Apocalypse: Regression

“Did you get everything we can get?” Seo-ah asked as the crew rode toward the rift. “I don’t know how long we’re going to be in there this time.”

“Looking forward to Narnia, Seo-ah?” Spencer asked.

“You know, too bad it’s not Narnia. With how cold you guys said it was, having a wardrobe of fur coats available right before we enter would be nice,” Maria answered.

“You ever wonder about the fact it’s a story about anthropomorphized woodland creatures, and the doorway to it is filled with fur coats? Kinda dark, right? Like, here, take a look at the corpses of those who tried to cross to your side,” Allen remarked, chuckling as he held up ViVi for a moment. “Wait, I wonder if I could add white fur to the drones for camouflage.”

“Well, I just hope we’re there for a long time!!” Adele announced as the car came to a stop and the doors opened. To Nick’s surprise, the moment Adele exited the vehicle, there was a priest there with a bag for her. He handed it off before making a religious gesture with his hands that Adele mimicked, and then he quickly departed.

“What’s that?” Nick asked as he looked over at the duffle bag the priest had handed her.

“Clothing and stuff. I’m going to set up the first church the new world has ever seen!” she replied merrily, her bag in one hand and her mace in the other. “Do you know how big of a deal this is going to be? Forget missionaries going to help the less fortunate in another country; I’m going to be doing it in another world!”

“You know, people might get the wrong idea about your religion if you keep swinging that mace around like that while you talk. They might think you’re the wrong kind of missionary,” Spencer noted, side-eying the barbaric-looking Adele.

“I can tell you what type of missionary I like,” Seo-ah remarked with a slight snicker.

“Me, right?” Adele replied. “You’re a member of our faith too, no? I’ve seen your parents in church before. They’re really nice people. You know they asked me to pray with them a few years ago for your older brother, who was struggling with romance. I wonder how that turned out.”

“Ah, right.” Seo-ah gave Adele an odd look, tilting her head for a minute, before just smiling and saying, “I think he’s doing fine.”

“Hey, wait . . . Isn’t that Steven?! And that’s Jennifer with him!” Nick blurted out, turning to Seo-ah for a moment and using a head nod to signal the direction without outright pointing, as he didn’t want to spook the “prey.”

“Uh, huh,” Seo-ah replied as if understanding Nick’s intentions. She gave Maria the same signal, and the three slowly fanned out so as to approach Steven and Jennifer from different sides and be able to catch the old man if he ran.

As Nick got closer, he could hear the contents of the conversation.

“How could you possibly put on airs and play the idiot now despite spending the entire party last night crying like some blubbering fool, blabbering on about the end before anything even happened!” Jennifer berated her grand-uncle.

“Fine, fine, I knew,” Steven admitted. To Nick’s surprise, despite dried tears in his eyes and looking just as much of a mess as he was the day before, Steven was at least sober this time. His appearance was a little ragged, like he hadn’t been home since the incident, and his hair was disheveled, but at least his speech was clear. “I knew! Are you happy?”

“Then . . . Then why didn’t you tell us?!” Jennifer demanded.

“I did tell you all! I told that kid you hang on, Nick, about how—” Steven made wild hand gestures as he was talking.

“What was it you told me?” Nick asked, motioning for Maria to body-block the other side of the man so he wouldn’t find it easy to run away.

“I-I told you about the dimensions, t-the gates! The bridge!” Steven spat out, stuttering as he stumbled across his words.

“For your sake, I think you should try to calm down and speak clearly,” Seo-ah said threateningly as she stepped in front of the traitor. “We’re all very interested in what you apparently already told us.”

“Uhh . . . well . . .” Steven, realizing he was trapped as the rest of Nick’s party began to surround him on all sides, turned to Nick. “I-I told you. The bridge, the—”

“Let’s start from the beginning, Steven,” Nick interjected, focusing the man’s attention so he wouldn’t continue going off the rails. He didn’t know how the old man knew so much. For all he knew, Steven could be a regressor like him, but Nick did know he needed to find out what was happening. “If it’s a bridge, what’s on the other side? Where did I go when I went through the rift?”

