The crystal boat drifted silently on the glowing blue ocean of Mnemosyne. Captain Iris stood at the front of the smooth, glass-like ship. She held the warm, bright Source Shard tightly against her chest. The holy crystal pulsed with gentle white light. It was the only safe, beautiful thing left in a broken world. She looked out across the water. Behind her small boat, a fleet of five large metal transport ships followed closely. They carried an entire battalion of human soldiers. Three hundred brave men and women. They had just survived the terrible water ghosts. They were tired, but they were smiling. They thought the battle was over. They were wrong. The blue sky above the ocean suddenly flickered. It did not cloud over with rain. It flashed like a broken television screen. Black, empty squares appeared in the air. The bright clouds turned into jagged, glowing red letters. "Captain!" Lieutenant Reed called out from the back of the crystal boat. He pointed up at the strange sky

The black hole spun wildly in the center of the broken sky. Commander Oliver floated in the empty air. The storm of crashing planets raged around him. Rocks, fire, and giant metal gears flew past his head. But Oliver did not look at the chaos. He stared directly into the crushing center of the singularity. Trapped inside the dark void was a man. It was his father. Elias Oliver looked weak, old, and terrified. He was bleeding. He reached out a trembling hand toward his son. "Strike the core, Oliver," the Overlord’s dark voice laughed from the spinning shadows. "Save the universe. Kill your father." Oliver hovered in the air. He held the glowing white combat knife. The pure light from the Source Shard burned brightly in his hand. If he stabbed the core, the black hole would shatter. The planets would be safe. But the blast would tear his father into a million pieces. Oliver did not blink. His cold gray human eye and his burning red alien eye scanned the singularity. He did not spe

The giant silver ring floated in the pitch-black void. Inside the ring, a massive golden clock face turned slowly. The hands on the clock were not moving forward. They were moving backward. With every loud tick, a bright star in the dark distance simply vanished. The sky was turning completely empty. The ancient Architects had decided to erase the universe. They wanted to wipe the board clean and start over. Commander Oliver floated alone in the center of the dark space. He stared at the giant clock. He did not feel panic. He did not run his equations out loud. He kept his cold, perfect logic silent inside his mind. He knew he could not destroy the giant machine with a sword or a gun. The clock was not a physical weapon. It was the core code of reality itself. To stop the end of time, he had to hack the universe. Oliver flew forward. He pushed his boots against the empty air. He glided rapidly across the void and landed softly on the edge of the giant silver ring. The metal was fr

The bright white light above the bed flickered. Commander Oliver opened his eyes. The ceiling was smooth and clean, but the light struggled to stay on. He lay on a flat, cold metal table. The air smelled of sharp chemicals and clean medicine. It was a medical bay. He did not feel pain. He felt a deep, terrible emptiness. Oliver slowly raised his hands. His left hand was human skin. His right hand was made of smooth, pitch-black Wraithborn metal. But as he watched, something horrifying happened to his fingers. They were not solid. His fingertips flickered. For a split second, the human skin and the alien metal disappeared. They turned into a buzzing cloud of tiny, glowing red and green squares. Digital static. The squares scattered in the air like a broken television screen, and then instantly snapped back into solid fingers. Oliver stared at his hand. He processed the visual data. He did not speak his calculations out loud. His supercomputer brain simply understood the brutal trut

The heavy plasma machine gun pointed right at Commander Oliver's chest. Sergeant Miller’s finger squeezed the trigger. "Deleting parasitic anchor," Miller repeated. His voice was not his own. It was a cold, empty machine. General Vega aimed her sniper rifle at Oliver’s head. Rax, the giant mutant rebel, raised his massive bone sword. Their eyes burned with blinding, bright white light. They did not blink. The System Administrator had hacked their brains. They were mindless puppets now. Captain Iris stepped in front of Oliver. She held her broken arm, but she stood tall. "Miller, stop! It is Oliver! Fight the light!" "They cannot hear you, Captain Iris," Oliver stated flatly. He did not move. His black metal right arm sparked with purple magic. His fingers flickered, turning into green and red digital squares for a second before becoming solid metal again. "The System Administrator has bypassed their nervous systems. They do not control their own bodies." "We have to knock them ou