Laurence "Windbreaker" Davidson

  It had only been five months, but as team leader, Laurence was already used to bearing the heat of everyone else's complaints when he insisted on doing things that really ought to be done. Whether it was drills, exercise, or slogging onward through what the others called a 'sea of bureaucracy'—Laurence would argue it was more of a decently large puddle—someone was going to whine about it. It was almost amusing, then, that the only thing the whole team was consistently willing to do was head into an active incursion.

  Still, he'd expected to receive at least a little bit of pushback when he interrupted the start of Kevin's special Friday Cookout preparations to announce that a Tier 1 incursion had been detected less than four miles away. Surprisingly, the entire team, all conveniently assembled as a result of Kevin's schemes, had all dropped everything to suit up. Literally. Laurence couldn't help but laugh when he thought back to the melodramatic way Kevin himself discarded the metal brush thing that he used to scrape down the grill.

  In different circumstances, Laurence would never have prepared to pressure the others to begin with. Kevin's parents lived as close as you could get to the 'middle of nowhere' without crossing over the mountains and pushing into the Sacramento Valley. Add in the fact that Coastal California had one of the best incursion response times out of any region worldwide, and Laurence felt like it was okay to let the team have their fun. It wasn't like they had a strict duty, as they were all still independent Guardians at the moment. I can't lie—I was kind of looking forward to the evening myself.

  Keeping everyone moving forward felt like herding cats at times, but not today. The whole team had been itching to clear a full incursion—or at the very least, take down a fully-formed breach. It was a major milestone any successful Guardian reached at some point early in their career, and for the past month, they'd all felt ready for the challenge. It was ironic, then, that they'd failed thus far from a pure lack of opportunity.

  The high baseline for Guardian competency and Civil Guard resources in the region was due, in part, to the frequency and severity of incursions the region experienced. It also meant that any incursion that stuck around long enough for a team of inexperienced new Guardians to get to was going to be a minimum of Tier 2. Naturally, they had a decent amount of experience fighting in higher tier incursions. In fact, they'd spent more time in Tier 2 and 3 incursions than anywhere else. It was only at Tier 4 that things got seriously dicey, and Tier 5 was right out.

  That being said, even the outskirts of a Tier 2 incursion were plenty dangerous, and if there was one thing Laurence was adamant about preventing, it was complacency. And, while their team had grown in capability to the point that they'd started mopping up Tier 2 and even Tier 3 outskirts, pushing all the way to a breach was a far bigger task. Frankly, it wasn't worth the risk, and that was something they all agreed on. Still, the barrier to their progress was frustrating.

  That was why, when Laurence brought the news of a remote, Tier 1 incursion that had just opened up not 5 miles away from their location, everyone was instantly on board. It was a stroke of good fortune that they probably weren't going to get twice. In recognition of the early barriers that new Guardians in high-activity regions faced, the Civil Guard had put out a special local alert. Apparently, they were also maintaining a perimeter to keep it contained and only sending people in to look for any endangered civilians.

  Rumors were already beginning to circulate that there was an actual Star Guardian involved in the whole thing.

  They also weren't letting anyone Tier 2 or higher in, effectively creating a golden opportunity for all the nearby up-and-comers. The competition was going to be fierce—but their team had a massive head start. I have never been so glad that Kevin's family lives way out in the sticks. It would still take them a few minutes to make it to the outer perimeter, but that was a colossal head start when it would take most of the closest other teams at least half an hour.

  Sure, someone could always fly or teleport in, but they didn't really need to worry about that, as no one had abilities like that at Tier 1. It was almost guaranteed that their team would be the first to make it to the breach itself. And that means we just have to be strong enough and disciplined enough to handle it.

  The breach was at the bottom of a big ditch. Or whatever you call it. I was pretty sure there was a proper geographical term for the terrain I was looking at. I just couldn't remember what it was. A ravine? A gully, maybe? Come to think of it, I realized I didn't have a well-formed idea of what either of those words meant. They were in that category of words that I'd read about a lot, and that carried certain hazy associations, but which I would struggle to concretely define when asked. God that's so annoying. This is going to keep bothering me, isn't it?

  Accompanying my lexicographical difficulties—wait, no, that's not what 'lexicographical' means. You're thinking of 'etymological', Alex. Part of me almost relished the irony of the mistake I'd just made, while another part just got increasingly pissed off. Wait. Oh hell, 'etymological' isn't even right either. Fuck!

