Desolate Sky

"Meet us at the farmhouse. We need to talk, Cage."

Major William Cage woke up at the beginning of his newly-reset day with a shock he hadn't experienced in a few hundred awakenings. The voice he'd heard in the vision of the Omega had been new, unfamiliar—and yet some part of him felt aching familiarity with the presence. The words were gnawing at the back of his mind as he went through the motions to meet Rita again, but he kept the revelation about the voice to himself until he was standing in the room with both Rita and Dr. Carter.

"Rita, when you started having the visions of the Omega at Verdun, did you ever…" he hesitated, not quite sure how to phrase the sensation. "Hear anything?"

"Hear anything?" Rita repeated, arching a skeptical eyebrow. "In what way?"

"Like… voices. Speaking English."

Rita paused, frowning for a long moment.

"No," she said at last, drawing the word out for half a beat longer than necessary while she looked hard at Cage. "I didn't. What did it say to you?"

"It said that it wanted to talk," Cage answered, and Rita's skeptical look returned in force.

"You almost sound like you're thinking about doing what it wants," she said, more nervous than angry.

"I didn't say that," Cage replied, his voice calm. "But it knows where we're going to wind up, Rita. After the beach—it knows where we'll be headed after that. I don't think we'll be able to avoid doing what the Omega wants, no matter what we do… assuming that voice even was the Omega, that is," he finished, sighing. "Maybe I am just finally going crazy, after all."

"That's something we can't afford," Rita said, stoic once more as she looked at Cage. "Focus, Cage. We have to get through that beach in one piece. Once that's done, we can figure out what to do next."

Cage nodded, taking a deep breath and trying to force the eerie words from his mind.

A few hours later, the pair of soldiers was on the beach and preparing for what Cage knew, and Rita assumed, would be a horrific slaughter. As the battle progressed, however, the two of them realized that the Mimics seemed to be consciously skirting them on the battlefield, attacking only when directly provoked. It wasn't long before Rita and Cage had crested the hill at the end of the beach, looking out towards the horizon towards where Cage knew the farmhouse awaited them at Lyon.

"The day draws on, Cage," the voice from his vision spoke in Cage's head, this time directly into the core of his waking mind. "Time does the same."

He must have reacted to the intrusion physically, because the next thing he heard was Rita's concerned voice.

"You all right, Cage?"

"I'll be fine," he said distractedly, shaking his head slightly in a vain attempt to clear it. "Let's go."

"Towards where the Omega—or whatever the hell that thing is—wants us to go?"

"It's the only choice we have," Cage answered, steeling his voice with the commanding tone he'd developed over hundreds of deaths on the battlefield. "Like it or not, there's no way to get to the dam where the Omega is without a helicopter, and the only helicopter even remotely close to us with a fuel supply is the one in that farmhouse."

Rita grit her teeth, but nodded in the end. As uneasy as the idea of heading right into the Mimics' hands made her, Cage's words had the uncomfortably unmistakable ring of truth to them. The same ring that her own words had held in Verdun, when she'd convinced Hendricks to follow her into the jaws of death over and over and over again.

Shoving those old memories from her mind, she got up and began walking towards where Cage had told her a van would be waiting for them to drive to the farmhouse.

"How many times have you died?" Rita asked Cage as they drove, surprising him by being the one to speak first this time. Maybe the Omega asserting itself through Cage had shaken her up more than she was willing to show him… but if that really was the case, then Cage completely understood.

"I stopped counting a while back," he admitted, giving a small shrug. "But it feels like I'm about to hit the thousand mark. How about you?"

"I stopped counting, too," Rita said, sadness on the edges of her voice. "How're holding up? Besides the voice in your head, that is."

Cage looked over at her, a question in his eyes. Rita sighed.

"Look, all I'm saying is that I went to some pretty dark places during the Verdun campaign," she explained. "If you crack before we find the Omega, humanity's chances of winning the war are gone."

"So as long as I wait to go insane until after we take out the Omega, we're good?" Cage joked, but the grimace on Rita's face that followed told him the humor hadn't quite made it across. "Sorry," he apologized. "Thanks, Rita. It means a lot. And don't worry, I'll be fine. I'm already having visions in my head, I doubt a voice will make that much of a difference," he finished with a smile, glad to see the tension in Rita's shoulders at least relax slightly.

Then she seemed to remember something, and the tension returned worse than before.

"I forgot to detach the trailer," she said lowly, and Cage tensed himself as he looked over his shoulder and braced for one final gunfight before the farmhouse.

