Warcog and Baseddoggo 3

The air in the temple didn't smell like incense or prayer anymore. It smelled of ozone, scorched marble, and the copper tang of Isaac James Walker’s own blood.

He was slumped against a fluted pillar, his legs stretched out across a floor littered with the brass casings of 6.8mm rounds and the shattered chitin of Phfor warriors. His breath came in ragged, wet hitches. Every time his chest expanded, it felt like a serrated knife was being twisted in his lungs. The symbiotic nanites of the suit, usually so diligent in knitting his flesh back together, were dark. The EMP had been a bitch. It had fried the suit’s active power core, leaving the "Ghost" as little more than a man trapped in a heavy, high-tech coffin.

"Fuck me," he wheezed, the words barely a vibration in his ruined throat. His vocal cords, long ago shredded and held together by Naro-tech filaments, were failing. "Fuckin' useless... piece of... shit suit."

He looked down at the Hemlock resting across his thighs. The rugged, olive-drab rifle was empty. He’d used the last of the underbarrel grenades to clear the doorway. To his left, his sleek double-barrel shotgun lay discarded, the grappling hook line snapped and frayed. He was a post-human warrior, a legend of the Pendulum War, and he was going to die in a hole because some three-eyed alien prick got lucky with a disruption grenade.

The shadows of the temple began to bleed. Not the natural darkness of a setting sun, but something oily and wrong. The air hummed with a frequency that made his teeth ache—a telepathic resonance he recognized with a jolt of pure, primal terror.

*“Lead us, Ghost...”*

The voices weren't in the room. They were in his mind, a thousand overlapping whispers that sounded like shifting tectonic plates.

*“The skies will part... and they will be drawn up...”*

"Shut the fuck up," Isaac hissed, his vision blurring. "Get out of my head, you overgrown... moon-sized pricks."

A rift opened in the center of the nave. It wasn't a Phfor warp gate or a Roman jump-point. It was a tear in the fabric of reality, glowing with a sickly, iridescent light that defied the spectrum. The vacuum pressure began to tug at his armor. Isaac tried to grab the pillar, but his gauntlets were slick with gore.

"Seriously? I went from dealing with the Terramorphs to... this? Fuckin' bullshit!"

The gravity shifted, and the Ghost was pulled into the maw of the unknown.

***

The transition was a scream of sensory overload. One moment, Isaac was in the ruins of a Roman colony in the 28th Millennium; the next, he was falling through a canopy of lush, green leaves. He hit the ground hard, the weight of the powered armor turning him into a kinetic slug. He tumbled down a grassy embankment, snapping saplings like toothpicks, before finally coming to a halt at the edge of a paved walking path.

Silence followed, broken only by the chirping of birds—birds that sounded far too normal.

Isaac groaned, his visor flickering with a low-power warning. The red liquid crystal lines on his helmet pulsed weakly. He tried to move his arm, but the suit was a dead weight. Through the translucent red of his HUD, he saw a world that looked... pristine. No orbital bombardments. No blackstone obelisks. Just a park.

"Where... the fuck... am I?"

He couldn't even say it. The effort of breathing was too much. A lung had definitely collapsed again. The nanites began a slow, agonizing crawl, trying to reboot using the last of the suit’s emergency chemical reserves. He felt the needles sinking into his spine, the agonizing "merging" process that reminded him he was barely human anymore. He blacked out as the suit began to feast on his remaining adrenaline to stay online.

***

A few hundred yards away, the afternoon was going much better for Daniel and Sophie.

Sophie, a Dobermann anthro with sleek, dark fur and a pair of thigh-high shorts that left little to the imagination, was leaning heavily against Daniel. She felt radiant. It had been forty-eight hours since the doctor confirmed she was pregnant, and she had spent most of that time reminding Daniel exactly how much she appreciated his "contribution" to the cause.

"I’m telling you, Dan, he’s going to have your eyes," Sophie said, her tail wagging with a rhythmic *thump-thump* against her leg. "And hopefully my ears. Your ears are a little small, babe."

Daniel, a human with messy blonde hair and a pale complexion that Sophie found endlessly attractive, laughed. "As long as he doesn't inherit your temper, Soph, we’ll be fine."

"Hey! I’m a sweetheart," she pouted, playfully nipping at his shoulder.

They rounded a bend in the park’s wooded trail, heading toward the parking lot, when Sophie suddenly stopped. Her ears flicked forward, twitching with predatory precision.

