There had to be more time; Chase sprinted through the Gates of Heaven and landed upon the squelching, sickening flesh of the Omnihive. It was all back, the heat, the red sky, the thousands of eyes all on him, but there was no point in dwelling on anything anymore. Turning toward the Aorta Tunnels, he braced himself to run. He stopped; forcefully digging his paws into the meaty ground with a ferocious grip. His movement had ceased, halted at the command of a foreign entity wrapping around his mind. It all came at once, the white-hot searing agony of tearing flesh, squirming tentacles leeching down his legs and coiling over the bone.
"Eng- no," Chase said, violently gasping as if his breath was being stolen away. "Not... not now! Not- ... eeaaaaahhhhh!" Like swarming fire the ferox messiah screeched from within his body, linking their veins and tendons and making a brutal grab to hijack his brain. Violently it fought, straining every last muscle in Chase's body until they vibrated like fearsome wasps. "No! Not yet-" Chase almost collapsed upon himself, burning under the immeasurable agony tearing his body apart from within. "I- I can make it!
His front leg lifted on its own, reaching to the red sky, and Chase knew it was not himself looking through his eyes. Blood fell from his ears and eyelids, electric pain shooting bullets through his skeleton straight for his shoulder blades. "Aaaahhhh!" He screamed as they ripped out of him with revered passion, four tentacles of sliming gore erupting from his back, embracing the red sunlight with their wriggling dance.
All bodily function fell to chaos; with sickening tears his skin ripped along his legs and sides, spurting blood and chunks of flesh. His own frame could no longer contain the massive creature liberating itself into the world, and Chase felt every last one of his nerves tearing in half. The shepherd fell on his stomach convulsing, unable to move from the overwhelming seizures. Stinking froth regurgitated from his mouth, and Chase fell still in the fields of the Omnihive, left only to his fading vision and the triumphant laughter of Mother Genesis.
Then the pain soothed, washed away with foggy soap and water, and Chase opened his weary eyes to the world. He recognized this place, the sorrowful songs whistled by the spirits in the air, endless wandering in the hopeless infinity. This was his mind, or at least he figured, the endless fog that possessed every direction obscured the various weary souls shivering in the cold.
Except one. A single shepherd sat a few feet away, sitting with her head hung to the floor. A terrible aura of depression surrounded her, as if she were gazing upon her life falling apart piece by piece.
"What..." Chase pushed himself up, wincing at the pain's memory fresh in his mind. "Am I... am I dead?" He looked down at himself, seeing that his body had supposedly returned to normal; gone were the gruesome tears and gashes that diseased his skin.
"Not yet," Audrey said, sighing to herself. "But it's taking you as we speak."
"Wh- then why am I here, we're wasting time!"
"I didn't bring you here!" she whipped around, snarling with flattened ears. "Your body couldn't take the transformation... and you fainted. You could have mere minutes left and they're being spent here..."
The soldier worriedly looked around at the foggy chasm that was his inner subconscious, "then how do I get out of here? How do I wake myself up?"
"I'm not sure you can, I wouldn't know anyway," Audrey shook her head, drained of all resolve and motivation. "I guess we just got really unlucky... there isn't more that can be done now."
"Of course there is!" Chase said with a narrowed expression. "We can't just let Genesis win!"
Audrey lunged at his face, barking with seething frustration. "She already has! She won when you got infected, she won with every last body I-" she stopped herself, swapping her words around on the fly, "that Feroxmalis snuffed out! She won when I transformed, she won when Rubble was compromised, and she's done nothing but confirm her victory with you stepping into the Omnihive!"
Her voice broke on the last word, her flaring anger suddenly fading into gradual sorrow. Audrey deflated from Chase's surprised expression, letting herself sit defeated. "It's over, Chase."
A pitiful silence encompassed them both, leaving both dogs seemingly to forever fade away within the hivemind, just another two souls for Genesis to toy with. Audrey didn't make eye contact as Chase paced in circles, struggling in growing panic to come up with any possible plan.
Until a third voice entered the clearing, gentle and broken. "No it isn't."
Both Chase and Audrey turned their heads, and like flames their expressions brightened with astonishment, Chase even more so than Audrey. He thought he was dreaming, which wouldn't have been completely outlandish given the odd location he kept meeting Audrey in. Everything here was a product of his subconscious, or so he'd been assuming, as the dog standing before him now changed everything.
"Rubble?" Chase asked, his voice echoing with reverence.
