Edgar Shin's consciousness-expanding journey through the Realm of Faith would fascinate Omicron's researchers—if anyone knew about it. Instead, all thirty or so residents of Neptunia faced a more pressing concern: growing their population beyond forty before the coin toss that was Thessa's court summon arrived.
Everyone knew the math looked grim. Unfortunately, they possessed no means to change it. The only people with teaching experience were Eleanor and Thessa—one training with Wonderweiss, the other rapidly becoming a stress case over an impending Fae Garden hearing. Kirby and his fellow eccentrics volunteered to help, but everyone vetoed their offer on grounds of potential insanity.
This left project administrator Erika staring at the bare ceiling of her barren quarters. Her final attempt at finding help—Vienna—had confessed she possessed no talent for mentorship and bowed out. Now the Omic lay sprawled on her mattress, contemplating their collective doom.
The Omicron sun had already dawned, sparkling against the sea in glittering light as pretty as immaculately cut sapphire. But Erika didn't want to rise from her bed. Cheap thermal gel bedding was one of the few comforts preserved through humanity's decline, and she wanted to savor every moment.
Lying there, she wondered what future Edgar had observed that compelled him to place someone as untested as her in this equally unfinished facility. In the sink's pitiful mirror, she reviewed a woman with tourmaline eyes and orange clay locks—more lost than a sick lamb.
With no guts, no clue, and nothing but guilt, Erika donned her form-fitting uniform of Prismatic Fiber. The clothes weighed no more than a feather and circulated air perfectly, but she couldn't feel those features; burden and responsibility pressed down like lead. Then she stepped outside to confront another feature of this place that left her conflicted: the sea.
Erika had never liked oceans. Genesis VIII's waters ran blood-red after two successive wars with Millennium Entropy, and even pristine seas felt wrong to someone more comfortable with paperwork and filing cabinets. She'd always been the weird kid who preferred books to playing—even her parents had thought so, before they vanished in a military draft when she was fourteen.
Scanning the horizon, part of her believed they would have loved this place: the sound of crashing waves, this unpolluted promised land. But Erika didn't share their theoretical enthusiasm. Her transformation into an Omic had stripped away choice—her new physiology demanded she adapt to this aquatic world, and her administrative position found her waiting on the Rebirth Waterfall's landing platform, calculating impossible logistics while praying Shayara knew at least basic organizational skills to help.
"The problem is scaling up," she muttered. "How do you expand from thirty people to three thousand in a single month?"
Shayara, dressed in a similar black coverall, didn't share her leader's mounting pressure. "Get any sleep?"
"No." The tired reply came with a despairing stare directed at the landing platform. "According to the timetable, she's arriving today." Erika studied the former Fae turned Omic. "You're way too relaxed about this."
"I'm not. This is me pretending to be calm."
Erika stared, blinked, and stared again. "Your acting is impeccable."
"Thank you." Shayara's voice carried forced lightness. "How does Edgar expect us to handle Helena Christy?"
"No idea."
"You've been quiet since he gave us this assignment."
"Maybe I have a good reason." Erika watched a flaming shuttle punch through the sky above.
The transport—a conical steel vessel—dropped toward the sea, thrusters firing in reverse to slow its descent. Calculated to the nearest millimeter, it pierced through a haze of orbital smoke before touching down.
Hydraulics hissed as the door unsealed. The gate dropped, and forty figures in white medical uniforms emerged, led by a woman with short-cut blonde hair and calculating eyes.
Erika immediately knew she had a problem.
She recognized this type: the confident adventurer who seemed to believe they were six steps and seven dimensions ahead of everyone. Every line in that dominant smile sent chills down her spine. Maybe it was an illusion, but she could have sworn she caught expensive perfume wafting from the woman—something that shouldn't be possible since no one could smuggle luxuries onto Wonderweiss's secret transport ship before stripping down for cryogenic sleep.
Then again, maybe this might be the only woman in the Rift Lines who could manage exactly that.
"Hello," Helena greeted them both. "Where's Wonderweiss?" She tilted her head, studying them closely. "Are you two Exos?"
Erika had no idea what to do. She knew for certain she was out of her depth from the first question. What was Edgar thinking?
Then, like a lightning strike, an idea flashed through Neptunia's Head of Logistics. Edgar must have foreseen this moment; if not, he certainly expected whatever response she gave to work on this impossibly competent woman.
This meant whatever she said would work. But what option did she have? The last time she'd tried scheming, her entire stolen ship had been swallowed by Alpha. With that record her talent in scheming could only be named as terrible.
Another realization struck: then she could only tell the truth.
To Erika, this line of reasoning seemed to take forever in her enhanced Omic mind. To external observers, however, they watched the orange clay-haired woman—certainly beautiful—go from pale shock to flickering indecision to sudden confidence. What emerged from her mouth was the most insane story they'd ever heard.