  Putting all of that aside, there remained the matter of the breach itself. I'd admit to thinking it was rather pretty, and I'd go so far as to argue that my opinion on the matter had nothing to do with either my nature as an Anathema or any other personal abnormalities. It was just pretty, in the way of something that would make an excellent wallpaper image for a high resolution computer monitor. I'd seen pictures before, but none of those did the real thing justice.

  I didn't say that because it had any kind of—wait, I think I need to whip out the pretentious French phrases for this one. It didn't have any unique je ne sais quois that would make capturing it on camera a futile endeavor. It was more a product of how all the footage of breaches I knew of was taken as a recording during combat and not for the purpose of making a nice digital wallpaper. It also allowed me to understand for the first time what people meant by phrases like 'fractal geometries' and 'space folding in upon itself.' I knew what an actual fractal looked like, so in this instance I was more referencing a particular way freaky reality-bending shit tended to be described.

  This also didn't have anything to do with some inherent limitation of cameras. For the same reason as before, I wasn't used to getting such a clear, stable picture of what it looked like, especially as the shape of the breach shifted over the course of several seconds. It was basically just a bunch of jagged lines of purple light with a distortion effect around them. The glowing lines looked almost like cracks in an otherwise invisible material. Probably because that's basically exactly what they are, genius. The distortion—I assumed that was the classic 'space folding upon itself'—basically looked similar to the way heat could produce a shimmering effect in the air.

  The only other weirdness was the semi-random way the cracks would morph in shape, often appearing, disappearing, or just moving and rotating about. I was going to guess that was just a basic consequence of a moving intersection between a full seven dimensional geometry and our particular three dimensional slice of things. I did happen to know the specific high dimension we were dealing with, here. The fact that breaches were, specifically, a seven dimensional phenomenon wasn't something that most people knew. The only reason I myself even knew that bit of trivia was because of my dad—my real dad.

  It was one of the only secret tidbits I'd ever gotten out of him, and I'm pretty sure it was a complete accident. He was in the middle of recounting what was perhaps the worst story of dealing with a Tier 6 breach ever told. Like, I'm pretty sure a literal text to speech program could have made it sound more enthusiastic. Anyway, he brought up the fact that breaches were the result of an intersection of our own reality with another, higher dimensional region. Alone, that wouldn't have been anything special. Almost anyone could tell you that.

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  But he hadn't just said 'higher dimensional'—he'd instead described it using the actual number. I'd never heard anyone do that before, and sure enough, scouring the internet later proved that it wasn't something you could easily find out, let alone find out at all. I was pretty sure even most Guardians weren't aware of that particular truth nugget. Lucky me, I guess.

  It was kind of a shame that it wouldn't make a difference right now.

  The density of Anathema in the ravine below was greater than ever, and more were making their way through the breach every several seconds. The longer we waited, the worse it would get—and honestly, it was already pretty bad. It wasn't yet at the point where I felt like we'd made a mistake in not running, though, thank God. There wasn't much point in letting it continue, though, and given that my attention was currently occupied with two different skinners that had tried taking Katherine's head off—well, I think we should go ahead and figure out how to close this thing.

  Wait, how do you close a breach? I knew that Anathema density was the main factor in incursion formation and growth, and that a lack of Anathema on our side of things would cause a rapid decay back to normal. Unfortunately, that wasn't an option. I was the only one of us capable of holding the door shut, so to speak, and even that might prove super difficult. Even if I could manage stopping anything else from getting through, that wouldn't do anything about all the Anathema that had made it across already. Katherine was definitely going to become super strong, since she was an actual Star Guardian, but a stupidly high power ceiling wasn't going to help us right now. I doubted she could put a dent in the numbers we were already seeing.

  So even if I can hold the breach shut, all these other Anathema would probably just go and form another one nearby. Shit.

  I was starting to think that I hadn't done a proper job of thinking through my plan.

  The one remaining hope I had was that I knew there were other ways of shutting a breach. Both the actual news and all kinds of Guardian media talked all the time about 'shattering' a breach. There was some way in which even regular Guardians could forcibly shut them without exterminating every single Anathema in the area. There had to be, because they didn't just talk about it. There was a whole phase of incursions, rather uncreatively termed the aftermath, where despite the incursion itself being over, the area could still be teeming with violent and hungry Anathema. It was a big enough deal that incursion drills, bunkers, and awareness campaigns were always coming up with slogans to say that you shouldn't think it's safe to go wander around just because the sky looks normal again.

