AN: Thank you, TheBlueNecromancer, for betaing!

This chapter should've been part of ch 12, but it just didn't happen, nor did it fit ch 13, so only a short chapter this week. I hope it answers some questions about why they don't skip dimensions in a plausible in-universe explanation way. There were a number of reasons why I didn't want to allow it from a writer's POV. For one, it would feel cheap and ruin any tension. Two, it would get complicated, bogging down the progression of the story as they get sidetracked. Three, I don't want to write a jump-chain, which is what the story would turn into if they could build portals.

It sort of builds on the fact that anytime people mess with Hell or portals, it always goes wrong eventually. So, while it might not be canon, I added in the subtle mental manipulations from being around such a portal and the corruption of organics, preparing them for possession. Could Miles and Rose survive and remain uninfected? 100%, but they don't know that. They could even mess around in Hell, maybe even incorporate Argent energy without issue, but that would take a measure of risk that neither would want to take.


Rose
April 21st, 2011
T+4 Days

Nothing existed in Rose's world as she and Miles gently settled the plasma missile on the ground. She didn't breathe or move as they used their telekinetic might. If anything went wrong, everyone was dead, even them, in their suits and powerful bodies. She knew nothing should happen. Miles had designed the plasma bottles to take hundreds of g's worth of shock during the impact, but for once, she wasn't confident of her survival.

Once in place, they backed away, hitting a button for an extremely strong magnetic field. Strong enough that if the containment failed during launch, the plasma charge should, in theory, be directed into the sky. It was a temporary measure, and like anything they threw together that outstripped their means, it wouldn't last long. Semiconductors turned to molten puddles with how much power flowed through them.

Rose ducked behind a solid concrete bunker built just minutes ago. Sometimes the most useful concoctions were easy to make; it was only discovering the formula that was complicated. Plain sand and seawater in and their own version of concrete out, but theirs didn't need aggregate. And they designed it to mimic a steel alloy's thermal expansion. Then mix in that an electrical current hardened the mixture, and they had a miracle construction material. One that they put to work, turning their part of the docks into a place that would survive indirect damage.

They did one more sweep of the area, Miles with his mind and Rose through her network of computers. After they confirmed no one was around, Miles launched the missile.

At that moment, the bottom-most plasma bottle opened slightly. From the basketball-sized bottle, a stream of compressed nitrogen plasma went from being pressurized to almost a critical state to the open air. It ejected at thousands of kilometers per second, forcing the missile into the air at dozens of gees. But that plasma ejected didn't react kindly with the environment, drilling straight into the ground, turning concrete into plasma and exploding outwards, detonating the launch pad even as the missile flew away. Cracking the sound barrier almost instantly, followed by an ear-shattering roar.

Two seconds later, it was already moving at a kilometer per second, a trail of eye-searing blue-purple plasma coming out the back. Rose knew that once it hit ten kilometers per second, it would slow the exhaust of plasma to both not melt the missile into nothing and not turn into a ball of plasma when it intercepts the asteroid. But it also didn't decrease the expenditure of energy as crude energy shields would spring into existence once past the atmosphere to protect it from micro-meteor impacts.

From launch to impact, it would take seventy seconds, even though the asteroid they were aiming at orbited six hundred thousand kilometers away. The flare of plasma soon disappeared into the dark clouds as Rose tuned into the network, and Miles joined her. Together, they watched through small sensors installed on the missile. Once out of the atmosphere, the thrust cut even as the Earth's gravity pulled back on it. A miniature disposable satellite disengaged five seconds before impact, allowing the thrust to kick back on and bring it back to 10 kps, only cutting back out right before the interception. They watched through grainy video as the dust-filled atmosphere blocked a fair bit of the data.

The missile slammed into the once-molten asteroid, now hardened and in one solid piece. A light flared into existence as the nose cone and rock vaporized against each other. The solid nose ablated away as it plowed deep inside the asteroid, and once the nose vanished, the first plasma bottle would be next. There was a failsafe where the magnetic containment fields would shut down, but that wasn't required this time.

An initial flash of blue plasma erupted from the impact hole before it turned white, and the asteroid shattered as the internal pressure far exceeded any connecting force. In the brief moment that cracks formed, white plasma from the vaporized rock escaped, further melting the asteroid and shooting molten droplets into the vast reaches of space.

The asteroid didn't break apart gently, with each chunk being flung away from the other by the expanding gas cloud. Soon after, the satellite slammed into the cloud, and the connection dropped, but from what she saw, it left nothing larger than six-hundred-meter-wide chunks of the once 5.5-kilometer-wide asteroid. They wouldn't know the end results until the detection arrays gathered more data, and they had to wait for the cloud of material to disperse.