“It’s . . . the land of dragons,” Steven answered, pausing for a moment as he looked like he was struggling to put the words together. “Of course, calling it a ‘land’ doesn’t seem right . . . It’s an entirely different dimension, and that dragon dimension is just what Earth would be if humans had not risen up and killed all the dragons throughout the land. Dragons were the one in a billion situation where we weren’t the inevitability.”

“Huh, a land without humans . . .” Spencer scratched at his chin. “I guess it could have happened. I mean humans are kind of weak and pathetic next to dragonkin and certainly outmatched by actual dragons.”

“But humans always happened. We happened on land like crabs happen on the beaches and in the water,” Steven explained. “It didn’t matter what the origin species was—apes or cats or dogs or foxes—hairless, stone-throwing, bipedal, big-brained mammals inevitably popped up. We are peak efficiency. Yet, I suppose in some dimensions, they have different ears or spots or stripes, but the basics are still the same.”

“So what does that have to do with the rift though? How does that explain the system?” Nick asked.

“You know that they say there is a practically infinite number of stars in space, and the actual universe itself is infinite? Well, with these dimensions it’s the same. There’s an infinite number of them, and just like with stars, they’re all . . . moving. Which means, even though there is usually enough space between them that they never collide, with an infinite number of them, it’s bound to happen eventually. That’s what happened with the system. Lady Ingeng—” Steven paused, gulping. It was like he had just been caught using cuss words in front of a nun. Then, taking a deep breath, he continued.

“From what we know, a long, long time ago, the realm of dragons smashed into another realm like a meteor. The energy of two realms colliding, an energy exceeding anything we could possibly fathom, is what created the system and also what created the portals and dungeons. That’s why the bridge was built.” He gestured at the rift. “It’s less of a bridge, perhaps, and more of an anchor, meant to stop the two realms from destroying each other as they collide.”

“So it had to go up, one way or the other?” Nick frowned as he took in what the old man was saying. He didn’t know how much he believed, but he had been to the other side, and the system had already told him it was another realm. It had already briefed him on what was happening. As much as he wanted to kill this man right where he stood for betraying humanity, he didn’t actually know if the man was a traitor. All he knew was that Steven clearly knew more about the events than he did.

“It didn’t have to be built, but if we didn’t build it, the other side would have. After the system was created and they enslaved an entire realm of humans, they figured out how to use the system and magic to steer their realm into other realms. The crashes, even the one into our realm, are intentional now. Those dragons, which are stronger than any man alive, go from realm to realm eating, consuming, or enslaving the people before doing it again and again. They were going to build the bridge right to their front door, cause the dungeons in our world to break and sow chaos, and then invade and destroy us all instantly,” Steven explained.

So that’s why a dragonkin army was the first army to pop through the gates, Nick thought as he took in the explanation. He still wasn’t ready to fully trust Steven, but everything the man said matched up with what he’d seen so far, especially with what he’d seen of the Black Witch’s memories. “So you switched the rift from the dragons’ doorstep to the icy hellscape it’s in now.”

“It was the only way to stop the dragons from finding and destroying us all immediately,” Steven explained as he took another gulp, his eyes scanning their surroundings constantly as if he was looking for someone in the crowds around him.

While Nick saw that the others didn’t seem to be taking the news as if it were that big of a deal, the only thing he could think of was the dream he had the night before. In his mind, running through it over and over again, were the images of how desperately the Black Witch had struggled just to run away from the tyrannical, destructive force of the dragons. Those invading legions would be enough to decimate even the strongest S-rank adventurers instantly.

“Why do I not believe this sniveling, spineless coward?” Seo-ah scoffed, pulling out her weapon and looking like she was about to stab the man out of sheer disdain.