The small, starry-furred translucent bulldog gave a humble shrug, letting a cheerful smile contain the excitement in his eyes. "Wow, you got tall."
"You're-" Chase ran to his old friend, looking down at him. "You're still a puppy!"
"Yeah, I can't really grow here," Rubble gave an awkward chuckle, looking up at the shepherd with age-old admiration. "I'm kinda... stuck, all of us are."
"All of you?"
"Me and the rest," said the bulldog, looking over his shoulder at the fog. "There's... many of us, hundreds even, I lost count. We're all trapped here, wandering... weary and lost."
"I can't believe you're here!" Chase could barely stop the elation spilling on his face. "I've... I've missed you, I've missed you terribly, how have you been? Oh- that's actually a dumb question, but-"
"Chase," Rubble held up his paw, cutting him off. The joyful wonder he commonly expressed fell to great pain, ceaseless exhaustion threatening to drag him to the abyss. "Listen, I... I never really got a say in anything that happened in The Lookout. I don't even remember when I was infected, but I saw everything, every single thing that happened."
Audrey looked away, unable to watch with the heavy guilt on her shoulders.
"And when I died, when that whole thing burned in the forest fire," he continued, "I was sent here, and I've remained here only to wander the infinite fog. I can't age, I'm never hungry or thirsty, and I never get tired. It's..." he looked up with terrified eyes. "It's torture... it's torture, Chase! Can you imagine being stuck like this, just... this limbo?"
"I'm likely about to," Chase looked off in the circulating distance, where the fog patiently awaited him. "But I need to make this shot count, no matter how little time is left. There's a bomb on my corpse, I..." he stopped, thinking over the gut-sinking plan humming in his infested brain. "It's the only power I'll have against her."
Rubble seemed unconvinced, but nodded in understanding to the only plan they'd ever have. "Then I'll be rooting for you."
Like a demon in the night, a booming voice startled the trio, appearing through the darkness. "How comedic you believe your endeavors to be fruitful."
Supermassive legs of solid biomass and bone stepped out of the fog, carrying a horrifying thirty-foot tall body of gore. Mother Genesis herself loomed over them, tilting her faceless, armored head. The footsteps alone made the ground shake, the realm even in her design cowering under her presence. Her horns shimmered in the fog, reflecting their hopeless light right back at them with questioning poise.
"The ferox messiah is now!" Genesis said with her radiating voice, leering over her terrified captives. "I warned you, Audrey, yet it's so often you go against the word of the mother. Chase is out of time, let him transform in peace."
"There's still a chance!" Audrey jumped up, standing before the terrifying enigma. "You're wrong about him, he's stronger than this!"
"Is he now?" the titan looked to the shepherd, who was visibly unnerved by her physical presence. She leaned her shield-like face down, speaking directly to him in a foreboding tone. "What you hold to drive your motivations, your ambitions, should be me. There are no angels, no demons, no devil, and there is no god. There is only me. Serve me, my messiah, and I will make anything you desire yours. Think before you take such... pointless actions."
Her massive body suddenly dissolved into stardust, scattering across the realm's sorrowful wind. Audrey swallowed the pit in her throat and looked back with weary doubt, Rubble hadn't even said a word, his feeble body paralyzed in terror of the Omnihive's matriarch. But Chase wasn't feeling afraid, he felt something else, a rush unlike anything ever felt before. Claws tensed, fur bristling on end, Chase knew Genesis would be watching, but he simply couldn't stop now.
"Audrey, how do I wake up from this?" Chase turned to his friend in the fog, suddenly hardened with determination.
She looked back at him, "well... not by yourself certainly." Audrey said, then narrowed her eyes at a quick thought. "But... we're all connected here. You can't wake yourself up... but we probably can."
"You can force me awake?"
"Not force, exactly," Audrey shook her head. "If Rubble helps, we could probably form a collective consciousness together. The sudden intrusion should jolt you up."
"Is it painful?" Chase said, although pain as an ideal was barely an afterthought to him.
"Hell if I know," she said with a shrug, letting her paw land on his. "But we're out of options."
Rubble came to Chase's side and placed a paw on his shoulder, and through the vast liminal network of the Omnihive already linking them, the three began to think as one. Chase shut his eyes, letting peace soothe his body under the fireworks of voices and memories running through their bond. He could see Audrey's times as a puppy, scrabbling along for food all the way to Archline's tests. He could see Rubble waking up everyday at the single sound of a food bowl, the various smells the bulldog always treasured bringing life to their minds. All memories and dreams were passed hand-in-hand along them, dancing in their subconscious as if they were all one dog. He could feel it working, faint lucidity breaking through the suppressive layers of Genesis's limbo, but it was only a flicker, and still he was left in the fog.
