POV: Jacob Smith

It'd been weeks since that Visitor, Dei, had cured all the Elites in the facility, but Jacob was still left waiting after the Karma-boy cursed him. Two weeks ago, the Elite dying to his own Karma affinity grabbed his wrist, shouted "Survive," then passed out.

He wanted to pull his own hair out as the suspense killed him, but he had no idea what to do. He was a normal guy, who'd been touched by some weird power that would apparently "lock in" his fate. What was his fate? He had no idea, but he couldn't stop turning over the Elite's words in his head. He kept mentioning something about "kind one" and "savior" or something along those lines. Jacob didn't know anything, he was just holding the guy down while Dei took out all his mana!

'I never should've taken that promotion. I should've stayed in the navy like my dad. I could've been on a submarine right now, but instead I'm in a cell. Cursed!'

It was, admittedly, a very nice cell, and he had constant updates from the outside world through his computer, as well as endless games. In the two weeks he'd been here, he could barely fathom what they were playing on the news- magic was out! Everyone knew! More importantly, there was a dragon god in the sun.

Still, none of that was what got to him, no, he was most irritated that his "High clearance" was useless now, as everyone knew magic was real. 'I hope I get to keep my pay.'

He'd spent many days pacing in his room, hoping something would happen, then regretting the thought and praying nothing happened until the Visitor came back to cure him.

Shortly after Dei had left, Jacob experienced a burst of hope as people from the dragon church came to help the people contained here, but they seemed as oblivious as Jacob about Karma. They said their job was to "Ensure the situation does not degrade until Dei Grrata returns," as apparently the man had cut a deal with the dragon to keep them safe.

'How considerate. PLEASE COME BACK ALREADY.' He was wound tight nowadays, always waiting for the other shoe to drop.

When it finally did.

Sirens blared, and a red light on his wall started flashing. A robotic voice said "Initiating full shutdown."

'That doesn't sound good.'

His cell door made a thunking sound, and slid open.

'THAT IS NOT GOOD.'

He'd been told in no uncertain terms to never leave his cell, but as he looked out the door he could only feel horror. Every door was open. Most had been cleared out since Dei's departure, but there had been a few new arrivals since he'd left. It was just Jacob's luck to poke his head out and lock eyes with a crazed maniac, all but drooling on the ground.

He knew that look. He'd spent enough times around Elites to differentiate the symptoms, and he knew he was looking in the eyes of a Gluttony user. A very hungry Gluttony user.

Warnings be damned, Jacob broke into a sprint. Animalistic growling sounded behind him followed by heavy footsteps, but he couldn't push his legs any faster. He rounded a corner and felt a breeze touch his neck as a figure barely missed its grasp, continuing down the direction Jacob was once going.

'Shit shit shit, why did they take my weapons!? I wasn't going to be interacting with anyone, at least they could've let me feel safe!'

He heard the thumping grow closer, but as luck would have it, two guards appeared from around the bend, eyes snapping to him and guns raised.

"Sir! Hands up and freeze!"

"I WOULD IF I COULD!" he screamed back, and they finally saw what was chasing him. Their aims adjusted and they moved to one side, leaving a gap for him.

"Get through and stay behind us!"

He'd built up some distance from his pursuer, so he had more than enough time to slip past. As soon as he was safe, he heard the roar of gunfire and wanted to collapse with relief.

He turned just in time to watch the glutton tear out the first one's throat. The second must've been terrified behind his mask, but didn't show it or stop, simply unloading the mag point-blank into the Elite's face.

It wasn't enough.

The glutton's newly-formed claws took the poor guy's head off, tearing through the kevlar like it was nothing.

The Elite turned to face Jacob, giving him a perfect view of the mincemeat left where his face once was, utterly shredded from the bullets specialized to kill Elites. The bullets that'd failed.

'I'm going to die.'

The glutton took one step towards Jacob.

Stumbled.

And collapsed.

He could hardly process what happened. 'Am I safe? Am I alive?' His conscious self told him yes, but he knew he'd never feel safe again. He'd see that face in his nightmares for however long he lived. 'Then I will count myself blessed that I don't need to sleep anymore.'

He hesitantly skirted around the Elite's body, still unsure if the man was truly dead, and picked up one of the guns from the soldiers- the one that still had a few bullets in it. Immediately, he unloaded the rest of it into the Elite's head, just to be absolutely sure.

That done, he quickly… salvaged what he could of his fellow soldiers, taking their sidearms and a knife from both as well. It was gruesome, but he also took their body armor for himself, ignoring the blood. He needed at least a little protection.