Rose clapped Miles on the back. They pushed their deaths off for another day, but it didn't come for free. They had massive quantities of steel from hundreds of cars and salvaged ships, but of the rarer materials, each missile they made drained them. It wouldn't be wrong to say they had enough to make fifty more, an enormous and geopolitically shifting amount that could've held the world hostage a week ago, but now, that wasn't even a hundredth of what was required to split every asteroid into smaller chunks.

They also lacked the power generation to supply that much plasma, as that single missile took six hours of dedicated output from the new and improved generator. A massive 4 quadrillion joules of plasma were contained in that one missile, consuming 24 liters of deuterium. The scale kept increasing, and with it, the resources required to retain that power grew more exotic.

Rose sighed, staring at the dark sky, running through what was next on the agenda. They couldn't make any more drones, nor did they have a reason to. Everything they could scavenge was already cleaned up, and the retaining wall spanning ten kilometers was already on the final stretch. After that, they'd be building another one, cutting off the docks from the rest of the city by a ten-meter-high wall that was just as thick at the bottom. Protection against tidal and blast waves also kept everyone outside they didn't want to be inside.

While that wall went up, new bunker/apartments also began construction. The individual rooms were tiny and lacked the amenities that any apartment required by law, but they provided privacy. At three-by-three meters per room, each one consisting of two rooms, it allowed them to cram an unbelievable number of people into a small area. Without appliances, restrooms, or windows, they were cheap and quick to make, only requiring power, which was handled by a transmission system.

Rose didn't delude herself into thinking it was a permanent solution, but with the potential number of people who would stay there, it was necessary. Each building had the potential to hold 2-10 thousand people and withstand a nuke, but the monolithic structures had a weakness, earthquakes. Anything over a six on the Richter scale would crack the buildings but not collapse them, so it was an easy tradeoff, in her opinion.

Both Rose and Miles decided on the next two objectives, turning to each other as she eyed him with her lips pushed together. He held a similar expression, not giving an inch. She held up a hand, mirrored by Miles.

"On three," Miles said.

Rose closed her mind to Miles while simultaneously trying to force her way into his mind. As she did that, she suffered from him slamming into her mind like a freight train compared to her needle, sending a thrumming pain into her head.

"Rock."

"Paper."

"Scissors."

"Shoe!"

Rose brought her hand down, the world slowing down as she hammered against Miles' mind, trying to glean an edge while keeping her eyes locked onto his hand. Right as her hand hit bottom, a force wrapped around it, holding her hand as a fist. As Miles' hand flattened out, her eyes widened, shooting daggers at the smirking asshat.

"I win."

"The fuck you do, asshole."

Miles stuck out his tongue at her, making her eye twitch. "Enjoy dealing with hell portals. I know I will love making sweet guns, armor, and vehicles." He laughed, throwing back his head as he turned away and walked off.

"Dick," Rose muttered, but she couldn't blame him. She was getting sloppy when brute force worked so well.

With a shake of her head, she left the destroyed missile pad as drones rushed in to rebuild the foundation. At some point, it would be worthwhile to make one that the plasma emission wouldn't destroy, but not yet. She walked back into the hangar, sending out an all-clear signal so everyone could get back to work without going deaf.

The draw of using their hellish advancement perk wasn't for teleporting or travel, but how it opened up alternative dimensions. Alternative Earths might not be suffering from a cataclysm and lack people to deal with, and different Earths might bring the opportunity for resources or even an escape route.

Now, building a portal to another dimension was reasonably easy with the knowledge the perk gave her, but it would never be that simple. It was an itch in the back of her head that told her there was some type of drawback, a limitation that made it less than described, and the reason Miles dumped it on her to figure out while he had fun arming a crew.

All the pondering in the world wouldn't let her know what was wrong with the perk until it was up and running, so the easiest way forward was building a basic portal platform. This had one destination and one destination only, Hell. Made to draw the energies of Hell to convert to electricity, even her spark-addled brain knew better than to do that, but it was basic and easy to build.

As the platform and requisite technology came together, which included an air-gapped computer system, both hardened to prevent any transmission and contain any innocuous signals from leaving. A fact that wasn't lost on Rose as perks guided her hands, both increasing certain security precautions and doing away with others. Most decidedly, the straw that tipped the scale on her healthy sense of paranoia was the inclusion of an energy shield system four meters away from the portal, set to block something beyond her ability to detect.

That shield system took the portal precautions and ramped them up to an insane level. Most of the time, Rose didn't know what she was doing or why, with so many different aspects guiding her hand at any given moment. Normally, she was the driving force, only dipping into her perks for challenging aspects or workarounds. This flummoxed her and pushed her to consider the whole perk a trap, a straightforward solution to hard problems that would only worsen later.