"What is it?" Daniel asked.

"Smells like... burnt metal," Sophie whispered. "And blood. A lot of blood."

She stepped off the path, her instincts taking over. Daniel followed closely, his brow furrowed. They pushed through a screen of bushes and stopped dead.

In a shallow crater lay something that looked like it had fallen from a high-budget sci-fi movie. It was a suit of armor, charcoal gray and sleek, contoured to a powerful, muscular frame. It wasn't blocky like the riot gear the local police wore; it looked organic, like a second skin made of metal. A tattered black cloak was draped over its shoulders, stained with dark fluids.

"Is that a person?" Daniel gasped, stepping forward.

"Dan, wait! It might be dangerous," Sophie warned, though her curiosity was piqued.

The "statue" moved. A hand, encased in interlocking plates of matte-black alloy, twitched. A low, gravelly sound—like grinding stones—vibrated from the helmet.

"Holy shit," Daniel said, kneeling beside the figure. "Hey! Can you hear me? Are you okay?"

Isaac James Walker opened his eyes behind the red visor. His HUD was a mess of error codes. *INTERNAL BLEEDING. LUNG COLLAPSE. VOCAL CORD FAILURE.* He looked up and saw two faces. One was a human male. The other...

Isaac’s internal monologue stalled. It was a dog. A giant, bipedal dog in a tank top.

"Fuck me," he tried to say, but all that came out was a wet, metallic wheeze. He assumed he was hallucinating. The Terramorphs were getting creative. First, they tried to eat his brain; now, they were showing him talking animals in human clothes.

"He’s hurt bad," Daniel said, looking at the cracks in the armor where a thick, dark red sludge was leaking out. "Soph, call an ambulance."

"On it," Sophie said, pulling out her phone.

Isaac felt a surge of panic. He didn't know who these people were, but he knew one thing: he was a Ghost. He didn't do "ambulances." He didn't do "help." He reached out, his gauntlet grasping Daniel’s wrist with terrifying, mechanical strength.

"Easy, easy!" Daniel cried out. "We're trying to help you!"

Isaac’s visor pulsed a bright, angry red. He forced his arm to move, reaching for the combat knife sheathed at his chest. But the suit hissed, a "CRITICAL POWER" warning flashing in his eyes, and his arm fell limp. The darkness claimed him again, but not before he saw the Dobermann-woman leaning over him, her expression one of genuine concern.

*What kind of fucked up planet is this?* was his final thought.

***

**Galactic Core – 31st Millennium**

While Isaac James Walker lay unconscious in a world of anthros and social media, the galaxy he had left behind was screaming.

On the frozen surface of Cyberpax, the sky was a bruised purple, choked by the exhaust of a billion Automaton forges. Aetius Augustus, Centurion of the 14th Tempest Legion, stood atop the wreckage of an Annihilator Tank, his grey-and-silver power armor splattered with oil and hydraulic fluid.

He adjusted the red plume on his helmet—the plume that had once belonged to his mentor, Trajan. In his right hand, he gripped a Bolter that chugged with the rhythm of a beating heart.

"Centurion!" a voice crackled over the vox. "The 3rd Cohort has breached the secondary cooling fans of Mega-Factory Delta. The scrap-heaps are retreating!"

Aetius looked toward the horizon, where the massive, country-sized silhouette of the factory loomed. Thousands of red lights—the eyes of the Automaton army—glimmered in the dark.

"Retreating?" Aetius’s voice was cold, filtered through the heavy breather grilles of his Roman-styled faceplate. "The Automatons do not retreat. They reposition. Tell the Varangians to hold the flanks. I want the 14th to push through the center. We didn't come to this frozen hellscape to play games."

"Understood, sir. For Rome!"

"For the Emperor," Aetius replied, though his eyes drifted toward the Pharos Table in his mind—the image of the golden, dormant God-Emperor Sol.

Aetius didn't care for the screams of the dying legionnaires or the frantic reports of the medics. He was a Tempest. He was a weapon. But as he watched a drop-pod streak through the atmosphere—likely carrying that lunatic "John Roman"—he felt a strange ripple in the Warp.

It was a faint signal. A ghost of a signature. It felt like Naro-tech, but older. More refined.

"Centurion?" his lieutenant asked. "Orders?"