Still, nobody had come to check on him 'Where is everyone? I know something is going on, but what? Infiltration? Sabotage? This has to be a terrorist attack.'

He continued down the way the guards had come, hoping to meet up with another patrol. He was about to run into an intersection when he heard voices, and opened his mouth to shout his presence.

"...You know you want to expand. You know you want to become more. I'm simply giving you an out."

He paused. That wasn't a guard voice, he knew that one. That voice was Boris, the Void user that'd escaped. They hadn't seen hide nor hair ever since, so what was he doing back here?'

He crept closer to the intersection, making sure to stick to the wall so Boris wouldn't see him. He heard two footsteps approaching his location, but their slow pace meant he had time to listen.

"I'm not sure," a second voice said hesitantly, and again Jacob knew this one. It was the Duplication Elite, the one that'd been considered a potential apocalypse-class threat. His name was Jean. "I… would kill a lot of people. I hold myself back for good reason."

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"But they wouldn't die, they would be changed. If we work together, we can infect people with Void and Duplication, granting them the ability to spread further across the multiverse. Void gave me these powers for a reason, and it is to help the people of Earth escape its bounds. I've seen things you couldn't possibly imagine… but my body is lacking. I cannot change fast enough to survive another universe. With your help, I could. Jean, you are neglecting half of yourself. I did that too, once. Duplication is you, just embrace it."

'Ohhh fuck. Did Boris set this all off? If Jean cuts loose into a civilian population…' he suppressed a shiver. 'No. I can't let that happen.'

He briefly thought of holding them at gunpoint and making them surrender, then chastised his own naivety. They were Elites. Under normal circumstances they were normal people, but if you gave them a chance to activate their powers, the layman could only sit down and die.

No, he had to take them by surprise and, at the very least, kill Jean. Boris might kill him afterwards, but he would die a hero.

A chill crept down his spine. He felt the icy hand of death embrace him, and hardened his resolve.

"You're right…" Jean started hesitantly, but iron slipped into his voice as he repeated "You're right. I'll do it. I'll-"

They finally entered the intersection, and Jacob fired, striking the man several times in the chest. His aim adjusted to catch Boris a few times as well, but the man's reaction time was too honed. The Void Elite disappeared without even a whisper, appearing directly in front of Jacob and tearing the gun from his hand with superhuman strength.

"NO!" he screamed once Jacob's weapon went flying, turning back to the dying Jean.

There was a time when Jean might've been invulnerable to regular gunfire, but without his mutated form he was nothing more than a man. One who'd taken five shots of a bullet specialized to kill his kind directly to the chest.

Boris caught the stumbling man, panic evident. "I'll- I'll take you somewhere that leans heavily into your affinity! I'll… you'll live!"

Jacob didn't have to think before he lunged at Boris, doing anything he could to disrupt whatever the man was about to do. The moment his knuckle made contact with Boris' ear, the world flickered, and he was somewhere else.

His fist continued its arc and pain lanced up his arm as Boris was knocked off the slowly dying Jean; disoriented, his form briefly flickered but remained in place. Unholstering his sidearm, he took advantage of Boris' brief vulnerability to pop three rounds into his head, finally ending the second Elite.

Jacob's focus flickered to Jean, but he'd already stopped twitching. Whatever Boris had hoped to accomplish had failed, and Jean bled out. He still fired a round into the Elite's head, just to be sure.

Finally, he took a moment to take in the room, and paused as he looked out the massive floor-to-ceiling window, showing an incredible view of space with the sun as the backdrop, and a gorgeous blue and green planet below.

'What? Am I on the ISS? Or… oh. That's not Earth.'

He studied the continents, and found that it didn't match up with any he knew. That aligned with Boris' words of bringing Jean somewhere his affinity was abundant, which could only be somewhere not in his original universe.

Tearing his eyes from the window, the rest of the room was baffling. He had to be in space, but it was certainly no ship he'd ever heard about, leaning more into sci-fi. He was on some kind of raised deck with a railing around it. In the center of this landing, he saw his first sign of other life when the glazed eyes of a corpse met his own.

The figure was short and stout, with a full beard and pale skin. Jacob didn't need to question what killed the man as he saw boils slowly creeping up his arms. It had to be recent as well, because while it spread at a visible rate, it was yet to fully encompass the body.

'Is that a dwarf?'

The realization struck him as… completely unimportant, so he ignored it. The dwarf sat in a grand throne, several floating screens opened before him. 'Definitely sci-fi.'

