ghost of tomorrow

**Neon Shadow: Eclipse Eternal**

**Chapter 12: Ghosts of Tomorrow**

The static between realities tasted like copper and burnt ozone.

Neon Prime knelt in the Siberian crater, Miko's body cooling in his arms. The fusion core lay shattered nearby, its energy spent. He should have felt something - rage, grief, the electric sting of vengeance - but there was only the hollow hum of his failing systems.

Then the sky split open.

A jagged tear of violet light ripped across the stratosphere, widening like a hungry mouth. From its depths came a ship unlike anything Prime had seen - all asymmetrical angles and quantum alloys that seemed to both exist and not exist simultaneously. It hovered silently above the crater, casting no shadow.

"Jade," Prime rasped. "What is that?"

Static. Then: *"Not possible. Their energy signature... it's reading like yours, but..."*

The ship's hull rippled. A figure stepped into thin air and fell fifty meters, landing in a crouch that cracked the glassed earth. When he stood, Prime's lightning flickered wildly.

The man wore a variation of his own suit - sleeker, more armored, with a high collar that framed a face Prime knew better than his own.

"About time I found you," said Alex Mercer.

But not *his* Alex. This one's eyes were harder, the lines around them deeper. A jagged scar ran from his temple to his jawline.

Prime's holographic hands crackled. "Who the hell are you?"

The stranger smiled bitterly. "I'm what happens when you lose." He tapped his chest, where a quantum drive pulsed. "Alex Mercer. Commander of the Quantum Legion. And we need your help before Lysandra destroys every reality that ever was."

---

**The Void Between**

The interior of the quantum ship defied physics. Walls shifted colors when not observed directly. Gravity came from all directions at once. Prime's form kept destabilizing, his code struggling to reconcile the paradoxes.

"Lysandra cracked multiversal travel six months ago in my timeline," Alternate Alex explained, pulling up holograms of dying worlds. "She's not just attacking your Earth. She's testing which realities are easiest to conquer."

The images made Prime's nonexistent stomach lurch. A Tokyo where the Titanborn had won, their crystalline spires piercing clouds of ash. A Berlin overgrown with biomechanical horrors.

Jade's voice hissed in his ear: *"He's telling the truth. These quantum signatures match the rift anomalies I've been detecting."*

A woman materialized beside Alternate Alex - Lena Mercer, but not Prime's Lena. This one wore a leather trench coat lined with glowing circuitry, her left arm replaced by a tesla cannon.

"Sentiment later," she snapped. "We have sixty-three minutes before Lysandra's Omega Wave hits your planet. After that, even we can't stop what comes."

Prime studied their faces. The hardened eyes. The weapons built for genocide rather than justice. "What aren't you telling me?"

Alternate Alex exchanged glances with his team. "The Titanborn? They're just the beginning. Lysandra found something in the void between worlds. Something *old*."

A new hologram flared to life - a swirling mass of darkness studded with pulsating stars, shaped vaguely like a clawed hand large enough to cradle planets.

"We call it the Devourer," whispered a third figure - a teenage Jade with neon-green hair and hollow eyes. "And Lysandra's going to wake it up."

---

**Tempest City - Throne Room**

Lysandra Voss ran her fingers along the cryo-chamber's glass, watching Marcus Kane's eyelids flutter. His resurrection was nearly complete - the nanites rebuilding tissue, rewriting memories.

"Will he remember?" asked her lieutenant, a Titanborn with quicksilver skin.

"Only what I allow him to." Lysandra turned to the observation window, where Earth burned in a dozen places. "The Quantum Legion has arrived. Accelerate the Omega Protocol."

The lieutenant hesitated. "The Devourer is still dormant. Without proper-"

"*Now*."

As alarms blared, Lysandra didn't see the shadow detach itself from the wall behind her. Didn't notice the glint of a plasma blade until it was too late.

"You always talked too much," Miko whispered, her remaining human eye blazing with stolen Eclipse tech.

The blade pierced Lysandra's spine just as the first Omega Wave tore reality apart.