[A/N: Sorry for no chapters past couple of days, I was getting over a sickness, but I'm back on track and will be uploading daily again!]
There were few times in the universe of realms when one of the Primordial beings had to intervene and fundamentally change things to ensure that existence continued.
The most egregious offenders were oftentimes Fate and Destiny. As the two Primordials responsible for the journey and path of every being that would ever exist, they felt it necessary to change the course of nature when it best suited their needs.
There were rules in place to ensure that they couldn't just change things as they wanted, a sort of checks and balances system. No one being in the universe could ever have that much power without being held accountable. If they changed a realms fate or a specific person's destiny, they paid the price.
Destiny had once turned a pauper into a king, paying for it by sacrificing some of her powers to her offspring. But that was eons ago. Today is a new age. A new dawn. And instead of Destiny being the one who shook up the universe, it was Fate.
Being a Primordial Goddess, one of the very first beings that existed, she wasn't immune to her own ambitions. She had goals. She had plans. And she would do anything to see those things come to pass.
She had dipped into the Stream of Time and plucked a string of one human in particular from it. She rewrote his fate, changing what was once a tragic tale into an open ended one.
Fate was so invested in this one human, and his race as a whole, that she took it a step further and manifested herself before a multitude of mortals. The last thing she managed to do was save her favorite human from Death a second time
This exacted a toll on her, one of untold proportions. It was expressly forbidden to directly intervene in the events of the universe without probable cause, more so to appear before the lesser races.
Her powers were drained from her, locked away in a vault. All the while she was forced into an endless sleep and locked away, put into her own domain.
Of course, her judgement was handed out by those she answered to. The only beings in the universe that could tell Fate what to do. Beings more powerful than the Primordials themselves. The beings that controlled everything. The Council.
In spite of this, her intervention had already taken root and the mortals she had shared the secrets of the universe with had taken action.
They began work on technology never before seen, using the slight bit of power Fate had left behind for them to create a game. When the time was right, they released their invention and their game out into the world, drastically changing things for Earth.
They were the creators of the Full Dive technology. They were the creators of War of the Realms: Online.
And they were known as Argus.
Earth, Location Unknown
Amanda woke up in a warm bed, surrounded by pillows and blankets. Her head felt like she was getting over the biggest hangover ever experienced, but other than that she felt fine. Actually, she felt better than ever. She felt ready for any-
This wasn't her apartment. The ceiling fan keeping her cool wasn't hers. The closet filled with a bunch of gray jumpsuits wasn't hers. This bed wasn't hers. Just where in the hell was she?
An automatic door to her left slid open and a woman with silvery-gray hair walked in. She was wearing one of the jumpsuits Amanda had seen in the closet and her hair was tied up into a ponytail. Her brown colored eyes were concealed by a pair of glasses that Amanda could only describe as 'doctor's glasses.'
Despite the color of her hair, the woman looked to be around her early thirties, and was roughly the same height as Amanda; which wasn't saying much considering Amanda herself was only five feet and four inches tall. Rosy cheeks, red lipgloss and a slender figure rounded out the stranger entering her room.
Amanda couldn't help but give an appreciative stare, this woman pulled off one hell of a sexy doctor look. If she wasn't in a strange place in a strange bed and totally caught off guard, she would've asked for the woman's number.
The woman held a clipboard pressed to her chest and stopped right by her bed, checking over the pieces of medical equipment that Amanda had somehow failed to notice when she woke up.
Whirring machines and soft beats made her realize that an I.V. had been put into her arm. She also noticed that her hand wasn't in excruciating pain anymore, and as she pulled out her arm from under the blankets her eyes went wide.
Her fingers were completely healed. There was no indication that they had ever been bent out of shape or twisted in ways that fingers weren't meant to be. The woman wrote down some things on her clipboard and then glanced at Amanda.
"I'm surprised. Most people would freak out about waking up in a strange place hooked up to strange equipment." She spoke softly, and with an accent that betrayed her European heritage. Amanda wasn't too well read or knowledgeable about the territories as they were now, but it sounded like she had come from Old Germany.
"Well. I'm not most people. I don't scare easily, though I am curious as to where I am." She tried to sound as confident as possible, but truth be told she was freaking out.
The last thing she remembered was Alex coughing up blood and then that explosion. Everything after that was a bit hazy, though she was sure someone had picked her up and thrown her over their shoulders like a sack of potatoes.
She was more concerned about Alex than she was about her current situation, but freaking out and demanding things was a sure-fire way to piss people off and achieve the exact opposite of what she wanted.
Her response to the woman's statement earned her a soft chuckle, and when she next spoke her words made Amanda go still. There was no way in Hell.