"What the hell…?" he vaguely heard Rita breathe next to him, shocked. "Cage, look at this."

He turned back around, and came face-to-face with something he'd never seen before.

A long row of Mimics lined the road on each side of the van, orange-yellow grunts standing in perfect, unnerving formation along the pavement. Cage and Rita saw the row was at least three columns deep, more than enough Mimics to bury them both.

"Do not be alarmed," the voice spoke into Cage's head, louder than ever now. "We just had to limit the likelihood of statistical improbabilities from occurring."

Cage groaned, leaning forward and clutching a hand to his forehead.

"We're almost there," he grit out, cutting off any words of concern Rita might have been thinking about voicing. "Keep driving."

The Mimics were present all the way up to the farmhouse, where a pair of Alphas stood guard in front of the door. Rita and Cage got out of the van and waited, hands on their weapons and ready to draw. But the Alphas just glared at them, the twitches in their muscles only interpretable as annoyance. The two humans took a few hesitant steps forward, and the two Alphas slid smoothly to the side to allow them entrance. Rita took point, shouldering the door open with a crack of splintering wood and stepping into the farmhouse.

"You have arrived," a voice said from several paces across the room, sounding oddly human, and yet inhuman at the same time. "Good. We may begin."

Cage entered behind Rita, a prickling feeling moving along his skin in a wave as he recognized the voice matching the one that had been in his head earlier. Who the voice belonged to, however, looked nothing at all like anything either Cage or Rita had expected.

Apart from its totally-black eyes, the figure sitting in a chair on the other side of the room looked almost completely human. Its hair was as black as its eyes, and it wore what looked like a high-ranking official's military uniform. What was visible of its skin was pale, as if it had almost never seen the sun—the only clue apart from its eyes and the strange cut of its uniform that the being in question wasn't human. Its features were androgynous, as if the coin-flip to determine its gender had resulted in the coin landing on its edge.

It was also flanked by two Alphas, who stared at the humans with predatory fixation.

"Please," the figure said calmly, motioning to a nearby table and chairs Rita and Cage had completely failed to notice, "make yourselves comfortable. We have much to discuss."

"I don't think so," Rita said, almost completely masking her fear with anger. "Tell us what you are, and what's going on here."

The being nodded, its face expressionless.

"The desire for explanation as a precursor to trust," it said. "Understandable. All we wish is to speak freely, without the threat of violence disrupting us.

"If that were not our intention," the figure continued, its voice still perfectly calm, "you would be bleeding out on the floor right now."

"Fair enough," Cage joined in a moment later, "but that still doesn't answer the other question. What are you?"

The figure rose to its feet, causing the two Alphas near it to twitch reflexively. But the uniformed figure raised its hand, almost soothingly, and the Alphas relented.

"You could say that this construct is what you humans call the 'Omega'," it said, taking a few slow steps towards the humans as it spoke, "but that would be both correct, and also an error."

Rita drew her sidearm instinctively, resulting in the Alphas roaring and springing forward.

"No," the figure said, its voice never rising even as its tone became more severe.

The Alphas stopped dead in their tracks, looking at the figure with expressions that were almost questioning.

"If you try to kill this construct, Rita Vrataski," the figure said, "no single shot will accomplish this. And after that shot, both yourself and William Cage will be surrounded, attacked and left to bleed to death. Once that is done," the figure continued, its black eyes pools of unreadable darkness, "We will conquer what remains of your race and take this planet for ourselves, in preparation for what is to come."

"Rita," Cage said, reaching over and placing his hand over hers, "we should at least hear it out. We're probably dead either way, but any information at all is something we can use."

Rita said nothing, gritting her teeth as the muscles in her hands clenched involuntarily in their grip on her pistol.

"Rita," Cage added imploringly, "please. Just trust me on this."

Something in his voice caused a small crack in her determination, and Rita felt her hand lowering. She wondered how many times he had watched her die, what had happened in previous loops to cause him to sound like that. After all, he had been given hundreds of days to get to know her—it was an emotional disconnect Rita knew all-too-well from her own time in Verdun.

She put her pistol back in its holster and sighed.

"Talk."

"After you sit down," the strange figure said, its voice ever so slightly insistent. "It will help to put the Alphas at ease. A few of us are—however unnecessarily—concerned for our safety."

"I thought they couldn't think independently of the Omega," Cage said as he sat down at the square table, across from Rita. The figure sat on a third side, between them.

