There wasn't much room to manuver. WIth lines of glass jars on either side,, the only feasible direction to move was in a straight line forward or back., but the cultists were hardly going to give them time to make that choice. In a wave of void lit flesh, they raised their voices in a cacophonous howl and charged forward and a hissing wave, bare feet thudding hard against the fabric covered floor.

All around them the water filled containers shook and rattled.

Behind them apollyon's light swelled.

Everett, still kneeling before the altar, raised a hand and gripped the shaft of the spear, ripping it from his chest with a pop and a squelch that could be heard even over the roar of voices.

His face was mottled with rage.

Sunny was the first to leap forward into battle, sweeping aside the first wave of cultists with a single arc of her spear. One cultist was knocked to the side, to rip and land within the forest of liquid containers. Glass shattered, and water erupted into the air, refracting orange void light like sparks. The second man was knocked back into the group behind him, stalling their forward moment just enough for Adam to take position.

Sensing Adam's intentions through their close mental link, sunny dropped into a low crouch, positioning herself at just the correct time and place as Adam charged forward leaping up to position a foot against the solid center of her protective backplate.

Her suit whirred hard underneath the combined weight of him and his SE armor, but still her legs straightened with a heave, and Adam was thrown a good ten feet through the air and over the heads of their frontline attackers.

The throw had been good, but his landing was sloppy. One foot landed solidly on the edge of the altar, while the second foot landed unevenly at its edge, slipping violently out from under him as his weight came down on the balls of his feet. Trying to maintain his balance, Adam pitched forward arms pinwheeling, and plowed face first into the Apollyon effigy, tearing straight through its stomach and scattering bits and pieces of it in a ruptured cloud of debris.

Everett screamed in rage.

But Adam didn't hear him.

Still falling, and as he tore through the chest of the idol, Adam was hit by a sudan wave of released energy.

An energy that he could not describe.

Or perhaps it wasn't energy, but a lack of energy, the absence of energy so heavy it felt like his life force was being sucked away. For a moment he feared a spontaneous black hole had formed in his guts, and with it came an abiding sense of....

Evil.

That was the only way to describe what he felt.

A crawling, creeping sensation, that clawed its way up from his feet and forced itself down his throat where it curled itself around his spine in a choking rictus.

Like a thousand spidery legs, he could sense it crawling over his skin, and running like an unwanted hand up the line of his spine.

He gasped in shock, as if dumped in a lake of chill water.

Adam had only ever sensed this feeling once: once upon the floating derelict beneath the Hand of God.

The idol ripped in half, and it was at that moment that the cold feeling running up his spine intensified into a fiery freezing burn, and Adam knew.

He was being watched.

It could see him.

Right through him.

And it knew. It knew him to his very core and then beyond that. It knew his past, and his present and his future, it knew what the space would look like in his absence, if he never existed.

And it wished to bring about that reality.

And then it was over.

As Adam's back hit the floor, the sensation dissipated in an eruption around him, allowing warmth and life to flood back into his limbs . All at once he felt comfort and happiness despite the current situation because at least that thing was gone, its eye no longer turned upon him.

But then came another terrible realization:: Everett had called the thing here.

Apollyon was coming.

Adam thought he had understood Apollyon. From the first moment he laid eyes on that statue, he understood what the creature was and how it operated, but now.... He knew beyond that. He knew what it was going to do, worse than destroy them, it wished to consume them, to consume all of their light and vitality.

To unmake the universe.

Starting where it would hurt the architect most.

If apollyon reached his goal, he would fulfill the fears of every sentient creature that had ever lived.

To be unmade.

To make sure there was no life after death.

And now there was only one person who might have the ability to stop him.

Adam turned onto his back, and tried to kick himself to his feet, but Everette was on him before he could gain traction.

The corrupted prophet leaped forward, landing on Adam's chest to claw at his throat and head.

