Chapter 67 - Teaser! (Patreon)

My plan for this chapter was to send Gothic on a bit of a nostalgia tour. What I didn’t expect was that it would require me to re-read a bunch of old chapters… which has slowed me down more than I care to admit. That, combined with an insanely busy stretch at my day job, has made progress slower than usual.

Still, re-reading those older chapters turned out to be surprisingly rewarding. I was sitting on the sidelines while my six-year-old played soccer, listening to the chapters through text-to-speech. There were moments I genuinely forgot I had written some of those scenes. The broad strokes were familiar, of course, but so many smaller details felt brand new.

Overall? I’d still favorite the story — it’s pure fire (if I can say that without sounding too arrogant). It was actually really motivating.

I’m aiming to have the new chapter out within the next week. In it, Gothic starts paying the price for his inexplicable bout of heroism.

Let’s just hope it’s not a chronic condition.

_____

Pain.

It was unending. Constant. A living, suffocating thing that pressed in from every direction, so complete it felt like drowning at the bottom of an ocean made of agony itself.

I stared upward in helpless despair, watching the faint, fractured light of the surface shimmer far above me—beautiful, unreachable. The weight of the depths pinned me down, chains of pure suffering anchoring me to the cold, lightless floor. Every pulse of my existence throbbed with it.

This was not the pain of injury or trauma I had known in either of my lives—neither the one before my displacement into the Star Trek universe, nor any I had endured since. This went far deeper. It was as if the very fabric of my being was slowly unraveling, thread by agonizing thread. My mind, my soul, my sense of self… all of it fraying apart under relentless pressure.

Death whispered like the kindest mercy. Oblivion beckoned as the only true release. In that moment, the thought of ending it—of simply letting go and sinking forever into nothingness—felt not like defeat, but like salvation.

Would it drive me insane?

As an Augment, pain had become almost a stranger to me.

The familiar aches of aging, the burn of pushing your body to its limit, even the hazy memories of those miserable four-ibuprofen patrols back on deployment—all of it had vanished the moment I was reborn into this universe. Relics of a weaker, more fragile life. Being an Augment came with plenty of baggage, undoubtedly, but the physical upgrades were undeniably awesome.

Which was exactly why I hated being called a hero.

A hero wouldn’t have hesitated. A hero would have charged into this nightmare without complaint, ready to lay down their life with noble selflessness. Me? I complained the entire way. Loudly. Colorfully. Right up until the moment I made my choice, I had been fully prepared to let those girls die and walk away with a clear conscience.

That decision still surprised even me.

What the hell had possessed me? Was it some lingering sentimentality? A twisted sense of kinship with my genetically enhanced “sisters”? Or was I just a shallow bastard at my core—seduced by the fact that they looked like the wet dreams of every horny teenager from my old world, all sculpted cheekbones, perfect bodies, and celebrity-level beauty?

I was man enough to admit the truth: their looks had probably played a part. Maybe a bigger one than I wanted to believe.

There were far easier paths to a life of pure hedonism.