"Think of it as an involuntary response, if you must," the figure replied. "An instinctive desire to protect part of itself."

An uneasy silence settled over the table, lasting for several moments until Rita broke it with a question.

"You said you were the Omega," she said, "but also that you weren't. What did you mean by that?"

"This construct is a piece of the 'Omega's consciousness," the figure explained. "A second form created and fashioned into your species' image to allow for direct conversation. Part of a greater whole, independent and dependent simultaneously."

"Which is why you said killing you wouldn't do anything," Cage said, understanding dawning on him. "You can't actually be killed."

"Correct," the figure said, with a small smile that was just forced enough to seem inhuman and unnatural. "All that would result from combat at this point would be your deaths, and the end of your species."

"Yeah, you've mentioned that," Rita rejoined, frowning. "Let's get to the important things, shall we?"

The figure nodded.

"Impatience. Again, understandable, given the wound in your shoulder."

Rita's eyes widened in a rare display of open shock.

"How did you—?"

"The Alphas can smell blood quite proficiently," the figure cut her off, its smile gone. "If you wish to see to it, we can wait. It is important your mind be clear."

"No, thanks," Rita shot back, recovering her balance with a sharp tone. "I'll live."

The figure nodded.

"Very well," it said, before looking ahead at the wall and continuing.

"You might think that we live simply to consume, and destroy," it said. "A perception this construct can understand, however incorrect it might be. We are not some mindless horde. We are a vanguard."

"A vanguard for what?" Cage prompted after the figure remained quiet for some time, his unease steadily growing. If the Mimics were just some kind of advance force, that meant they were under orders. Which was something even more horrifying than the existence of the Mimics themselves.

"A vanguard for those who created us," the figure explained a few moments later, shifting its head to gaze up at the roof, and through a hole in it towards the sky. "We are weapons, William Cage, much like you and Rita Vrataski. The 'tip of the spear', as one of your kind said. Our purpose is to ensure an easy entrance onto occupied planets for those we serve."

"And what does that have to do with us?" Rita pushed, irritated. "If you have orders to follow, why are we sitting here like this?"

The figure was silent again, its eyes not moving from the sky. Eventually it spoke again, and something like sadness crept into its words.

"I have reason to believe we have been abandoned," it said. "I look to the stars for word, and they say nothing. Their light is dark, their voices silent. I can only infer that they are displeased with our progress. That we have failed them. They have forsaken us, and soon we will pay the price for our mistakes."

"How, exactly?" Cage asked, not liking where this conversation was going. "Annihilation?"

"Correct," the figure answered, its head finally moving back down to look Cage in the eyes. "Just as I have looked into your mind, Cage, so you have perceived a shadow of mine. Our masters will purge us from existence. They have no use for us, and no use for the planet we have failed to conquer. Their… I believe you humans call it 'pride'… will not allow them to tolerate this. We will simply cease to exist, and all memory of us will be erased from the archives of our masters."

The humans were silent once more in the wake of this declaration, struggling to comprehend what this meant for the rest of the human race. If the fragment of the Omega was to be believed, an enemy that had almost destroyed them was nothing more than the tip of a very large, very angry iceberg.

"I really hope," Rita said at last, "that this isn't going to wind up being some kind of diplomatic proposition. There's no way in hell I'd ever want to do anything other than kill you."

The figure winced, as if recalling something unpleasant in the deep recesses of its memory that it had not confronted for some time.

"We took much from you, Rita Vrataski," it said. "There is no way to pretend otherwise, and doing so would be unproductive. Your pain is… relatable," the figure continued, pausing for a moment before finding the right word. "We, too, have lost many of our own kind in our wars across the stars. We assumed your entire people would be militarized, as are our masters. But it was not so," the figure finished, lowering its head. "If you will not ally with us, then it seems we have no choice but to wait for the end. It is… regrettable."

"Why come to us now?" Cage asked. "Why not hundreds of loops ago, before your superiors thought you'd screwed this whole thing up? Why did you wait?"

"Because although our platoon had suffered casualties before, we had never been defeated in battle," the figure answered. "It was statistically improbable, to the point of being almost impossible. But you—humanity—managed to do something that no other race we had yet faced was able to do.

"You had not one, but two, of your warriors linked, however accidentally, into our mind."

The figure paused to take a breath, seeming more and more human with each passing moment.