The shield sprung to life, arcs of light that skimmed the dimension barrier showered inward, leaving the material plane untouched. It was a crucial step forward, and one with dozens of redundancies built in that couldn't turn off, not by her or anyone else. Hardwired with enough power storage to keep it up for years. It would only turn off if the portal platform stopped functioning or was destroyed. Even then, it would stay on for at least another forty-eight hours.

Rose held up her hand through the energy shield, watching arcs of light spear through her hand, leaving nothing in their wake. She shook her head, stepping further in to continue the construction, and things took a turn for the weird. The next portion involved drawing a complex set of runes with her blood that circled the platform on small hand-sculpted rocks.

When Rose placed the last one down, completing the set, an eerie feeling settled over her, like something was watching, waiting for the moment to strike. It itched and whispered, but it was nothing to her mental might, and she cast it aside. The moment she stepped outside the energy shield, it vanished. Just another reason this was a bad idea.

Four hours after starting, Rose finished.

'Miles, I'm done.'

'I'll be right there.'

Rose leaned against Miles, and she still gave the circle of stones a speculative look. She didn't like it one bit.

"This looks more involved than I expected," Miles said.

"Yeah, I don't like it."

Miles leaned forward, sticking his head through the shield before pulling back with a grimace. "That's… not good." He stroked his chin, looking over the various machines while reviewing Rose's memories. "So, one of the safety measures disabled blocked the psychic attack."

Rose shook her head. "Not really. It only blocked the muttering from being noticed, not its effects."

"A trapped perk?"

"I… don't know, but we shouldn't let anyone cross that barrier."

"Agreed. Should we turn it on?"

"Sure," Rose said, placing her hand against the scanner that only passed the energy shield by a millimeter. There wasn't a real reason not to, with how fortified it was from having anything leave the portal.

Two articulated robot arms pushed a metal pole onto either side of the platform, locking them in place as the air-gapped power connection flipped up and switched on. It transmitted power at a constant rate, receiving no information from the other side. If it wasn't properly distributed or disposed of, it would short out the electronics as a safety measure, adding another to the hundreds of others.

The hard-coded computer system did exactly as planned by funneling power into the poles, and a baleful red pinprick formed. Currents of warped air spun around the prick, growing in size and speed before it spread wider. A minute later, it touched both poles, leaving a swirling whirlpool of red clouds before it solidified. The center folded inwards, revealing a red-hued plain with floating mountains in the distance before them. Dead bodies littered the ground, some just bones while others rotted away with creatures flying far away, their size undeterminable.

Miles hummed before sticking the tip of his pinky finger through the shield. Wisps of smoke erupted off the exposed skin, contorting into disturbing effigies before he pulled back, but there wasn't anything left. Rose blinked at the sight of his missing fingertip before smacking him.

"That must be the other safety feature, not only disabled but enhanced. It seems to only affect organic compounds." Miles said, nodding along to himself.

Rose turned to the stones that once had her blood on them to see the lines burnt into the rocks; the blood was gone. Miles turned and left, leaving her to gaze deep into what was the physical manifestation of hell. He returned with an armful of different materials and started chucking them through the shield and the portal.

Metal balls flew through fine and did so for every almost pure element they had, but when he tossed an apple through, it turned to smoke before it traveled a half meter. That included a dead rat, amino acids, proteins, sugars, and plants. Everything remotely organic that dealt with potential life met its end on the other side of the energy field.

Rose and Miles brainstormed why but it didn't take long to conclude with the destination they connected to. Anything connected to Hell corrupted organic materials, and by supercharging the corruptive nature, it burned out anything that it could corrupt. They used its very nature against it, removing any attack vectors akin to shorting out sensors because the signal contained too much power.

"That removes that option of escaping, as even if we reverted that safety feature, it will still potentially corrupt anyone traversing it, including us," Miles said. "Because we have no way for detecting its vector of attack; we only know that it exists on the edge of reality, and we don't have technology designed to deal with that."

That also removed one of the critical resources they would use another world for, food. They'd have to test if the corruption could affect computers before they moved forward, as Rose wasn't sure, considering how the defenses her perk gave her focused on separating everything inside the field from acting outside it. Was it just a precaution for something coming through Hell and surviving the field? Or an actor working remotely through the portal?

Rose sighed again, knowing that, for the foreseeable future, her job was testing the hell portal. She turned to Miles, ensuring that her best smile was pleasantly affixed to her face. He shivered at the sight, stepping back and holding his hands up in protest. "Could you please not do the most suicidal, harebrained, idiotic lunacy ever devised in that pea-sized brain without running it by me? Thank you."