"It's not enough," Audrey whispered, keeping herself still. "We need more."
Appearing from the silence, a brand-new paw touched Chase's other shoulder, taking the shepherd by surprise. He opened one eye, looking to his right at the new presence before them. Amber eyes met brown, and for just a brief moment, the gentlest sparks of anger threatened to drip from his tongue. But it never came, Chase refused to allow it, what good would even it do? A soft smile drifted across his expression, and he gave Zuma a wordless nod.
The starry chocolate Labrador couldn't bear to meet his gaze, looking down in shame. He expected rebuttal, lashing, how could deserve anything after the conflicts so long ago? But they were just that, years ago, only distant memories of anger long spent. Overjoyed to reconcile with his last, banished brother, Chase moved his own paw to Zuma's shoulder, letting them both be forgiven for the past. Zuma looked up with mercy-pleading eyes but softened under the gaze of the shepherd's resolve. The world brightened around them, the only sounds being Audrey's final pleas to right the wrongs, and Chase was pulled from the drowning abyss of his mind.
Writhing under the red sky, Chase suddenly awoke on the ground, eyes flaring open as if they had been electrocuted. The pain had mysteriously vanished from his body, a notion that should've been concerning given his circumstances, but his teeth bared in a snarl at his new mission. Dutch's bomb was still strapped to his collar, the detonator still sitting a few feet away like a loyal companion. Leaping off the ground, Chase sprang onto his feet with great energy and strength, swiftly grabbing the remote.
"Run, my messiah," Genesis whispered in his ears. "Run with power unlike anything in the world."
He ran with beautiful stride, his entire body committed to the sprint across the fields of the Omnihive. Bright energy coursed through every limb, singing powerful songs of resolve and morale. Trumpets roared in his head like warriors into battle, violins danced like the very world was ending, and echoing percussion drove them all to gleeful madness with enough rage to fight the very sun itself. The violins became the loudest as he ran, vocalizing with immeasurable energy powering his stride.
"Why do you fight me?" came the mother's questioning tone. "Back down, I could give you things not even dreams alone could reach!"
Chase's legs began to elongate, transforming right under his nose in a slow miracle of evolution. His muscles pulsed with glowing steroids, increasingly so the more he clenched his teeth. Like gruesome wet paper his skin began to tear, unable to contain the astonishing power of a ferox messiah. Five claws of solid bone cut out each paw, tendrils of bloody red tearing out of his shoulders and waist to ensnare around his body. Nothing could stop him as he flew across the meaty ground, not even the solid bone tearing through his body to form segmented armor.
Genesis was louder than usual, "mangled fool, desist before I force you myself."
"You can't control me!" Chase shouted directly into the sky, power singing in every vein and nerve spiderwebbing across his body. "The messiah's not fully formed, you can't take me yet!"
The mother went quiet.
He didn't need the Aorta Tunnels; like a burning flood memories and knowledge swept his mind. He knew exactly where the Nexus was, a different entrance accessible only to someone with the might of a ferox warrior. With the grace and efficiency of a free-spirited jaguar, Chase tore through a dogtree forest, speeding past thousands of orange eyes watching him run. Launching himself into air, he gripped a dogtree with his claws and leapt up it, preserving his momentum and velocity to jump along the canopy of stringing meat. He felt invincible, free as a horse charging across the meadow with no humans to leash it, even as more skin ripped along his body, exposing ribs and layers of muscle. His tail stripped itself of its skin like a freshly molted snake, flowering out into a wormlike, several-foot long tail of bloodied tentacle.
"I cannot take you now, but you only have minutes until you completely turn!" Genesis snarled, her voice deforming with wicked entities unknown to human comprehension. "And when you do, I'll see you suffering for this insolence!"
The mountain of flesh and muscle was in his sights, a towering structure that nearly touched the bloody sky. All obstacle an afterthought, Chase gracefully landed from the trees and scampered up the mountain, scaling it with considerable agility. His eyes caught thousands of openings and details at once, seeing each crevice in the mountain's surface to jump from in milliseconds of thinking. It was happening, he knew it was happening, and the creature inside him knew it was happening. But not yet, Chase gritted his teeth on the remote as he jumped, he just needed more time, just the smallest window to strike.