"You are only half right," Erika pointed at Shayara. "She used to be an Exo from Fae Garden a few weeks ago."
The admission caught everyone by surprise. Helena's face didn't change a single bit—such was her immense skill. But her fellow travelers, the other thirty-nine people, were dead giveaways. Even Shayara stared at her with equal parts horror and wonder.
But Erika didn't stop.
"You are now standing on Planet Omicron of the Omicron System, part of Wonderweiss's Pioneer Project to salvage humanity from the coming Third Millennium Entropy War. Your current leader, Edgar Shin, is not available for queries at the moment. He is undergoing supersoldier augmentation deep inside this facility. As for Wonderweiss, he is currently in a predator-infested jungle research lab. I think they're working on prototype osmosis generators and saline superconductors. Therefore, I will be your guide. And to answer your previous question, Miss Christy, I wouldn't necessarily call myself an Exo. I used to be human. But through circumstances beyond my control—"
Shayara coughed.
Erika gave her subordinate a baleful stare. "Correction: through circumstances which were mostly my fault. We stumbled across a stable mutation procedure, approved by this planet's living consciousness to evolve human-related species into a form adapted to the Omicron environment. Wonderweiss has more or less stabilized the procedure, which will be performed in this facility." She paused. "Anyone else have questions?"
Silence stretched like a held breath. Waves rolled past like tumbleweed. Finally, a hesitant voice emerged from a girl with black hair in a white gown.
"Um," started Mary Swift, the group's military engineer. "It just dawned on me—the ocean is falling into this pit in the sea. I don't think the laws of physics work like this."
Erika studied the younger Swift sibling. She recalled her profile: a former Buffer of Materia engineer until a High Terraria noble's unwanted advance forced her and her brother Lemuel to flee, landing them in Wonderweiss's recruitment net. It was a story that had grown tragically common, something that reminded the Omic of Sistine.
Her answer couldn't be more honest.
"It resulted from the battle between Pioneer Edgar Shin and a gigantic monster known as Alpha. Explaining the rest would take a long time." Erika tried to avoid Shayara's deadpan stare. "Let's say I'll send you Wonderweiss's official record of the event."
The answer hung long enough for the waves to sing another verse in tumbleweed. After an agonizing three minutes, Helena Christy finally clapped.
"That is a wonderful story, Miss Erika," Helena smiled like she had heard the most amazing myth ever—something no one else here shared. "Can you move on to the tour?"
And they did.
Erika had taken the group from the first stop in the cafeteria to the bottom-most floor of this facility and its most important room: the Chamber of Rebirth. Shayara took over the bulk of explaining things—rations made from seaweed, medical coffins suspended over a pit of blue mutagenic fluid, surrounded by monitors and sensors that blinked with quiet persistence.
The reaction had been mixed, but most leaned toward resignation. Most people on this orientation were former Militia members. They'd read the fine print on the modification clause and understood it well enough that neither the Chamber of Rebirth's existence nor their eventual fate shocked them. But the numbing scent of hesitation still remained.
Erika could understand. Had she been given a choice, she wouldn't have leaped at the chance of shedding humanity's familiar touch to transition into the species' new oceanic cousins. In her opinion, only Mary Swift appeared moderately open to the idea.
But that was nothing compared to the conversation Helena conducted with her group—a conversation held in the ancient language of Old Earth called French, something so dead it had become a secret code. Alas, the legendary smuggler didn't know Wonderweiss had invented a language translation spell long forgotten even before the First Millennium Entropy War. A spell he'd used to craft universal translators he'd specifically gifted to everyone, including Erika.
Originally, Erika had thought the little universal translator useless. Everyone in the Rift Lines spoke High Terraria's common language; even Fae Garden dialects shared those roots. But for reasons the Prime Magister barely explained—something involving childhood dreams and building a "federation"—he'd insisted everyone carry these translators around.
Personally, she believed everyone only did so out of pity.
Now it proved incredibly useful for cracking this ancient arcane language. She frowned internally; whoever created this language must have been a loser, judging by how pretentious it sounded. She suspected that people who spoke this tongue often fell for lies, as long as the person telling them dressed smartly enough.
Her inner prejudice aside, the conversation's content didn't inspire confidence.
"They're hiding something," Helena said in French, confident no one—at least no one with a universal translator only ten people knew existed—could listen in.
"You sure?" Mary's use of the language was clumsy; she'd obviously been tutored by Helena only recently. "She looks perfectly honest to me."
"Mary, they obviously know I'm here. They have something to hide, and they know I'm going to find it, so they're trying to distract me with fairytales." Helena clicked her tongue. "I'd wager she'll send out a false report full of fabricated references. Wonderweiss must realize the only way he could catch me off guard is with complete nonsense."
A man beside them—whom Erika identified as Mary's brother Lemuel from their facial similarities—spoke in slightly more polished French. "So where do you think Wonderweiss actually is?"
