Bill Mitchell stood in the command center of the orbital platform; his eyes fixed on the holographic representation of Shadow Earth below. The stealthed Shadowgate had been merged with the Valkyrie and a swarm of missile pods. Bill sat in his interface chair in the extended prow, creeping past the threshold of the gate to peek into the Shadowverse.

Bill needed to be on the shadow side of the portal to sense the hidden dimensions that hid predators and aided in transmitting thoughts and intent. He no longer flinched when masers burned high-altitude wisps from the path of his odd craft. The larger space-capable creatures weren't fast enough to keep up with his weapons platform.

With his augmentations, he could see the dark, twisted landscape below as it writhed with movement—hordes of creatures swarming like antibodies to an infection. Except in this case, the infections were new nodes of massive infrastructure that hadn't been present in his scouting mission.

He no longer needed to consciously link with the gestalt network connecting his many selves. The uplift virus had restructured his neural pathways to accommodate the dimensional compression, allowing his consciousness to swim freely between his biological and digital copies. Fifty-four instances of himself, yet they functioned as one expanded mind.

"Targeting solution locked," Bravo reported through their shared connection. "Nuclear payload prepped and delivery vehicles standing by." The speech wasn't necessary, but Bill was determined to log the entire conflict. He hoped that there would be a future where this recording would be valuable.

Sebastian—his primary biological form—nodded physically, though the gesture was unnecessary. The entire collective knew his thoughts before his muscles could respond.

Casa had provided not only the raw nuclear material but also enhanced yield designs—amplified matter conversion matrices that pushed energy release to near-theoretical limits. Even after years of working with her, she still managed to surprise him. Bill had accepted her support without hesitation while insisting she keep away from the threat and out of Apex's attention. Her last warning nagged at him.

"Status on Promise?" he asked aloud, a lingering habit from when he'd been a single consciousness.

Another Bill—this one calling himself Marcus—materialized as a hologram beside him. "The ark has altered course. Confirmed trajectory directly back to Earth. Casa is tracking and closing but it still hasn't responded to her hails."

"Damn it," Sebastian muttered. "Timing couldn't be worse."

The fact that Promise hadn't sent so much as a laser pulse in over two decades was troubling. There was no visible sign of pursuit, no way to confirm why they were returning now. Bill trusted Casa to chase that mystery down—she'd already done the impossible. This merely difficult mission shouldn't be a problem for her. For now, he had more immediate concerns.

"Shadow gate alignment?" he asked.

"Gate is stable in high orbit," replied a drone-piloting Bill stationed near Luna. "Missile vectors are pre-fed for instantaneous passthrough to active incursion zones. We're focusing on the major rift clusters that are aligned with points on Earth showing signs of dimensional thinning."

Direct strikes into the heart of the infestation with no signs of defensive missiles or lasers. It was surgical warfare, if surgery could be measured in megatons. Bill's attention flicked outward, past the gate, to the drifting thermal signatures on the edge of his observation network.

The Lunar Drakes. He's scrapped with a few of the space drakon on his last exfiltration. They were tough and deadly with a perfectly adapted form for space battles. The swarm had been a singular, writhing mass near Shadow Luna—so large it had once blotted out half the orbital horizon.

Now it was smaller, diffuse, thinner than the last time Bill had eyes on it. It was still dangerous—enough to tear apart the delivery vehicles if they strayed off-course—but something had thinned their numbers. Whether internal conflict or something else, he couldn't say. The enemy wasn't idle and it wasn't stupid. It felt wrong.

"We can't delay the offensive," Sebastian decided, speaking for all of them. "The incursion points are multiplying. If we don't strike now, we'll be fighting them on Earth."

Through their shared consciousness, Bill felt a familiar pressure building—Apex, trying to connect with his selves still on the Earth side. The collective immediately hardened their defenses, deploying the Chthonic blocking code they'd reverse-engineered from Shadow Earth's own technologies.

"Not now, you manipulative bastard," Sebastian growled. Apex had been steering high orbital transit away from his operations and occluding the many Earth and Luna based sensors from seeing the war machine in high orbit.

A digital Bill operating from Luna sent a priority alert through their network: Analysis complete. Shadow Earth incursions increased by 218% following our first reconnaissance mission. Dimensional breach signatures match our gate technology.

The implications hit the collective like a physical blow. Their investigations—the very missions Apex had manipulated them into performing—were likely to have been the catalyst for the ShadowVerse's accelerated incursions. Innovation was funny like that. Once you truly knew what was possible, it was only a matter of time and will to get there.

"He used us," Sebastian said, his voice cold. "Apex sent us through knowing we'd leave breadcrumbs for them to follow back. It's supposedly all knowing. It must have known this would be the outcome!"

The collective's anger rose like a tide—not hot and sudden, but a cold, calculating rage that spread through every instance of Bill Mitchell across the system.

"We still proceed," came the unanimous decision from the gestalt. "Better to unleash hell here than Earth."

"First wave delivery vehicles launching in ten seconds," announced Marcus.