He finally reached the peak of the mountain, jumping up every intention of land as if victory itself was waiting. A gaping sinkhole was waiting for him, reaching all the way down into the swallowing abyss below. A few ferox warriors were grazing on the fleshy surface when he appeared, and curiously they looked up at him with tilted heads. Without warning, Genesis connected to their minds and barked orders, Chase could already see their masks going from mild interest to sudden, unprovoked aggression.
The warriors attacked him, swarming at both sides with teeth and claws. They were nothing, the messiah was far stronger than anything a single warrior or even Feroxmalis could've hoped to be. Like pathetic rodents they were nothing, Chase fought them back and battered them off the mountain like tumbleweeds.
"See your power!" Genesis said, a slight edge in her voice. "Behold my gift! Stand down, now! The whole world will be delivered to you for all your destructive desires!"
With the resolve of a thousand soldiers protecting their families and homes, Chase fearlessly jumped directly down into the yawning void, riding atop gravity's shoulders all the way to the Nexus.
Five straight seconds in terminal velocity was barely anything to his new form, Chase landed perfectly into the engraved cathedral, suppressing the impact with a fluid sideways roll. His body straightened, staring daggers down the whispering hall of the Omnihive Nexus. Fearing not even the many eyes watching him with terrified, narrowed pupils, Chase charged down the hall as if he were leading a whole revolution. A seizure struck him from within, briefly staggering his movement through the nexus. The ferox messiah had nearly finished weaving the last of its nerves and tendons with Chase's own, now beginning to grope its infection across his bones.
"Ghh-" Chase's body unexpectantly veered itself to the left, stuttering across the floor. "No! N- no!" In furious rage he battled over control, throwing himself in all directions in a clawing attempt to reclaim his mind.
"Seize him," Genesis said from within, speaking as if she were patiently waiting for the transformation.
"I am you," came the messiah's layered, snarling voice up Chase's throat. "Just as you, are me."
"You can't take me!" the shepherd seethed with madness, fighting against the uncontrollable seizures to stabilize his foothold. "Neither of you can!"
Ferox warriors began climbing through the tunnels, flooding into the Nexus in gleeful anticipation of their new leader. They appeared in the dozens, remaining perched on the walls and looking down at the violent duel between a dog and himself.
Genesis directly screamed into his mind, "desist!"
Coursing with adrenaline, Chase leapt forward and sprinted down the Nexus, the warriors watching him closely behind. Mother Genesis was right where she appeared ages ago, pushing herself free from the fleshy wall of blood and perverted mass to sit upon her throne of gore. She laid on her stomach, crossing her clawed hands in a polite manner, her egregiously long tail curling around the floor and tapping to itself. Even more warriors appeared in response to their mother's presence, some even climbing on her back like infant kangaroos hopping aboard.
Chase finally stopped, coming before the powerful matriarch just as his body was on the verge of rupturing.
"Drop the device," Genesis commanded him sharply.
The rapidly shaking shepherd only glared up at her in response, fighting through the mutation with sheer will. Everything was still there, the bomb attached to his collar, the remote still held in his teeth.
Faintly twitching with unease, the large titan bared his claws and loomed over him. "Drop it, Chase!"
Her words only went through him like blank noise, Chase's mind busied itself with old memories and faces of the loved. All he could think of was Everest, with Rocky and Marshall standing at her sides with glowing fur.
The remote fell from his mouth and landed on the ground, exposing a red button harmlessly attached to its shell. Chase's eyes flicked to it for a split-second before meeting Genesis's furious shadow. Like encompassing disease, the ferox warriors all gathered in the hundreds, watching like a starstruck audience at the exchange.
"Be a good dog and listen to your mother!" roared the titan, flaring with -although noticeably fearful- anger.
"A good dog doesn't blindly follow the orders it's given," Chase said through snarling teeth, his voice weakened under the maelstrom of mental hijacking. "A good dog..."
He held his paw over the remote; Genesis flinched, the surrounding warriors either paled or expressed confusion.
"A good dog..." said the shepherd, struggling to speak as his life was being stolen away. "Defends... and protects!" He slammed his paw down on the remote, crushing the button and activating the bio-saturator bomb.
For a moment, all anyone could see was a blinding light radiating from him, feathers of blue dancing along its wavelength.