"Oh that's easy, Miss Amanda. You're at Argus' Headquarters."
***
Thankfully, the woman was very receptive to Amanda and her questions, of which she had a lot.
Turns out, Argus' HQ was located at the bottom of the ocean floor. The logistics of which sounded like a nightmare to Amanda, but somehow they achieved the impossible and built a fully sustained compound that kept them hidden from the rest of the world.
Her hand being healed was a bit more of a touchy subject and considered something that she didn't have clearance to know. Whatever it was, must be some secret, but to her it almost felt like magic. Nobody's bones healed that quickly.
The one question that really bothered her had finally been too much to bear, so she had spoken it aloud without much thought or consideration. How in the world had they shown up and rescued her and Alex from Anton?
According to Leana, the nurse assigned to take care of her, a strike team had been assigned a mission to raid Anton's underground compound to rescue "persons of importance."
They had managed to excavate right down to the outside of Amanda's cell and blown down the walls right as Alex crumpled to the ground. The eight man strong squad then grabbed Amanda and Alex and got the hell out of there before Anton or his enforcers knew what had happened.
The specifics weren't known to Amanda, but she questioned how they knew that she and her brother were there in the first place. Even more so, what classified her and Alex as important people to Argus?
She knew about Alex's condition and what happened to him so she could understand why he was a special case. Did these people somehow also know? It was such a ludicrous idea that Amanda didn't know what to think. In a matter of days her world had been flipped upside down.
Her next question brought another hearty chuckle from the nurse, making Amanda feel somewhat silly for asking it in the first place.
Apparently the people of Argus weren't magicians, future tellers or all knowing humans. They had just gotten some outside help and knew that someone needed to be rescued from Anton Valdenci on a specific day at a specific time.
It all really perplexed Amanda, and left her with more questions than she had started with. Just what was Argus and how did they operate was at the top of her list, right next to perhaps an even more important question.
"Where's Alex?"
***
There he was. Inside of a room that resembled what you'd expect a hospital room to look like. He was hooked up to a bunch of blaring machines monitoring his vitals, all of which were fluctuating up and down rapidly.
"Believe it or not, that's the best he's looked since we brought him in." Alex's eyes fluttered every so often, but for the most part his chest heaved up and down at a steady rhythm.
There weren't any visible wounds or marks and he didn't seem to be in any pain. Amanda let out a sigh of relief seeing that he looked okay.
Leana stood next to Amanda at the foot of Alex's bed, studying him and making sure that all the machines were monitoring him properly. The machines themselves looked like they were state of the art, beyond what Amanda could comprehend.
She had only been to a hospital once before, when her mom had gotten really sick out of nowhere. The machines before her made the ones she saw at that hospital look like child's-play.
"Do you know what's wrong with him?" Amanda's voice was steady despite the turmoil she felt on the inside. She was trying so hard not to break down and cry. She was trying so hard to be strong.
Alex had come back for her. He had come to save her when she thought all hope was lost. He hadn't abandoned her, and she wouldn't abandon him. The Khelton siblings were finally back together, she wouldn't let anything break them apart again.
"Unfortunately all we know is that something is very wrong with him internally. His heart is healthy, as are all of his vitals. If anything, your brother is in peak condition and as fit as can be for a man his age." A look of frustration flashed across Leana's face. "And even with all of this," She gestured to the advanced medical equipment, "We can't find out what's actually wrong with him."
Amanda just nodded silently. There was nothing she could say or do to help. She wasn't a doctor, she was just a sister who wanted her brother back. A single tear fell down her face, unable to be held back any longer. Seeing Alex like this finally broke her.
Words couldn't express what she was feeling or how grateful she was to the people that had saved her. More tears flowed down her face and she went over to Alex's bed, sitting down in the chair next to it and grabbing his hand.
"Please Alex." Don't leave me. Come back. I can't lose you. Wake up. All things she could say to showcase the state her emotions were in. All things she could say that would fall on deaf ears. Instead, she stifled back her tears and steeled herself. Alex would come back, she was sure of it. She just had to be strong enough for the both of them until he did.
Argus HQ, Unknown
"How is he?"
"He's stable Director Stanton, and I've just received word from Leana that the sister is awake."
"Good. See to it that she's taken care of and given whatever she needs. Prepare two Dive pods for them. Amanda wasn't part of the plan that She left for us, but we're gonna need both of the Khelton siblings to survive the coming storm."
"Yes Director, I'll see to it." The Com-Link went silent and the Director of Argus was left alone to his own thoughts. If only he had more concrete answers. If only She had left more for them to go off of.
If the boy didn't wake up soon, they were all fucked.