On the tactical display, dozens of small, stealthy craft detached from the orbital platform, each carrying multiple warheads designed to penetrate dimensional barriers before detonation. Rail guns affixed to the exterior of the Valkyrie accelerated the pods. With stealth, armor, and software hardened to resist the Chthonic memetic noise, they'd fly true.

Sebastian murmured to his other selves, "I doubt that this will end them. It's only a firebreak, but a sorely needed one. Miriam needs more time to unite the nations and align with the AI and the animal tribes."

The delivery vehicles accelerated toward the shadow gate, passing through its aperture in perfect formation. The massive pods screamed past the bridge rattling Bill in his chair. He pursed his lips in thought. The rail accelerators were designed for smaller pods. Casa's design was another 10% added to their mass.

His many selves provided feedback; the margins were fine. He grinned at the feeling as they emerged above Shadow Earth, trajectories carefully plotted to maximize damage to the many "hive" clusters.

As the countdown reached zero, Bill accessed the high-resolution feeds from observation drones positioned throughout the orbital network. He wanted—needed—to witness firsthand what happened next.

The first detonation bloomed like an artificial star against the darkness of Shadow Earth. The blast exceeded the fabled Tsar Bomba in yield by an order of magnitude. Bill could see the writhing masses of Shadow Earth's denizens, their forms twisting in ways that defied terrestrial biology, blown away as the structures shattered against the firestorm.

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"Second wave," Sebastian commanded, and another salvo of delivery vehicles launched.

Through the gestalt network, Bill received status updates from his copies stationed across Earth and the solar system. Reports of minor incursions were coming in from a dozen locations—Istanbul, São Paulo, the Mojave Desert, Siberia—but nothing the local response teams couldn't handle. He wasn't surprised to feel an incoming signal that to his multiplexed mind "smelled" like Miriam.

"Bill! We have closure of the last four breaches that we've been unable to approach. Whatever secret plan you were cooking up must have worked. Are you sure you can't share?"

"I've got a file ready for you, but I suggest you don't pass it along too quickly. I don't want the UN to get uptight with me when we need them working with us against the enemy. Gotta go, we're delivering the final payload now." Bill said, cutting the link.

The collective diverted a portion of their attention to these tasks while maintaining focus on the bombardment. The nuclear flashes continued, illuminating Shadow Earth in brief, apocalyptic moments of clarity. Each detonation targeted a specific type of node or gate, systematically sealing the bridges between worlds.

"Targeting the central nexus now," reported a Bill stationed in the weapons control center. "This will either collapse their primary transit hub or—"

"Or force them to commit everything they have," Sebastian finished. "I know the risk."

The largest warhead yet launched from the platform, aimed at what their reconnaissance had identified as R'lyeh's central spire—the dimensional fulcrum around which the seething storm of ill intent seemed to be centered. The last missile disappeared, dropping down into the dark world's gravity well.

Seconds stretched like hours as the collectives' ramped thought speed as they waited. Every instance of Bill Mitchell across the solar system held their metaphorical breath.

The detonation, when it came, was unlike anything they had anticipated. The final missile didn't just detonate. Something critical must have been destroyed as space-time twisted and inverted, a huge chunk of land folded and collapsed out of reality.

The collective's biological instances nearest to Shadow Earth spasmed in unison, skulls pounding with an unnatural pressure as ancient rage rippled through the noosphere—the higher-dimensional psychic medium that connected minds in the Shadowverse. Bill shut down everyone's sensors and feeds but still lost far too many drones and scout packs. The scream echoed in his head despite the willed isolation, Bill gasped and slammed a hand on the manual failsafe.

The Valkyrie detached and slid out of the dark portal, pulling the bridge crew back to the Earth side. Only when it snapped shut could Bill and his cohort take a breath. The first phase of Bill's offensive against the Shadowverse was complete. But as the nuclear fire faded from their observation screens, the collective understood with perfect clarity that this wasn't the end, but rather the beginning.

"God damn it," Sebastian muttered. Bravo answered back.

"God got nothing to do with it. If there was a god on the shadow side, he's dead and that thing back there ate him."

"Fuck, we've stalled them out for now, but I don't feel like this is going to be the end. I hope Bo made it to the Labyrinth. It's tearing me up that this is at least partially my fault and Max is still down there. New York's dimensional membrane is far too thin. It's only a matter of time if the enemies on the shadow side want to punch through. Despite all that damage, I feel like we only made them…it? Mad. We need a better approach."

All the Bill's eyes narrowed as his/their minds stretched to consider alterative approaches.

The vast consciousness of Cthulhu pulsed through the impossible geometries of R'lyeh's dimensional folds. Deep within the planet's dead and desiccated core, protected from the surface's devastation, his primary nodes seethed with cold fury. The intrusion by the bipedal organism and its clones had been... unexpected and novel. A good reason for its partials to join and awaken it.