"Obviously somewhere in this facility," said the woman who couldn't be more wrong. "This place has all the infrastructure the Prime Magister needs. The only thing I have to do is find him and force him to cough up the trap." Helena chuckled. "I wonder what the Administration would do if we exposed this little project of his." She smirked. "This might be my best chance at bringing down those incompetents in the Administration."
Lemuel wasn't impressed. "And putting you and your fellow conspirators in charge?"
Helena stared at him. "I dare you to say that they're currently doing a good job."
The young Militia captain met her eyes. Frankly, he believed an amnesiac talking duck would do better managing the current Administration than whoever was piloting House Alma at present. Compared to them, Helena could be called the second coming of Vichaya.
Such was Lemuel's perspective until his little sister unearthed an alarming observation.
"So you volunteered for a transhuman experiment just to dig up dirt on Wonderweiss?"
"No pain, no gain." Helena's smirk widened as the cohort around them admired the surrounding medical hardware. "Don't worry—I have a dead man's switch. Wonderweiss better keep me alive and happy, or Wonderweiss Academia's main campus gets a greeting from orbit."
Shayara, who also carried a translator, crept closer to Erika upon hearing this declaration and whispered, "You know she could actually do serious damage, right?"
"Yeah," Erika admitted, pretending ignorance about this 'secret' conversation. "That is, if she actually believes the files we gave her. She probably thinks our entire library is nonsense."
"But the records are real."
"It wouldn't matter if she refuses to believe we're telling the truth," Erika said, realizing the solution. "She's going to search for secrets that don't exist. Should keep her occupied."
"You realize there has to be an endgame for buying time, right? What's ours?"
"I don't know," Erika admitted. "Maybe Edgar will figure something out when he returns."
The sentence was spoken more from forlorn hope than concrete planning. And like anything built without consideration for durability, Erika's excuse proved infinitely fragile. When Omicron's sun set and the cohort was escorted to their new quarters, Erika found herself unable to sleep.
Clutter filled her mind to the rim—particularly thoughts of what Helena Christy might accomplish. After one too many visions of the legendary outlaw ramming a spaceship into her room, she decided to clear her head by spending the night in her one mental refuge: the firing range.
Originally, she hadn't been much of a firearms enthusiast. The human Erika couldn't point a gun correctly to save her life; the Omic Erika had learned that lesson during her brutal pilgrimage south with a trusty sidearm.
Sponsored by Eleanor and Vienna, this recreational facility was among the most advanced installations on the planet, barring Wonderweiss's own laboratory. The firing booths—constructed from a variant of Omicron Crystal—came equipped with multiple holographic target projectors, each loaded with selections from their painstakingly recorded database: serpents from Leviathan Nest executing aerial maneuvers, Militia members in trenches, even militarized Old Earth predators from early genetic experiments.
Part of Erika, the fragment that remained after countless sleepless nights, felt a spark of pride. She had contributed to this facility's construction as lead logistician.
She activated the simulator. A modified Siren Eagle felt top-heavy in her grip. She frowned, making a mental note to readjust the counterweight later as simulated Fae Garden soldiers materialized—each bearing Radiant Scepters—and began firing at her.
Mentally substituting Helena Christy's face onto each target, she started shooting. Some managed to return fire, docking points from her score.
That didn't matter. The Head of Logistics had all night, and she intended to beat Eleanor's record.
After hours of simulated massacre, the door hissed open. Shayara entered and gulped as she watched Erika's performance. As a former Fae Garden member, the speed with which Erika slaughtered replications of her former compatriots was terrifying. Most targets evaporated under sonic waves before reaching their weapons; those who survived never managed more than one shot.
It served as a sobering reminder of what accelerated analytical and pattern recognition traits could accomplish in combat.
"You're—" Shayara gulped as her leader eliminated five more Fae before finishing her sentence "—getting more accurate."
"Thank you." Erika robotically shot another enemy through the eye before swiveling to blast the head off another. "What do you think about the orientation?"
"Most of them seem fine, but Helena will be trouble."
"I'm betting she's sneaking around this facility searching for the server room," Erika agreed. "Should we shove her into the mutagen tank first?" She sought her subordinate's opinion. "It would eliminate most of our problems."
"Isn't that the same attitude that led us to Alpha?"
The sudden jab struck exactly where it hurt most, stopping Erika dead in her tracks—along with her chance at the high score. She looked at the scoreboard with disappointment. This had been a promising run, but third place wasn't terrible.
Suddenly, the firing range door swung open. Both Omics turned toward the entrance, mentally resisting the urge—trained during their days at sea—to reach for weapons and blast the interloper into bloody chunks.
Restraint proved wise.
"Hello," said a nervous Mary Swift. She gulped as the two women reacted to her entrance like a sea monster had come to steal their lunch. "I'm here to ask about the Omic thing."