  The aftermath was often as long as the incursion itself, and it required hunting down the overwhelming majority of remaining Anathema. The incursion would just start up again if they didn't, and they also had to continuously shatter the weaker, miniature breaches that would keep trying to form. But, like, how do they do that? Seriously, I kind of need to know what the actual process is.

  I did my best to share my thoughts as I defended the other two from more skinners. Those were the biggest threat, and I needed to take them down first. The scuttlers and grabbers were also dangerous, but I had more time to react to those. The scuttlers were slow and had limited range, which meant Katherine and even Max didn't have a hard time avoiding them. The only danger there was getting boxed in or pushed into the other Anathema.

  The grabbers were a bit more problematic, despite posing zero threat to me. Once they snagged a person with their tentacles, they'd drag the victim deep into the central mass, crushing and tearing them apart. Max might be a real tough bastard, but I didn't think any normal human could survive that, not once they were fully entangled. I was less sure about Katherine. I knew that bonding with a Star Core had made her tougher and stronger, but I didn't have a proper understanding of how much. The only thing I knew for certain was that, right now, I was way ahead of her on both counts. That was by observation and her own admission both.

  I wanted them both to stay alive, for now, and that meant making sure neither of them got their heads torn off when another damn skinner tried to attack from behind or just jump straight over me. A grabber getting a tentacle around one of them was something I could potentially still react to after it happened. Fortunately, the nature of the ravine meant we ended up with our backs to a big, flat rock, and there was an even bigger one looming over us. Once we'd positioned ourselves there, things became way easier for me.

  Just have to hope some stupid burrowing shit doesn't show up to ruin our day. I think I'd actually be really pissed if some worm fucker popped up and sucked one of them down.

  I tried to cancel that thought as soon as I had it. Good job, Alex. Real nice. That is exactly how you get some stupid worm fucker to show up.

  Katherine, blissfully unaware that she was about to be eaten by a giant, tunneling worm, finally decided to add her own input to the breach shattering problem. "I think I know how to do that, actually."

  "That's real great," I said, pausing to kick an encroaching scuttler hard enough that the whole thing exploded in a gory, red and yellow mess. Damn. I was just trying to kick it away, not do, uh, that. "Could you maybe please share your breach-shattering insights with the class, though?"

  "Oh, yeah. Sorry." I resisted the urge to groan, or to tell her that I don't care if you're sorry right now, just tell me how the hell we deal with this bullshit? I kept my thoughts to myself, though. One of the most important things I'd learned early in life was the importance of knowing when to shut up. And also, you know, actually doing it. Katherine did continue, though, which pleased me. "Can't you also feel it? If you pumped a bunch of that energy we use for our powers into it, the cracks would all start to seal themselves up."

  The fuck? You're telling me that's how you do it? Despite my desire to complain, it did make a certain amount of sense. It would also explain why it was fairly taxing for regular guardians, which was something I already knew in some vague sense. The way she phrased that kind of implies she would have to use a substantial amount of her magic Guardian juice, but most Guardians don't have an actual Star Core powering them. I'm assuming, then, that shattering a breach at the same tier as you is a pretty big energy investment.

  There was one problem with this, though—and it was, unfortunately, a rather big one. I'm actually an Anathema! I don't have any Star Core energy!

  Obviously, I was the one who should go fight my way to the breach itself and seal it up with my magic Guardian juice. I'd already developed into a pure frontline fighter, which meant I was the ideal candidate to plow my way to the very heart of the incursion and shatter the damn thing. The problem was that I was physiologically incapable of doing that. I didn't know all the similarities and differences between Anathema and Star Guardians. There had to be some similarities—at minimum, they both developed increasingly potent and impossible esoteric abilities at higher tiers—I mean, yeah, they literally have the same tiers. I didn't think they were secretly the same thing, though. Katherine... tasted different.

  I shoved that particular thought out of my head.

  Most relevant to my current predicament, however, was that it sounded like there was a fundamental difference in how our powers worked. Katherine was talking about fueling her powers with some kind of energy that she could also apparently eject from her own body. That was, just, not at all how my own abilities had worked. My strength, toughness, and regeneration weren't really tied to anything—at most, they correlated with eating things. All three, as well as manipulating my voice or my metal, felt more like flexing muscles than consciously fueling anything.

  As far as I was concerned, Anathema didn't have some kind of anti Star Guardian power energy. We just didn't have power energy at all.

  God damn it.

  Dealing with the breach thirty feet away from us was already a problem, but it was also only the beginning. How was I going to keep pretending to be a Guardian if I couldn't shatter a breach?

  Link: