Wanderer Ch 37: Trapped Again, Coming Of The Crimson Singularity!

(Thalassa)

There he was.

The little ship zipped through the black, weaving between debris and the drifting husks of ruined vessels, darting away like a firefly in a thunderstorm. But I felt it—his presence. That flicker of strange, defiant energy that no other mortal carried. I knew it was him. My mite. The one who'd touched something he shouldn't have. The one who might hold the key to everything.

"You're not getting away," I murmured.

My fingers unfurled through the void like stretching vines of the cosmos. The stars themselves seemed to tremble at my focus. I reached—slowly, carefully, as if coaxing a frightened animal. He was fast, clever, even lucky... but not fast enough.

I closed my eyes briefly, pulling in a long breath. Space itself tasted electric here. My veins pulsed with celestial rhythm, the energy I'd once thought stripped from me now surging stronger than ever. I focused it into my hands, and a radiant glow—deep, vibrant blue—sparked to life along my palms and fingertips. A dance of light, controlled, steady.

The air shimmered around my outstretched hands. The forcefield built itself from the heart of me, a cocoon of pressure and energy expanding outward until it caught the tiny vessel in its grasp. Like a bug in amber.

The ship slammed against the edge of it and bounced off, wobbled, tried to correct course.

"Oh no you don't," I said, smirking. "You're mine now."

He was still trying, I could see it—his ship twisting, engines flaring like it was about to break itself apart trying to escape. Admirable, really. He had fire. But fire burns fast in the cold of space.

Behind me, I felt the sting of tiny blasts—those annoying black-armored crafts buzzing around me like gnats. One exploded against my collarbone, leaving a splash of heat. Another clipped my shoulder. A tickle, nothing more. I didn't even flinch.

"Do you mind?" I called out, not taking my eyes off the little ship struggling inside my glowing cage. "I'm in the middle of something important."

They didn't stop, of course. No manners.

I brought my other hand closer, reinforcing the field. The little ship was trapped now, held in a bubble of pure, divine will.

"You must've known it would end this way," I said softly, tilting my head. "You don't tug at the threads of the cosmos without attracting the attention of the weavers. And here I am."

I floated closer, gently cradling the orb of light in which his ship flailed. Through the energy field, I could almost see him—just a tiny speck in the cockpit, probably cursing, probably sweating bullets.

"Relax," I said with a little laugh. "I'm not going to squish you. You've got answers I need."

And maybe... just maybe, you've got questions I've been waiting my whole existence to ask.

***

(Thanoros) 

The control room of the dreadnought groaned like a wounded beast, its walls quivering under the weight of external forces and internal decay. Chunks of debris trembled loose from the ceiling above, falling like dead leaves. Blackened steel panels sparked erratically. A low hum of power surged beneath the floor—unstable, angry.

Dr. Thanoros stepped inside like a man untouched by the chaos, his long black coat trailing behind him, tattered at the edges from battle and blast. His breath rasped through the cracked edges of his obsidian mask, fractured from an earlier skirmish, but still functional. For now.

He approached his throne—an obsidian monolith carved from raw, unnatural alloys—and sat down slowly, deliberately, like he had all the time in the universe. His hands, gloved and trembling with strain, gripped the cold arms of the seat. All around him, the monitors flickered with crimson static, displaying broken feeds of the carnage outside: ships ruptured like overripe fruit, limbs of colossi tearing through space, one of the titanic women laughing as her fingers crushed an entire squadron like ash between her nails.

Thanoros said nothing at first.

He simply watched.

Then, softly, almost reverently:

"You will not get away..."

His voice buzzed through the damaged speakers in the walls, calm and analytical, but with a venomous edge.

"Righteousness..." he muttered, resting his fingers together in front of his face. "...is not born from gods or titans or fate. It is forged. Measured. Recalibrated through trial and flame. My vision—my future—is the only constant in a universe of chaos. And if it must be built atop the corpses of ancient beings, so be it."

The ship jolted suddenly. A power conduit in the ceiling blew out, casting a shower of blue sparks across the room. He didn't flinch. His eyes—what little could be seen through the glowing red slits of his mask—remained locked on the image of the escaping ship caught in Thalassa's glow.

"I warned you," he whispered to no one in particular. "No one listens to prophets until they've burned the world down."

He reached forward and pressed a large red button on the console beside his throne. The reaction was immediate.

The walls of the control room pulsed red. Deep within the ship's core, something ancient and terrible stirred. A vibration ran through the floor like a heartbeat, and the metal plating began to warp, bend, breathe. Crimson light slithered across the seams of the vessel like blood through veins.

From somewhere below, a mechanical scream echoed—long, inhuman, and laced with fury.

"You all die," Thanoros said, leaning back into his throne as it tilted slightly with the tremors.

He let the chaos wash over him like a wave, calm and unmoved.

If the gods would not yield to his reason, they would fall to his science.

And in the end, the equation would balance. One way or another.

***

(Jack) 

I yanked on the controls again.

Nothing.

The yoke didn't so much as twitch, and the glowing alien runes on the console just blinked at me in smug indifference. It was like trying to pilot a dream. Or a toaster. Honestly, probably had more luck flying a toaster.

"Come on, baby, don't do this to me now," I muttered, slapping the dashboard with a solid thunk. "Just give me something. Left. Right. Wiggle. Anything!"

Still nothing. The ship was completely encased in a glowing blue bubble—some kind of energy cage. At first I thought maybe it was atmospheric shielding or an AI-driven life support response. That would've been the nice explanation. But no.

No, I was in a forcefield.

A very intentional one.

Outside the shimmering curve of the bubble was skin. Not metal. Not stars. Skin. A wall of flesh that went on forever in every direction—smooth, bronze, and alive. So much so that I could see the slow rise and fall of her pulse underneath it, like a sleeping beast. Goosebumps the size of cars rippled near one edge as if responding to some cosmic itch.

It was her hand.

Thalassa.

The titan. The Wanderer. The being who'd crushed warships like paper toys and spoken across the void like it was a phone call.

And she was holding me.

Well, not me exactly—the ship. But that didn't make it feel any better.

"I don't even know what you want," I said aloud, though my voice was barely more than a whisper. "I can't give you answers. I barely remember where I left my socks this morning."

She had to be watching me. Even though I couldn't see her face, I felt her presence. Like a low hum at the back of my skull. Every instinct in my body screamed I was being studied—picked apart like a bug under a microscope.

Why me?

I was just a scavenger. A runner. A guy who got lucky (or extremely unlucky, depending on your definition of "lucky") with a prison break. She wanted answers? To what? Her origin? The universe? Why she and her sisters existed?

Lady, I'm flattered, really—but I am not the guy you're looking for.

That's when the ship shook.

I stumbled into the side panel as the whole interior trembled violently. Through one of the external cameras, the image stuttered before coming into focus—and I saw Thalassa lurch back. Not in pain. More like... surprise.

A new anomaly was forming in space.

At first it was just a flicker of red light. Then it spread. Twisted. Ripped.

A black hole. No—worse. A singularity, yes, but laced with some kind of unnatural crimson radiation, bending light in a way that made my eyes hurt just looking at it. It didn't distort so much as infect everything it touched. Stars vanished into its maw. Ships—both friend and enemy—screamed into nothingness.

"My god," I breathed, watching the void collapse in on itself.

I wasn't religious. Not really. But when space starts bleeding and physics takes a sick day, you start reconsidering your beliefs.

If that thing kept expanding... there wouldn't be a universe left to explain.

I looked back at the wall of glowing skin outside my cockpit window, still glowing faintly with the forcefield's reflection.

"Okay," I whispered. "I'm in trouble."