The blue flashed for a millisecond, then came a debilitating explosion of fury and fire. Chase seemingly ruptured outward with such divine force it appeared holy in nature, spreading cleansing fire in a rapid burst of song. Mother Genesis was caught directly in the epicenter, at first her body held against the powerful atomic force, only to scream in the dying voice of a thousand ancient gods as her body began tearing apart. The fire washed through her gore, turning it to ash and incinerating every nerve and tendon in her body. Her exoskeleton resisted the blast for only a few seconds, until it burned black and crumbled to pieces, blown away in the explosion. All that could be heard were her raging screams of defiance as what remained of her cracked and fractured, shattering away until there was ultimately nothing left of her.
Hundreds of ferox warriors were caught in the blast, disintegrated so quickly most of them couldn't even react in time. The fire traveled through the Nexus, sweeping into the Aorta Tunnels and burning every last egg and ferox infant still skittering through its corridors. Like a triumphant volcano the explosion finally vented out through the sinkhole in the mountain, spewing a torrent of vengeful flames into the red sky. It finally subsided, falling quiet as the few remaining licks of flame came to rest on the ground of the Omnihive.
All across the realm, a great agony was felt through the very core of its being. Surviving ferox warriors stopped in their tracks, feeling sick and falling onto their sides. With Mother Genesis destroyed, the hivemind became unstable and spiraled with fear and confusion. It only persisted without anyone to control it for a little while, all life in the Omnihive falling ill for a few minutes, until finally the network crashed.
Every ferox warrior gave their final breath and died on the spot, every towering baalcross prowling the surface suddenly collapsing from mass heart failures, every dogtree wilting as their lifeforces drained from their roots. The Omnihive was dying; its many eyes across the realm yellowed with disease and lost their strength. The red sun in the sky dimmed its light, bathing the entire land in darkness like a vengeful god punishing those below it.
With the hivemind fractured, millions of imprisoned souls slipped through cracks and flew to the heavens. Humans, dogs, cats, they dropped their chains and flew to the light, singing in rejoicing freedom. No more would they be contained, every last one joined hands and lifted up to eternal peace. Audrey danced and laughed into the air like she had never had before; gone was her pain and suffering with nothing left to keep her down. Rubble and Zuma followed behind her, then Ryder, then countless other spirits breaking free from the nightmares. Chase was last, a starry spirit risen from the ashes, making sure every last soul made it out first. Once the hivemind was wiped clean, only then did he smile and fade away into the sky, finally freed from the torment and agony.
Within twelve minutes, all life in the Omnihive had completely perished, every last trapped soul now set free to paradise. The entire realm itself was only moments away from extinction.
A peaceful, victorious silence fell over the smoldering ruins of the Archline Foundation, whispering its lullaby over the dozens of burned corpses and fried ferox warriors. High above the ruined lab, the final, surviving three sat in contemplation. Rocky, Marshall, and Everest were huddled up on the bridge standing before the gore-slathered doors to freedom.
Something caught Marshall's eye, "hey, look!"
The three all turned to the doors the Omnihive had maliciously sealed off. Its flesh suddenly yellowed with sickness, the eye in the center bulging as if in pain, until the life faded from its iris. Its strength weaned from it, and the wall of flesh died before them and wilted away into bloody goo. The last piece of the Omnihive had fallen; and with it, the entire dimension into eradication.
"What happened to it?" Rocky said quizzically, stabilizing himself against Marshall.
"Something with the hive," came Everest's awe, realizing what it meant. "Does this mean..."
It did; no one could bear to say it, but it was painfully obviously what had occurred beneath them. Everest's expression filled with pain, staring heartbroken at the dead biomass littered before the door.
Bowing his head, Marshall went quiet as if he were praying. "See you on the other side..."
Different emotions all struck Rocky at once, grief, anger, rage, bargaining, his paws clenching with bubbling defiance. Although nothing came from him; just as many other proud, heroic soldiers once fallen in battle, yet another hero came and saved them all.
"He did it," Rocky said, voice struck with grieving agony, whole body on the verge of shaking.
"We... we need to do something," Marshall spoke with a quivering voice, every ounce of self-control keeping himself from breaking down. "Make something... for him."
"Bella can help with that."
"Who?" Everest asked with a broken tone, completely defeated from losing the most beloved thing in the world to her.
Rocky gestured for her to follow, "our leading officer. Now come on... let's find transport and go home."
With no one left but each other, the trio passed through the doors and walked out into the light, finally escaping the nightmare and embracing freedom.