Back at our hideout, we helped Mikey settle in and recover from his ordeal. I filled him in on our mission and our fight against Starkid and StarStruck. While initially hesitant, Mikey eventually agreed to join our cause, eager to use his newfound abilities for what he believed to be the greater good.

  In the following weeks, we trained together, honing our skills and learning to work as a team. Mikey's progress was remarkable, and he quickly became a powerful force within our ranks, easily adapting to the rigorous training and demonstrating his unique abilities.

  One day, during a break in our training, SCAN burst into the room, a look of excitement in his eyes.

  "Found it," he says without looking up, fingers dancing across three keyboards simultaneously. "Camp Estrella. Starkid's primary base of operations. Hidden in plain sight, disguised as a government research facility. Actually a training ground for his powered recruits."

  "Location?" I ask, strings tasting possibilities in the electromagnetic fields saturating the room.

  "Northern California. Sierra Nevada foothills." Multiple screens converge on satellite imagery showing a compound nestled against mountain wilderness.”It’s impossible to tell what we are getting into. It could be dangerous."

  "Nothing's impossible," I reply, studying the facility's layout. "Just technically challenging."

  I have plenty of experience breaking into secret hideouts…

  *****

  Desert wind tastes like failure and copper pennies. The quantum suppression field around me pulses like a migraine, my strings weak as wet paper. Two zealots flank me, black cubes humming in their trembling hands. Their devotion to Roth can't mask their fear of me, even weakened.

  "How much farther?" I ask, though I already know. I can taste the wrongness ahead—the quantum mineral warping local physics, making reality uncomfortable.

  "Just beyond that ridge," the taller zealot replies, sun-leathered face glistening with sweat despite the evening chill. His name is Barrett—former physics professor who found religion in Roth's temporal manipulation. Shame really. He had potential before becoming a quantum cultist.

  The other zealot—Eliza, ex-military with the thousand-yard stare of someone who's seen things that shouldn't exist—checks a device strapped to her wrist. "Energy signatures consistent with heavy mining operations. And... something else."

  "Contortion," I say, tasting the name like spoiled meat. "How exactly does his ability work?"

  Barrett's gaze drops, remembering comrades who returned as human pretzels. "He twists matter like it's clay. Bends physics in ways that shouldn't be possible. Metal, stone, flesh—all the same to him."

  "And no projectile weapons can touch him," Eliza adds. "He sees them coming, warps space around his body. Bullets end up going sideways, backward, anywhere but through him."

  Perfect. A physics-bender with a personal force field. Just what I need while operating at quarter-strength.

  We crest the ridge, and I get my first real look at the quarry. A massive pit carved into red desert stone, spiraling downward like an inverse Tower of Babel. Heavy machinery dots the excavation layers—retrofitted mining equipment modified with tech that looks military-grade.

  Marauders patrol the perimeter. Not the garden-variety scavengers from old apocalypse films—these are organized, equipped. Their armor is a patchwork of stolen exoskeleton segments with power cores glowing ominous red at joints and connection points. Weapons pulse with unstable energy signatures, the kind that don't just kill—they unmake.

  "Twenty-seven last count," Barrett whispers, passing me a pair of quantum-enhanced binoculars. "Plus Contortion."

  I scan the operation, noting guard patterns, defensive positions, extraction points. My strings, though weakened, still twitch with analytical precision. Old habits. "Processing facility at the eastern edge. That's where they're refining the raw material."

  Eliza nods grimly. "Contortion will be there. He never strays far from the largest mineral deposits."

  "Good." I hand the binoculars back, already forming plans. Contingencies. Attack vectors. "I need something from you both."

  The zealots exchange nervous glances. "We have strict orders—" Barrett begins.

  "To ensure my success," I finish for him. "Which requires proper equipment. I need those." I point to the small quantum devices strapped to their belts. "Not the suppression cubes. The others."

  Barrett's hand moves protectively to his belt, where three smaller black cubes hang like technological prayer beads. "These are quantum disruptors. Experimental. Dangerous. Roth hasn't perfected them yet."

  "Exactly why I need them." My strings coil with dangerous patience. "Unless you'd prefer to fight Contortion yourselves?"