Adam grabbed the Maker's arm's SE strength struggling against immortal power. Everett's teeth gnashed and snapped not inches away from Adam's visor, and he was suddenly reminded of a similar such scene from many years before, when Everette tried to kill him for the first time.

But this time Adam was more well armored.

The Fealty AI bristled in rage, and with a whirr of metal Adam kicked Everette hard in the chest sending him flying backwards to crash amidst an eruption of glass and water. Void light had faded from the room, leaving them only with the flickering of candles, and the slow red burn of the emergency lights.

Everett staggered to his feet, shedding chunks of glass, a shard of which he pulled from the meat of his body just beneath his lower ribcage.

Black ooze welled from his wounds as he snarled at Adam.

Adam didn't wait for Everette to finish, but this time his goal wasn't to kill.

Everette mattered very little now.

What mattered was getting help.

All around him the others had engaged in fights of their own. Sunny had taken out the cultists to the front, throwing them bodily into the field of glass and allowing them to impale themselves on the shards.

Water covered the floor in glimmering puddles.

Behind her, a group of unseen cultists had flooded into the room behind the, and the room was suddenly lit up by a series of bright flashes and gunshots.

Krill yelped and ducked as a cultist swung for his head.

The duck was clumsy, but apparently krill's fight, flight, or flee instinct was running on pure fight, and with a rather high-pitched roar, he charged headfirst into the cultist, planting a shoulder against him like a professional linebacker, only to toss him a good two feet into the glass field.

It would have been an impressive move if he hadn't immediately slipped a second later, and sprawled to the floor at Ramirez's feet.

Celex swooped in at the last moment blasting a cultist in the face with his maker abilities and planting himself between krill and whatever danger there was to come.

Sunny finished off the last cultist before the altar, and raced to help Adam. She caught Everette in mid leap and threw him to the ground, slamming her spear through the meat of his leg, causing him to howl in agony. Adam was under no delusion that they would be able to kill Everette. All he really wanted was to buy them some time to escape and find help.

Standing together, Adam and Sunny both launched a kick that sent Everette sailing into one of the red hanging curtains tearing it from its tacs to tangle around Everette as it fell, revealing a convenient second door as it did so.

"Come on!" Adam shouted

Celex grabbed krill by the drag handle and threw him almost bodily across the room towards Adam and Sunny before following. Ramirez was about to do the same when the gunfire stopped.

Cultists were no longer spilling in through the doorway .

But that's only because they had been replaced by something worse.

Maverick stood at the end of the hallway, her eyes sparking with flickering candlelight.

Her platinum hair had been left to grow out, where it curled around her head in an unruly mop brushing her cheeks and almost completely covering one eye.

Her face was more gaunt than it had been before, and looking up to her face, Adam could see her cold, gray eyes deep set within her face..... And the deep well of hate that lay behind them.

And that's when Adam realized.

That wasn't Maverick.

Renegade/the rebel stalked closer, walking in a languid stroll up the hallway, her eyes never straying from Ramirez.

The room had gone silent but for Everette struggling to free himself from the tangled curtain.

Ramirez stood rooted to the spot, body planted gun raised to point directly at Renegade's chest.. The corner of her mouth twitched up in a mocking sneer defiling maverick's face in an expression Adam had never seen her make during their friendship.

It seemed wrong.

"You aren't going to shoot me."

The barrel of Ramirez's gun remained steady, but even from here Adam could see his finger trembling against the trigger.

Her sneer only grew with derision and amusement as she continued to walk forward, "Go on Ramirez, pull the trigger." Even the voice didn't sound like hers., cold and mocking. Maverick had only ever teased people in fun, she had never gone out of her way to be mean.

This time the barrel of his weapon did shake.

She stopped right in front of him, stepped forward until the barrel of the gun was resting against the indentation between her collarbones. A shot like that would blow a hole in her the size of a fist, taking her heart with it.

She would be dead in seconds.

Ramirez's finger twitched.