“Yeah, I’m inclined to think he’s a traitor, and we should just turn him over to the authorities instead of talking to him any further,” Maria added, also glaring at Steven just as sharply as Seo-ah. “Maybe they might buy his sob story about infinite realms and crab humans or whatever.”

“Uncle is a lot of things, but he’s not a liar,” Jennifer insisted, her eyes staring into the old man’s, looking like she was trying to find something in them to explain what was going on. “It could be just as likely that he thinks he’s telling the truth, that someone else has pulled the strings and convinced him. Did he not say that their source was Lady Ingenga? They’ve been causing trouble for a while now. Perhaps he got taken in by those cultists?”

“Say what you want, but I’m done talking now. I told you what I know because you’re my blood, and I don’t want you to follow your friend into that hellish realm,” Steven told Jennifer, looking around him nervously. “But . . . but I don’t have to stand there and take this. I’m leaving now, and you all can’t stop me.”

“I mean, I recorded the whole thing,” Allen chimed in as he walked over and held up his drone, “so you can leave, but this tape is going on the news later. Your choice.”

Steven looked like he was about to reach out and try to break the drone, but Allen then quickly added, “You can destroy ViVi, I’m sure, but you know the data is already saved in the clouds, right?”

This caused Steven’s eyes to open wide. “No . . . No, you can’t let him find out I told you! He’ll kill me! He’ll kill us all! He’ll kill Jennifer!”

“What?” Nick asked, confused.

“I’d rather die than give that man a reason to snake his hands around the girl,” he said, backing up, bumping into Nick as he did and nearly falling down before running off.

“What the heck?!” Maria exclaimed as she moved to chase after him.

“No! Please stop. I’ll go,” Jennifer insisted, stepping in front of Maria to keep her from going after Steven.

Nick turned to the group. “What man is he talking about?”

“I don’t know, but how is someone as rich and powerful as Mr. Girard scared of someone else?” Allen asked, looking down at ViVi. “Should we just publish everything anyway?”

“Could you please not?” Jennifer pleaded, her face caught between confusion and sadness as her frown deepened and her eyebrows furrowed. “I do not know what struggles he is going through . . . but he’s still family. I’d like to save him, if possible, even if it’s just from himself.”

This caused the whole group, who were previously debating what to do with the footage and how to handle Steven, to go quiet as they looked at Jennifer. Even Nick didn’t know how to handle the situation. While Jennifer wasn’t exactly a super-close friend, she had helped him a lot in the past, and had always been there when he needed her. Steven had even done the same, his insurance company being one of the main reasons Nick had been able to build his wealth and start his guild.

“I believe, my lost child, that if you put your heart in the right place and donate a little bit to the church, you’ll ease the burden on your soul,” Adele broke the silence as she made a holy gesture with one hand while putting the other on Jennifer’s shoulder. “I mean, think of all the children that will be able to eat and the families that will be able to survive thanks to such a noble gesture. I’m sure that will help counteract whatever wrongs you think have occurred.”

While Nick knew he shouldn’t, the moment he heard that, he couldn’t help but laugh. This had been one of the most awkward moments for him, as he struggled to figure out what to do, and then along came Adele the priest, extorting money from someone right away as if it were second nature.

“Yeah, okay. We can go with what she said,” Nick added while shaking his head at the shamelessness of his cleric. “Just remember to get everything your uncle knows out of his head. We need to know what he knows, who he knows, and who he is scared of.”

“I will, and thanks,” Jennifer replied before giving polite nods and then running after her uncle.

“Is it really okay to leave things like that?” Allen asked. “I mean, I got the video, so we could—”

“Let’s trust in Jennifer,” Nick told him. “After all, if it was your mother, you’d want us to trust in you.”

This caused Allen to freeze a little before pursing his lips, nodding, and looking to the portal. “Then shall we go see what’s happened?”

“Yeah, sounds good,” Nick replied, leading his group through the rift and into the realm beyond.