  Another exchanged glance. Barrett reluctantly unclips the devices, placing them in my outstretched hand. Each cube feels heavy with potential, its surface etched with equations that seem to move when I don't look directly at them.

  "Three charges each," Eliza explains, professional tone masking anxiety. "Targeted quantum displacement. Creates momentary disruptions in abilities that manipulate physical space."

  "Like Contortion's twisting."

  "Theoretically." Her expression suggests the theory might cost me substantial amounts of flesh and bone.

  "Stay here," I order, pocketing the devices. "Keep the suppression field active, but at minimum strength. I'll need at least some access to my abilities."

  Barrett adjusts his cube's settings, and I feel the field weaken marginally. My strings stretch like waking limbs, still limited but more responsive.

  "How will we know if you succeed?" Eliza asks, practical to the end.

  I smile, all teeth and bad intentions. "You'll hear the screaming."

  Infiltrating the quarry proves easier than expected. Security focuses outward, not inward—designed to repel frontal assaults, not single infiltrators. Arrogance. Complacency. Fatal flaws in any operation.

  I move between patrol routes, timing my advances with scheduled check-ins. My strings, though weakened, still taste the air, sensing electromagnetic pulses from communication devices, predicting movement patterns through subtle disturbances in the quantum field.

  The processing facility looms ahead—a retrofitted mining complex with improvised additions. Pipes and conduits snake across its surface like mechanical veins, pumping liquified mineral from extraction points to refinement chambers. The air shimmers with quantum distortion, physics protesting the mineral's unnatural concentration.

  I circle the structure, identifying entry points, threat patterns, escape routes. Two guards flank the main entrance, exoskeletons enhanced with what looks like salvaged military tech. Weapons at ready position—energy rifles capable of turning flesh to superheated plasma.

  My strings twitch with predatory anticipation. Even at reduced strength, I have options.

  I retrieve one of Barrett's quantum disruptors, activating it with a precise mental command. The device hums to life, its surface crawling with equations that hurt to comprehend. I target the communication relay on the facility's roof, trigger the disruptor, and watch reality hiccup.

  The effect is immediate and impressive. The relay doesn't just malfunction—it temporarily ceases to exist in our dimension, creating a localized reality disruption that cascades through connected systems. Alarms shriek with dimensional confusion. Lights flicker between states of being and nonexistence.

  The guards react predictably—attention diverted, weapons raised toward the disturbance. I strike from behind, strings wrapping around their throats despite the dampening field. Not enough pressure to kill—just enough to cut oxygen to their brains for the crucial seconds needed to render them unconscious.

  They drop like marionettes with cut strings. Ironic.

  I appropriate one guard's access card, slipping through the facility's side entrance while chaos erupts at the front. Inside, the air tastes wrong—saturated with quantum particles that shouldn't exist in our dimension. My strings recoil from the contamination, curling defensively around me.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Research stations line the main corridor, each one analyzing different properties of the mineral. Screens display molecular structures that shift and change randomly, refuse to obey conventional physics. Samples float in containment fields, their surface rippling with colors that have no names in human language.

  And beyond, in the central chamber, I spot him. Contortion.

  The ex-Fellowship member hunches over a particularly large sample of raw mineral. His body defies anatomical logic—spine curved at angles that should shatter vertebrae, limbs bent and twisted like hot metal, yet moving with unsettling fluidity. Where his hands touch the mineral, reality warps like fabric caught in machinery.

  His head snaps up, sensing my presence. Not through conventional means—through disturbances in the quantum field I create simply by existing. His face stretches in a smile that uses too many muscles, extends too wide across features that shift position with each movement.

  "I ssssmell old power," he hisses, voice vibrating with unnatural harmonics. "Weakened. Muzzled. But familiar." His body unfolds, rising to a height that shouldn't be possible with human anatomy. "The puppet master himself. Come to dance?"

  My strings coil with violent anticipation. "I've come for the mineral. And to shut down your operation."

  Contortion laughs, the sound distorting air molecules around him. "The great Marionette, running errands for a third-rate time cultist. How the mighty have fallen." His fingers elongate like melting wax, stretching toward me. "The Fellowship will be so disappointed to learn what's become of you."

  "The Fellowship is dead." My strings dance with renewed purpose, testing the limits of the suppression field. "Just like you're about to be."

