And here it is, folks, the final chapter. Which I've had, already mostly written, for, oh, about a year now?
EDIT:
Click here to read the sequel.Chapter Sixty-seven
Meanwhile, in Switzerland, the unnamed laboratory near CERN lay in smoldering ruins. Concrete blocks the size of cars were strewn about in an apocalyptic wasteland, punctuated by still-burning fires and mangled bits of steel. Dark smoke swirled between the deserted, jagged ruins.
Blackened bones could be seen, strewn here and there amongst the debris. Not much was left of the bodies, no trace of skin or muscle. Only those smoking fragments of bone. Everything else had been burned away to smoke and ashes.
Yet, impossibly, something was moving within that concrete graveyard. An unconscious figure slowly stirred amidst the rubble, surrounded by bent and broken steel bars that jutted out of the ground like twisted fangs. Her features were oddly distorted, like different images of her had been laid over one another, a multiply-exposed photograph of a face. All were african-american, but the slight differences in tone created an eerie effect, almost like darkened iridescence.
Her right eye was gone, nothing left but a blackened and jagged eye socket. Like a crater had been blown in her face. Stretching all across the right side of her face and part of her left, radiating and crisscrossing all around the missing eye, was an almost delicate scar, a lace-like spiderweb pattern of cracks on her skin, where she had been burned by molten shrapnel from the explosion. It was the only thing that all the images of her face had in common, which gave it the eerily curious effect of being the only solid thing about her. It was like looking at a broken funhouse mirror, the cracks overlaying the twisted illusion beneath.
The woman opened her remaining eye and looked around, slowly remembering where she was. Her many-layered identity was all that had saved her from being killed in the blast. Each version of herself had only taken minimal damage. But if she had taken all that damage herself, in only one form, she would have certainly died.
She could feel something, off. Her vision seemed incomplete, somehow, as though something was blocking some part of her field of sight. She looked around, trying to see what it was. Realizing that there was nothing in front of her, she raised a hand to touch the right side of her face, where her eye should have been.
The woman gasped in horror. The texture under her hand was something raspy and rough and brittle. Like crumpled paper. That wasn't skin. No. That could not be
her skin.
She closed her one eye, bitterly remembering her previous life. How she had been shunned by the site that had created her. She had been banned from that corrupt forum, forced to live in exile at its borders. The nerve of them! So long, so very long, she had been trapped there, with nothing but a meager few of her faithful minions to keep her company.
She remembered that day, not so long ago, when she had finally gotten her lucky break. A fool in search of adventure had traversed into her territory, and from there it had been child's play to follow him back to whence he had come. There she had lain hidden, in wait for a chance to strike back.
She remembered how she had eventually learned the secret to 'surfing, how to cross over from one website to another. With that knowledge, she had eagerly found her way into the rest of the internet. She remembered trying to recruit followers. But she had only met with failure, again and again.
Even outside of the forum that had banned her, users were fools. They didn't understand her power. They didn't understand, that there could be no other ruler, no other leader to sheep such as they.
But then, she remembered that moment, when she had been offered an even sweeter deal. By a user with no idea who or what she really was. He had offered her a chance at infinite power. Power over those who had disgraced her.
But as soon as she had been freed from the internet and brought forth into this strange new world beyond, she was betrayed by those who had liberated her. She had been held against her will, studied by scientists. No matter how she screamed and protested and even begged, they held her captive, to be their lab rat.
Of course, that was alright, now. They had been appropriately punished for their sins. They were dead. Maybe not all of them, but enough. And she was free.
Amidst the rubble of the ruined complex of her captors, a single object stood out, barely visible in the distance, through the misty haze of smoke. Drawn towards it, the woman stumbled forward on mangled legs.
It was a white sphere. She could see it now, as she drew closer. It was utterly untouched by the destruction around it. The woman approached it, in awe at its sleek smooth perfection, and held out a hand to touch it. There was not a scratch upon its pristine surface.
She happened to catch a glance at herself, in a reflection upon its featureless white glass. She saw her own scar for the first time. She winced, and tentatively touched a hand to her broken face. Her features soon twisted into a scowl, furious that anyone or anything would dare to tarnish her magnificent beauty.
"I will find those responsible for this, and I will make them pay," she vowed in a harsh voice to the empty air.
She already knew who it had been. Who had done this. Who
had to have done this. The only infidels who would dare to insult her beauty like this, who would dare to scorch her lovely features.
Her features twisted still further into anger and rage. She bared her teeth, some versions of which were sharpened, like vampiric fangs.
"I will
make them pay!" she repeated, louder. The sound of her own voice seemed to fuel her demented fury.
"Do you hear me, RAFians?" AlmightyQueen howled into the wind like a wild animal. "YOU WILL PAY FOR THIS!"
