Physics of the Crowbar

Nihilanth

Air. Falling. Falling.

Gravity kills.

He flailed, found his eyes, found down and up. And fell past a face staring back at him, enormous, wrinkled, bilaterally symmetric, fetal. Like an embryonic human, but grotesquely old.

Then his back hit liquid and he sank and scrambled up, choking out bitter fluids and slime. The life-form above him spoke, and he knew what he'd been hearing.

FREEMAN, it said. The mouth did not move but his ears and his core ached with the sound. YOU CANNOT KNOW.

And then it shot at him, purple-tinged plasma like ball lightning, each bolt the size of his torso, and he shot back.

He'd found the Nihilanth and it knew his name. He didn't have a context for what that ought to mean but he sensed weight behind the words. This was the creature bent on taking Earth, the thing he'd been sent to kill-If it was killable, if any weapon in his arsenal could make a dent-and it was ready for him.

He ducked behind a spike of brown organic growth and peeled the Xen gun off his arm. He discarded it into the murky water and hefted the yellow energy gun instead. Blood dripped from his hands, leaching through a hundred tiny holes the living weapon had eaten in the underlay.

The yellow gun made a dent, cut a swath of flesh away, but the Nihilanth undented itself.

Healed itself.

Of course it would. He wiped char and slime from his face and leaned back against the spire. He could hear it behind him, above him, but its bulk prevented it from getting any closer. It was too large for its own chamber. But he watched it draw in energy from the metamaterial crystals studded around the dome's apex.

Resonant crystalline teleportation, he realized. It was drawing energy through the twinned crystal faces, exactly as he'd been doing. It manipulated them itself, without need of external device or energy source. This thing was holding the gateway from Xen to Earth open, controlling the troops pouring through the sieve it'd made of reality. Manipulating twinned metamaterial crystals wasn't the peak of its technology. It was a kitchen-drawer bandaid.

He hefted the yellow gun again and fired. Again, the creature healed itself.

It groaned and roared and seared out a line of purple plasma.

Freeman dodged but not fast enough. The margin of a bolt rippled close, melting the HEV from shoulder to knee. His whole left side was on fire, suit compromised, skin burning under the overheated carbon fiber. He stumbled to his knees in his little sliver of cover. The HEV bleated warning after warning before going silent in a system failure.

Another glancing blow would probably kill him; a direct hit certainly would.

He thought, madly, quickly, in the seconds before his nerves caught up and pain management took over. The crystals were its key- as long as those existed, it'd just keep healing itself. Metamaterial crystals were tough. He'd shattered plenty but only under enormous resonant strain.

He'd never tried shooting one before.

The suit didn't need to list off his injuries. His left side was stiff as HEV joints melted together. It rode heavily on his shoulders, its internal structure and weight distribution compromised. His left arm shook and his right hand was swollen and sore from the Xen gun. He didn't have much time before his mind caught up with the burns and made focus difficult.

He traded guns for the revolver. It was a comfortable weight; he'd been saving its scarce ammunition for when something needed a heavy, reliable slug. Bullets tended to go where they got aimed. His hands were steady. He shot the first crystal-two bullets to shatter-and ran for cover, for another angle. Second crystal down.