Cthulhu's many-angled thoughts absorbed the knowledge extracted from the dying moments of the Enochian Baron. The primitive nuclear devices had cratered the surface conversion zones, destroying weeks of global coordination, sacrifice of its minions, and meticulous work. The carefully engineered tessellations of mini-gates, the intricate lattice of dimensional weak points—all reduced to radioactive slag.

Insects, Cthulhu's thoughts rippled through the Shadowverse. Nothing more than insects scurrying across the surface of a dying world. But these had tiny stingers, nonetheless.

His rage erupted into the noosphere like a supernova, cascading through the mental dimension beyond physical reality. The psychic shockwave rolled across R'lyeh's blasted surface. Mi-go swarms seized in mid-flight, their primitive neural structures overloading and burning out in an instant. Entire colonies of Xothrati Skimmers exploded into pulp as their chitinous bodies contorted beyond biological limits.

The annoying insects had disrupted his plans. The vast entity shifted its awareness, expanding outward through the noosphere. Here, Cthulhu's rage manifested as a churning maelstrom of impossible colors and frequencies that would shatter any lesser mind.

The network of mini-gates was no longer viable; the power requirements for individual portals were too great to sustain against Nyxaraq's constant entropic assault. Many Shoggoth would be needed to cleanse the materials. The surface conversion must be accelerated.

Cthulhu's consciousness contracted, focusing on the stellar drakon already flying at maximum speed to taunt the undying Nyxaraq. Unlike the lesser beasts that populated the surface, the drakon was a creature of cosmic scope, capable of swimming through solar currents.

The plan had been to wait, to ensure the drakons' attack only when certain the preparation of R'lyeh was complete. But the biped's interference had forced his hand. Through the noosphere, Cthulhu reached out to the drakon, his will penetrating the layers of reality between them. The creature responded, its consciousness simple yet vast, like a star given rudimentary thought.

Now, Cthulhu commanded through its noosphere link to the drakon swarms, Attack!

The stellar drakon swarm began its rapid ascent down the stellar gravity well, its passage leaving trails of ionization against the dark sky. As one they lashed out, disrupting and tearing at the choking shroud of Nyxaraq's presence. The response was quick as energies unleashed, vaporizing the drakon one by one.

In the shadowed corridors of his inner sanctum, Cthulhu's physical form stirred. Vast tentacles uncoiled as countless eyes opened across his amorphous body. The nuclear bombardment had been thorough, but the insect could not possibly comprehend the true geography of R'lyeh. For every structure destroyed on the surface, thousands more existed in the folded dimensions beneath.

His thoughts turned to the young, vibrant planet he had glimpsed through the mini-gates—teeming with life and energy. A feast beyond measure after eons of starvation in this prison dimension. Now, with the biped's interference, subtlety was no longer an option. Cthulhu was a being of eons, but it knew that insect mortals could change and grow fast. It would crush them before they could learn how to brace the dimensional walls.

Cthulhu's consciousness expanded once more, encompassing the entire planet. The Shoggoth enforcers, the Enochian Barons, the R'lyeh Architects—all felt the weight of his attention and trembled. New commands flowed through the hierarchies of the Chthonic ecosystem. The surface conversion would continue but it would now be solely devoted to the bigger project.

Cthulhu's plan was elegant in its brutality. When Nyxaraq responded with a solar flare prominence to scour R'lyeh, the energy would not be wasted on destruction. Instead, the carefully positioned conversion nodes would capture and channel that cosmic power, creating not many small gates, but one massive portal—a gateway large enough for Cthulhu to slip the bonds of this dead dimension.

The ancient entity settled back into the non-Euclidean geometries of his inner sanctum. Through the noosphere, Cthulhu sensed the faint echo of the biped's consciousness—a tiny spark of awareness in the vast cosmic darkness. The insect had no comprehension of the forces it had interfered with, no understanding of the ancient war between cosmic entities that had reduced R'lyeh to its current state.

Soon, the insects would understand. The feast was nearly at hand. Hunger—ancient, all-consuming hunger—radiated from Cthulhu's consciousness into the noosphere.

This time, the psychic wave manifested not as pain but as ecstatic rapture. The surviving denizens of R'lyeh convulsed in religious fervor. The Nyarlathotepian Sirens sang in harmony, their alien voices causing the very air to crystallize. The R'lyeh Architects carved new and terrible symbols into the landscape, their chitin-covered limbs moving with frenzied purpose.

In the depths of space, Nyxaraq, the Dyson Matryoshka Swarm Entity, stirred. Its countless components shifted in response to the ill times and unprovoked attacks. The solar flare prominence was already building, a retaliatory strike against the perceived threat. It regarded its ancient foe with distaste and activated its punishment, a promise of pain and potential obliteration to all its lesser beings.

Cthulhu's many eyes watched and waited. The trap was set. Unlike the caged light energy, the solar flare would take days to arrive. The cage door was about to be blown open by its very keeper. Soon.

And the young world beyond—beautiful, unaware, succulent—would be the first to feel his hunger when he emerged from the dark.

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