashed, leaving a cold sort of horror at my situtation with her words.

  "You need to reach the city above. The problem ascending to the city, I myself took a full cycle to descend from the city and I was only upon its lowest layer, you would need to reach the very top, where the source and the shields are. Just getting to the first true layer of the city would be a challenge. To speak of reaching the very top... you'd face every angel and the last god... if he still lives."

  I stared out of one of the many windows, in the distance the tower I'd spied only a few hours before stood, a spire that reached the heavens and seemingly beyond even that.

  "I need to climb that?" I muttered out loud

  ---

  // Boris 1130 - 1 hour and 13 minutes since object entry confirmed. //

  ---

  The shuttle was silent aside from the groaning and silent sobbing. An unarmed guard lay slack against a wall, scorch wounds littered half of his body. Likely from the blast as that creature unleased with whatever was that weapon, now half the damn base was melted, reduced to slag with years of painstaking effort gone in a single instant.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  I exhaled, my breath came out in a cloud of small ice crystals, it was no surprise, the room was almost freezing, thick insulated suits kept us from freezing but even that was starting to fail.

  I got up, groaning, I'd taken a nasty wound to my leg. Some of the melted material after from the blast had dropped onto my leg and liquified part of the suit before sealing itself onto my leg. I knew most of my skin and some of my muscles on my leg had been liquified from the heat as well. But thinking about that wouldn't help.

  Life support was almost non-functional in the shuttle and the shuttle itself had broken down half way to base beta. I'm limped over to the window, staring out at the lunar landscape I sighed, so this was how I would die. 384,400 km from home.

  "Don't worry. Help is coming, a shuttle from base beta is arriving anytime!" Say a young man laying next to me. I chuckled. He'd been surprisingly optimistic throughout the entirety of the event. I felt bad for him, I was old, years spent on the project and then shipping the whole thing to the moon.

  I gave a rueful smile. "Sure kid, help is coming." I muttered, my tone bland and I sounded tired. I lifted my head, turning away from the window and flicked my gaze to the control panel, the shuttle technician leaning over it met my gaze.

  He held it for a moment before shaking his head. I felt my face twist into a frown, that meant we didn't have long, either oxygen or the power systems would fail soon.

  I slumped against the wall, staring up at the dim white light flowing from the led in the celling, it was flickering, power would go first its seemed. I rummaged at my side, one the floor lay the helmet to the suit.

  I grabbed it, considering whether to tell the rest of those here to put theirs on as well. I decided against it, I doubted most had any oxygen left in the merger tank of the suit. Likely used most of it just escaping the ruins of the base.

  Unsurprising, these were emergency suits, made to protect in case of a breach, not the destruction of the whole damn base. I lifted my helmet and slotted onto into place. I could tell my actions were noticed by a few and watched as some did the same.

  I slumped, staring at the light as it drew dimmer and dimmer before even it two flickered off. I heard the technician sigh.

  "5 minutes." He said, the words a death sentence, five minutes, that was all we had before the tiny amount of power remaining would no longer support even the bare minimum for us to breath.

  I closed my eyes. Counting down the seconds. Memories of my life flashed in my mind. The day I graduated, the moment I married the love of my life, the day I learned of her death. I few my face twist, we never did have a kid, talked about it, but she vanished from my leg too soon.

  I never did recover from that. I chuckled, I guess in a way, if heaven truly existed... I might get to see her again. I continued to count.

  Four minutes.

  Three minutes

  Two minutes

  One minute.

  A voice broke my counting, I blinked as I rose up. The young man had shot up and was staring outside. "They are here!" He exclaimed. I blinked and shot up as well, peering over his shoulder I saw what he had witness, a shape on the horizon.

  I felt hope filling me as I saw it was moving, moving towards us. I smiled. "Its true!" I exclaimed as well, joy filling my tone. I'd live, I'd god damn live!

  Then I noticed the dome, it was half hidden behind the shape, but it was clearly the dome of base alpha.

  The shape was coming FROM base alpha... I felt my smile fade as I pressed up against the window. I stared at the shape, the hope in my chest curdled as I stared. "That is... that is not them." I repeated the words that is not them over and over as the shape drew closer.

  It was the thing. It wasn't destroyed by the collapse of the moon base as we'd hoped. I stared in horror as it multilegged form slowly breezed over the moons surface.

  I watched as it slowly drew close. I distantly felt the hum of the life support stop, I felt the cycling of oxygen in the room stop. Powers out.

  I could hear the guard who's suit had been breached in several places start to choke, he'd decided not to wear his helmet, something about just accepting it.

  I turned my head as the choking stopped, he laid there, still. Suffocated quickly, wasn't surprising but at least it wasn't the blood boiling within your body from depressurization. I turned away as the sounds of people gasping for air increased. I closed my eyes, trying to block out the noise, but the suit wasn't made to dampen noise.

  A thump broke my trace. I'd forgotten momentarily about being and it seemed in that short amount of time it had reached us.

  I full expected it to simply move past, to gaze at the ruin of the shuttle and continue on, likely to base beta.

  I didn't expect it to suddenly grab the shuttle in one of its many limbs. The half broken craft shuddered and suddenly with a start, the control panel beeped, power had suddenly returned. I felt the shudder of the life supports turning back on and the steady hum of their activity return.

  I blinked, confusion filling my mind. The being had attacked and destroyed everything we had thrown at it, why was it helping us? I looked around the shuttles interior, seeing familiarly confused faces more some then most.