  His attack comes without warning. The floor beneath me twists impossibly, metal and concrete folding like paper, trying to wrap around my legs. I leap backwards, strings cutting through the warped material before it can solidify around my ankles.

  Contortion's body flows across the chamber, limbs elongating and contracting with fluid unpredictability. No direct line of approach—all angles, all directions, reality itself bending to accommodate his impossible movement.

  My strings lash out, aiming for vital points—throat, eyes, spine. They pass through empty space as his body twists aside, matter rearranging itself to avoid contact. Not teleportation—something worse. Something that makes physics whimper.

  "Too slow," he taunts, voice coming from three different locations simultaneously as his form splits and merges, divides and reconnects. "The legendary strings, now just pathetic threads."

  His counter-attack explodes from multiple vectors. Fingers elongate into bone-white spears, punching through air from impossible angles. I dodge the first two, feeling them whip past close enough to displace air. The third catches my shoulder, piercing flesh and muscle before I can fully evade.

  Pain jolts through immortal nerves. Blood that shouldn't be flowing soaks my sleeve. The wound already begins its accelerated healing, but slower than normal—the suppression field interfering with even this basic function.

  Perfect. I needed a reminder of my own mortality.

  "First blood," Contortion crows, fingers retracting to normal proportions before immediately stretching toward new attack vectors. "How does it feel, puppet master? To bleed like the insects you've controlled?"

  I don't waste breath on replies. My strings slice through his elongated digits, drawing an inhuman shriek as severed finger-spears flop to the ground like dying snakes. The victory is fleeting—his flesh already reconstituting, damaged parts twisting back into impossible wholeness.

  Time to change tactics.

  I activate another quantum disruptor, targeting the space directly around Contortion. Reality hiccups as local physics experiences momentary amnesia. The contortionist's body loses coherence for precisely 2.7 seconds—long enough for three of my strings to wrap around what passes for his throat.

  His eyes widen in genuine surprise as I tighten my grip. "Impossible," he gasps, body struggling to twist free, to bend around the strings cutting into his flesh. "Your powers are suppressed—"

  "I've had centuries of practice," I reply, tightening further. "And you're still thinking in three dimensions."

  Contortion's skin ripples as he attempts to shift his vital organs away from the deadly pressure. His form elongates, contracts, tries to slip between molecular bonds in my strings. But the quantum disruptor's effect lingers just long enough to disrupt his spatial manipulation.

  Still, he's Fellowship-trained. He doesn't panic.

  His right arm stretches impossibly, wrapping around a support column like a python. With a violent twist, he tears the entire structure free. Metal groans. Concrete shatters. The ceiling above destabilizes, sections crashing down around us.

  I'm forced to release my hold, diving aside as tonnage of debris crashes through the floor. Contortion flows through the destruction like water through rocks, his liquid form reassembling on the chamber's opposite side.

  "Nice toy," he snarls, eyeing the quantum disruptor in my hand. "Let's see how it works on you."

  The air twists. Reality folds. Suddenly he's directly behind me, impossibly close. Fingers like steel cables wrap around my wrist, crushing bone, forcing the disruptor from my grip. Pain lances up my arm as radius and ulna fracture under pressure that would pulverize normal human skeletons.

  "I'm going to take you apart," he whispers, mouth stretching wider than human jaws allow. "Slowly. One joint at a time. See what makes the great Marionette tick."

  His grip tightens. More bones crack. My strings respond to pain and rage, lashing out with what limited power the suppression field allows. One finds purchase, slicing across his extended neck, drawing fluid that isn't quite blood—too viscous, too iridescent.

  Contortion hisses, momentarily loosening his grip. I exploit the opening, twisting free despite screaming nerves and fractured bones. My arm hangs useless, damage too severe for real-time healing under suppression.

  Limited options. Decreasing mobility. One quantum disruptor left.

  I retreat strategically, putting processing equipment between us. Contortion laughs, the sound echoing from multiple points as his form splits and merges around obstacles.

  "Running, puppet master? How disappointing." His voice stretches and distorts like his body. "I expected more from the man who killed half the Fellowship."

  "I'm just getting started," I reply, backing toward the chamber's center where the largest mineral sample floats in a containment field. My strings probe the field's parameters, tasting frequencies, identifying weak points.