Now that Jacob was listening, he heard a tiny feminine voice emanating from the screens as well, and moved closer.

It was in words he couldn't understand, but the tone was clearly frantic, verging on sobs.

He gave the body a wide berth, but he must've crossed a threshold of some kind when the speaker emanated several words in a robotic voice, and the female on the speaker cut off.

"Dwarvenoid foreign entity observed. Adjusting to conceptual speech."

"Hello!?" He heard the female voice again, this time in English. "Is anyone there?! Dwarvenoid foreign entity… are you aliens? Is this retribution? We apologize, we never should've reached above our station, please spare us!"

"Woah woah, I don't know what's happening!" he said back, walking to position himself behind the dwarf. He saw the holographic face of the woman on the screen and, and a smaller one displaying his own location. When he was within frame, the woman gasped.

"A… human? I thought… we never thought any of you were real… much less the rulers of the-

"We aren't on the same page here. Stop," he commanded, and she did. "There was a terrorist attack. I am not an alien, humans don't rule the stars. I got caught in some kind of teleportation, and I think I'm not in my original universe anymore. I don't know where I am or how I ended up here. Explain quickly, because I don't want to catch whatever that guy has," he said, pointing at the dead dwarf.

For her part the lady took it in stride, but looked apologetic. "I am sorry, but that is not an option any longer. The moment you appeared in that station, you were infected. We sent out a colony ship, and they found something they shouldn't have. They were all infected… and we didn't know. Not until it was too late. The ship is on a crash course for Caps, and I… we were trying to get Dargic to readjust it to the sun, but he perished minutes ago. Perhaps moments before you arrived."

He sighed. 'Well, I expected to die preventing the apocalypse. What's dying in a completely different way gonna change?'

"Great. And I'm guessing Caps is that big green planet out there?"

"Yes. Dargic made the changes, but died just before finalizing them. I'm sorry to ask this of you, but Caps is in your hands. Sir, whoever you are, I, Yalda Boneseeker, on behalf of all Dwarfdom beg you to save us. Finalize the change in course, and enter the sun. I know you may want to live, but you must understand-"

"Yea yea yea I'll do it!" he snapped, and she quieted. "I'd intended to die anyway. How, before I succumb?"

If she was stunned she didn't show it, jumping into a professional explanation of what screens to go through to finish what Dargic started. Jacob pushed the corpse chair off to the side and got to work.

The entire time, he could see Yalda's face, her eyes holding back tears as she walked him through the process. Jacob could only feel numb.

'What the hell kind of day is this? What did I do to deserve ANY of this?'

Dwarves were real and he was in another universe, but he was going to die immediately. What was the point of it all? He felt himself cracking as he tried to keep up, to think on his feet, but he couldn't stop his mind from wandering.

He was in shock. He couldn't understand anything. He was just going through the motions.

A few minutes later, he was done. The ship lurched, his view changed, and he heard screaming cheers from ground control. Clearly, they were not alone on this line.

Yalda did not join in the celebrating, looking mournfully at him. "I'm sorry it had to come to this, and I'm sorry the only human our world has ever seen is about to kill himself for us. May I have your name?" her words silenced the others, and he could feel the tense air from here.

He rubbed his eyes, hiding the crack in his voice. "Jacob. Jacob Smith."

"Jacob, I don't know if every human is like you, but you bring honor to them all. Not everyone would've been willing to throw their chances away as you have, no matter how futile it would've been. Thank you."

He smiled, but it felt hollow.

"It'll be hours yet before you reach the sun. I'll stay on the line with you, okay?"

"Thanks…"

"Would you like to tell me about your world? You said you're from another universe, could you tell me about humanity?"

He sighed, looking over at the two other corpses in the room, of the Elites who were going to damn Earth. 'If humanity is leaving behind its mark on this world, I'm proud to say it's a good one.'

He thought it unlikely that his own universe would ever reach here, trapped on their little rock as they were without magic. He may very well be the only human Caps would ever see. Why not give them something to remember him by?

Wiping away the tears, he laughed. "You know? It's actually a little funny. You talked about humans not being real, so I'm guessing you have some myths or fantasy topics about us? It's the reverse for us. I always heard about Dwarves and Elves in fantasy, so…"

He started to ramble about himself, humanity, and magic as Yalda listened and nodded occasionally.

'And so end the tale of Jacob Smith,' he thought not bitterly, but tinged with pride.

He'd forgotten, however, of the karmic curse placed on him. So ended the tale of Jacob Smith.

But did it have to?

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