  The young man next to me took in a great gulp of air, as did the guard, it seem I'd misjudged him, he had been still alive, barely at least, he wasn't moving but he was breathing.

  The young man turned to face me, the same confusion on his face clear. "Why is it helping us?" He said, voicing my throats. I reached up, fiddling with my helmet as I pulled it off. I got it off and opened my mouth to speak when suddenly the comms crackled to life.

  "What What What Where Is Is Is What Where Is Source Where Source?" The voice said, jittering and broken, it sounded like the ramblings of a madman but fed through a machine. I blinked and confused responded before anyone else.

  "What source?" I said, as I looked up at the small speaker and camera in the corner of the shuttle. The voice returned sounding frustrated but with better grammar.

  "WHERE IS SOURCE! SOURCE GONE! WHERE? SOURCE IS GONE, FLOW IS GONE, THINKING IS HARD!" It screamed, the increased volume causing it to crackle as it spoke.

  I swallowed, growing even more confused at its words. "I don't understand, what is the source?" I asked, mostly curious but making sure to keep my voice down, all I knew was this being had saved us but for what I didn't know.

  The young man next to me hissed. "What the hell are you doing?" He asked, his voice filled with alarm. I turned slightly to him, keeping my eyes on the camera in the corner which had suddenly started looking around.

  "I don't know but this thing is keeping us alive and I don't want it to suddenly stop!" I hiss back, trying to make him understand. He clearly did and opened his mouth to respond but nodded stiffly and backed down.

  The camera flickered around, zooming in on me, the guard and a few of the other people in the shuttle. The voice returned, but sounded confused.

  "You... are not... you are true meat... impossible. Halt." It said going silent. I felt the tension in the air increase the longer its silence went on. Clearly it was thinking, hopefully at the end of its thoughts it wouldn't kill us or worse.

  "Requesting information. This is the [city]?" It said, but it pronounced the word city oddly like it was trying to say something else but couldn't find the word.

  "No this is earth, the moon orbiting the earth to be exact." I said, I wasn't sure if it understood anything I was saying considering its strange halting speech, but all I could do was work with what I had.

  "Not city? Earth? So Source is not present on... Earth?" It asked, confusing me even more but I answered. "Yes I don't think the source you speak of exists here." It went completely silent for a full minute.

  I felt the tension increasing, the room felt like it was boiling. I could see people staring at me, I felt the weight of expectations upon me, everyone here wanted to live, they all clearly expected me to somehow guide them to a future in which they were alive.

  I mentally swore when it hadn't responded after almost five minutes. Did I saw something wrong? I wondered, but thankfully after a full six minutes it responded.

  "No source present so impossible to block source so actions lack required sin for execution. Angel unit Cessation is in direct violation of all known laws. Processing." The voice said, leaving me with mixed feelings and growing hope.

  Whatever an Angel unit Cessation was it clearly was whatever that metal spider was, and it seemed it believed, or at least did at one point and had acted with that in mind. I recalled the utter destruction that it had caused.

  Was all of that? All of the deaths it caused just because of what? A misunderstanding? I felt a bubble of anger boiling up from within me. I wanted to yell at it, to accuse it, to scream at it for what it had done, for the years of damage it had caused.

  But I didn't, I didn't want to ruin the already small chance before me. I instead held my breath as it continued.

  "Angel unit Cessation unable to connect to source to receive proper punishment, moving to secondary laws... secondary laws state to revert or provide equal worth to what was taken. Accepting." Its voice returned once more, it was clear this was some kind of machine, a clearly highly advanced one, but none the less.

  I felt the hope growing stronger, it was speaking about helping us. I swallowed, this was it. "Uh... Angel unit Cessation? if it as you say, then please help fix what you broke!" I said, taking the shot.

  The wide eyed terrified expression of the others gathered made me nervous and I felt the eyes of the young man next to me boring into my side.

  But the being responded. "Angel unit Cessation accepts. Requesting extend of destruction caused by unit Cessation."

  I felt my breath hitch, this was it. If this being was as I thought, some kind of hyper advanced machine, then perhaps it could rebuild or even make better the base alpha it had quite literally reduced to slag. I felt ideas racing in my mind and I had to steel myself before responding.

  "You've destroyed the entirety of base alpha. Within the base thirty people actively resided. I don't know how many survived whatever it was you did, but likely of the thirty there, around ten are still alive, seven here. Three or more in the one other transport that left but didn't crash. The twenty others are unlikely to be alive." I said, the weight of my words heavy as they left my mouth.

  The thing didn't respond, but I felt the shuttle shifting, several more beeps from the console made me break my death stare at the camera in the celling. I saw the technician there staring at the control in disbelief.

  I guess he could tell we were wondering and shakily spoke. "The damaged sections... they are fixed, all is operating perfectly, fuel is... full and power is, well I can't calculate it." He said he expression tight yet hopeful.

  I looked up. "Angel Unit Cessation... please take us back to base alpha." I said, feeling both good and bad. Good because we had seemingly an advanced machine on our side and willing to help.

  Bad because it took the deaths of twenty people and destruction of base alpha to get.

  I felt the shuttle move and I slumped against the wall, disbelief and confusion mixed with adrenaline still rushed through my system but I was alive.

  I was still fucking alive. I felt the phone which had been dead ever since leaving base alpha suddenly shudder.

  I pulled it from my pocket, raising it to my ear I accepted the call. A familiar voice on the other end reached my ear.

  "...Boris?" Said Nickol, he sounded concerned and tired. I let out a chuckle.

  "yes... yes its me. God its good to hear your voice Nickol."