Aetius shook the feeling off. Whatever that ripple was, it was light-years away. "Burn it all," he commanded, pointing his Bolter at the factory. "Leave nothing but slag and memory."

***

**Baseddoggo Earth – Three Hours Later**

Isaac woke up to the sound of a heart monitor.

He was in a room that was far too clean. The air didn't taste like ozone; it tasted like bleach and lavender. He tried to sit up, but his body felt like it was made of lead. He realized with a start that he was still in the suit. Of course he was. The suit was his skin.

"Don't try to move, honey. The doctors are still trying to figure out how to get that 'costume' off you."

Isaac turned his head. Sitting in a chair by the bed was the Dobermann woman from the park. Sophie. She was scrolling through something on a glowing glass rectangle—a smartphone, though Isaac didn't recognize the brand.

"You've been all over TikTok for the last two hours," Sophie said, not looking up. "The 'Iron Man of Pine Falls.' People think you’re a promotional stunt for a new movie. But I saw that blood. That wasn't movie magic."

Isaac’s vocal cords buzzed. The suit had diverted enough emergency power to facilitate basic speech.

"Where..." he rasped, the sound deep and gravelly, like Venom Snake whispering through a radiator. "Where is... my gun?"

Sophie jumped, nearly dropping her phone. She stared at him, her ears pinned back. "Your gun? The police took that bulky olive thing. And the bow. And the... grappling hook shotgun? Seriously, who are you? The Punisher?"

Isaac ignored her. He looked at his right arm. The wrist blade was still there, retracted into the housing. He checked his internal HUD.

*POWER: 4%. REPAIR STATUS: 12%.*

He was in an unknown territory, surrounded by xenos that looked like household pets, and his weapons were in the hands of the local "police."

"Fuckin' great," Isaac growled, the gravel in his voice making Sophie shiver. "I'm in a goddamn zoo."

"Excuse me?" Sophie stood up, her hands on her hips. "I'll have you know this is a top-rated municipal hospital. And I'm the one who saved your life, Mr. Grumpy-Armor."

Isaac looked at her properly for the first time. She didn't look like a Phfor. She didn't have three eyes or hooves. She looked... human, in a twisted, biological sense.

"You're a dog," he said flatly.

Sophie blinked. "And you're a jerk. It's 2021, dude. Get with the program. Are you from one of those supremacist groups? Because if you are, I’m calling my boyfriend back in here and he’s a lot less patient than I am."

Isaac’s mind raced. 2021? The Pendulum War had ended in 28,986.

"What... year?"

"2021," Sophie repeated slowly, as if talking to a child. "October. You okay in there? Did you hit your head when you fell from the sky?"

Isaac fell back against the pillows, the weight of the revelation hitting him harder than a Phfor staff-blast. He wasn't just on another planet. He was in the past. Or an alternate reality. Or a hallucination brought on by the Brethren Moons.

*“We are coming, Ghost...”* the whisper echoed in the back of his mind.

"Shut up," he muttered.

"I didn't say anything!" Sophie protested.

Isaac turned his visor toward her. The four red lines of light glowed with a dim, menacing intensity. "Not you, dog-lady. Listen to me. I need my gear. If the police have the Hemlock, they're going to accidentally level a city block. It’s tuned for 6.8mm high-pressure rounds. The recoil will break a normal man's shoulder."

"They have it down at the station for 'analysis,'" Sophie said, her tone softening as she realized he was serious. "Look, Dan is a good guy. He’s talking to the Chief right now. We thought you were a tech-bro whose exoskeleton malfunctioned."

Isaac let out a short, bitter laugh that turned into a cough. "Tech-bro. Fuck me. I’m a post-human warrior from a galaxy at war, and I’m being called a tech-bro by a Dobermann in a crop top."

He struggled to sit up, the servos in his suit whining in protest. He had to get out of here. He had to find a way back, or at least find a way to secure this world before the things in his head decided to follow him here.

"Wait! You can't leave!" Sophie reached out to stop him.

Isaac caught her hand. He didn't squeeze, but the cold, unyielding metal of his gauntlet was a clear enough message.

"I don't know what this world is," Isaac said, his voice a low rumble. "I don't know why you look like a dog or why the year is wrong. But I’m a soldier. And soldiers don't stay in hospitals."

He swung his legs over the side of the bed. The floor cracked under the weight of the suit.

"Now," the Ghost said, looking at the window. "Tell me where the fuck the police station is."