  Contortion flows across the ceiling, body defying gravity, limbs elongating toward me. "No more tricks. No more toys. Just you and me and pain."

  "Not quite." I activate my final quantum disruptor, but not at him—at the containment field itself.

  Reality convulses. The field doesn't just fail—it inverts. Energy meant to contain the mineral explosion explodes outward in quantum backlash. Raw mineral, exposed to unfiltered reality, reacts violently. Light erupts in colors that shouldn't exist. Air molecules scream as their fundamental properties temporarily rewrite themselves.

  Contortion shrieks as waves of unprocessed quantum material wash over him. His abilities rely on manipulating physical space—and suddenly, physical space isn't playing by the rules. His body twists in directions even he didn't intend, flesh folding into impossible geometries as local physics has a nervous breakdown.

  I shelter behind a reinforced console, strings creating a barrier against the worst of the quantum storm. The suppression field actually helps—limiting my connection to the dimensional energy that's currently tearing Contortion into mathematical impossibilities.

  When the initial blast subsides, I emerge to survey the damage. The chamber resembles a surrealist painting—matter frozen mid-flow, colors bleeding between objects, gravity taking a coffee break in localized pockets.

  In the center, Contortion lies twisted beyond recognition. His body resembles a M?bius strip of flesh and bone, trying to exist in four dimensions while constrained to three. Eyes blink from surfaces where no eyes should be. Mouths gasp from joints that shouldn't speak.

  "You... broke... everything," he manages through a throat that's currently inside out.

  I approach cautiously, strings extended despite the pain radiating from my shattered arm. "That was the idea."

  "The mineral... can't be contained now." His laughter bubbles from multiple orifices as his form continues to twist involuntarily. "Reality is... bleeding here. You've created... a wound."

  "A calculated risk." I kneel beside his twisted form, strings poised to end his suffering. "Any last words?"

  "Everything... bleeds together... at the Zenith." His body convulses as quantum energy continues to rewrite his cellular structure. "The prophecy... the Umbras... they've been watching you. All of you. Pieces on a board... you never saw."

  "What prophecy?" My strings tighten around what might be his throat. "Tell me."

  "The Zenith Prophecy..." Blood bubbles from a mouth opening and closing on what used to be his shoulder. "When the star-child and the void-walker meet... at the moment of convergence... reality will be... rewritten."

  "Where?" I demand, tightening my grip. "Where will this convergence happen?"

  Contortion's laugh turns wet, gurgling. "Where it all began...." His body begins to lose coherence, cellular structure breaking down under quantum stress. "But you're too late... puppet master. The twins have... accelerated the timetable. The Umbras... have already chosen sides."

  With a final, shuddering gasp, his twisted form collapses into components that don't resemble human anatomy. The quantum energy that kept him coherent dissipates, leaving behind matter that can't decide what it's supposed to be.

  I rise slowly, processing his final words. Where did it all begin?

  The quantum mineral lies scattered across the chamber, some pieces still floating in defiance of gravity. Smaller samples remain intact in storage units along the walls—enough to fulfill my agreement with Roth. But the information I've gained is far more valuable.

  The Zenith Prophecy. The convergence point. Perhaps this is how I save Dredsen. Maybe this is Melek meant.

  Reality itself bleeding at the edges as dimensional barriers fail. The Unweaving accelerating, stars disappearing faster than before. And beneath it all, ancient entities watching, waiting—the Umbras, seeking their way back into a world that once exiled them.

  My strings taste purpose in the quantum-contaminated air. Taste connection. Taste hope. Taste vengeance.

  But first, I need Roth to stabilize that pendant. To create a connection to the spaces between. To find Dresden before the convergence. Before the Zenith prophecy fulfills itself.

  I gather what intact mineral samples remain, ignoring the pain from my shattered arm. Outside, alarms wail as marauders realize something's gone catastrophically wrong. I'll deal with them if necessary—my strings may be weakened, but they're still deadly in close quarters.

  Contortion's final words echo in my immortal mind as I prepare to leave the quantum-destabilized chamber. The Zenith Prophecy. The convergence point where all barriers fall. Where dimensions bleed together.

  Some of the knots in my strings are finally coming undone.

  Time to set the stage.