DN - Laser Avoid

“There’s another factor to consider,” says Utopia as she reaches a sitting position. I stop pacing. “It takes some time to recharge my inversion beam, but it does recharge.”

Her chest cavity pops open, and the searing cobalt beam leaps out at me.

I jump clear in time.

Calamity doesn’t.

***

The blast flings me into some fallen machinery. The beam’s fuzzy green afterimage swims in my eyes and blots out the world. I shut them and try to see through the lattice instead. Utopia’s weapon—the inversion beam, she called it—has shredded reality in here. Torn, dangling ends of the lattice seem to writhe in pain. Nausea bubbles in my stomach. With a conviction I can’t account for, I know that nothing will ever really work quite right in this place again. Machinery will fail, animals will cower, and people will feel unaccountably disturbed. Even though I’m still half blind, I open my eyes and focus on the visible world again. Anything is better than being confronted with the damage she’s done to the foundations of reality.

- Dreadnought, Chapters 26/27