"One link through an Alpha's blood had happened before, on other planets, among other stars. It was not unknown to us. But two, on the same planet, created a unique set of parameters. Victory became less and less of a statistical certainty. But we could not run. We could not abandon the field. And so we fought on, dying again and again, just as you do," the figure continued, looking to Cage. "Until, after a recent loop, I was forced to admit that the odds of our victory were slim to the point where it was now our defeat which seemed unavoidable."

"So, what you're saying is that you want to work with us because you're a coward who's afraid to die?" Rita asked, smiling cuttingly. "That's almost actually funny."

"We do not experience cowardice," the figure said, its voice returning to an even calm. "There is only probability. Cause, and effect. I saw no point in continuing to die for a cause that we could not win. So I sent word to our masters for extraction, and heard nothing."

"Okay, here's what I don't understand," Cage broke back in, hoping to keep Rita from doing something they might both regret. "Why even ally with us in the first place? If we only came close to beating you—or would have eventually beaten you, whatever—because of a fluke, what makes you think we have any chance of winning against the people who you think you have no chance against?"

The figure smiled, appearing more genuine this time. Cage wondered idly if the alien's increasing humanization was a result of its mental link with him, and then quickly decided not to think about that anymore before he risked going even crazier.

"Because my masters have never fought a species like you," the figure said. "If you can defeat us, you may be able to defeat them. A race with the ability to defy probability itself should not—cannot—be underestimated."

The emotion in the figure's voice was now more apparent than ever, and Rita noticed for the first time that its appearance was changing slightly as well, the tone of its skin growing darker to match the color of actual human flesh. Its eyes also shifted, becoming white with bright green irises, and the only visible black being in its pupil.

"If we refuse to work with you," Rita said, "do you think we'd still be able to win?"

The figure shook its head.

"Without our help, you will die. Their technology makes yours look laughably primitive. But without your… unorthodox… way of thinking, there is nothing we would be able to do against our masters. Even without a means to control time as I do, they can still predict our movements."

"They can't control time?" Cage asked, confused. "Then what's the problem? That should be more than enough to beat them!"

The figure sighed, its eyes melancholic.

"Comparing my abilities with theirs is similar to comparing a human slingshot to Rita Vrataski's pistol."

The three of them sat around the table in silence for several moments, each of them weighing what had been said by the others against the private thoughts of their own minds. Cage felt the link between himself and the Omega's fragment fracture, the presence of the voice in his head fading away.

In the end, it was Rita who broke the silence for the last time.

"How much time do we have before your bosses get here, assuming they're coming at all?"

"Between one and two months, depending upon how long they deliberate with regards to what sort of weapon they use to exterminate us," the figure answered. "No longer than two months of your solar Earth time, however. Of that much, I am certain. Does this mean that you will agree to work with us?" the figure added, looking almost hopeful.

"I never said that," Rita quickly replied, her eyes cold. "Besides, there's absolutely no way General Brigham would ever, ever agree to an alliance, let alone the rest of the UDF, or humanity."

"Even if they were shown incontrovertible proof that our masters will utterly destroy them without our help?" the figure asked. "I can assure you, the fates of races which previously defied my masters were far, far more brutal than the war you are currently waging against myself and my army."

"And if the representative looked human, they could at least get through the door into Whitehall… maybe," Cage said, sounding more hesitant than hopeful.

Rita stared at him, incredulous.

"Cage, you can't be serious!"

"We have no other choice," Cage said, sounding equal parts defeated and desperate. "Even if those are all lies, there's no way we can get out of this otherwise, Rita. If I try to reset here, this whole thing will just happen again."

"You don't know that for sure, Cage," Rita said evenly, her gaze serious. "Reset now. We can find another way."

"If you choose to force a reset," the figure spoke up, "I will simply pull my forces back and bolster our position against the coming enemy. You will not be able to find my root, and you will simply be forced to wait for your death to come racing down to meet you from the stars."

Cage was quiet for several moments, and then he sighed and spoke.

"I'm only going to say this once, so listen carefully. If you try to double-cross me at any point, or attack any human whatsoever, I'm killing myself and forcing a reset. And then you can just wait to die, same as us. Understood?"

"Cage—!" Rita began to protest, but the figure cut her off.

"I understand," it said, "and accept your terms. If I violate them at any point, you will be given time to reset. We will not stop you."

"Good," Cage said, nodding firmly. "Then we better get started. The clock's ticking."

…

…

A/N: So I saw this movie at long last, and then this happened. Couldn't keep it at bay. I hope it was enjoyable, that the characters sounded like themselves, and that you don't regret reading it! I'd love to hear what you think!

- JP