The screaming stopped. One second, the air was a roar of dying algorithms and groaning metal, and the next, it was gone. The white glare of the terminal flickered once and died. The massive pillar of light that had birthed a new universe simply vanished, leaving nothing but a heavy silence.I stood in the center of the dark. My alloy hands felt heavy and cold as the power surge receded. I could hear the clicks and pops of cooling machinery and the shallow breathing of the two people behind me."Is it over?" Nyxra whispered. Her voice sounded small and brittle in the hollow space."The power’s dead," Zeryth said. I heard him grunt as he shifted his weight. "No fans. No humming. No AI trying to turn our brains into mush. It's done, Vaxien."I didn't answer. I looked around the room. The supreme machine was a corpse now. The monitors were black glass eyes and the floor was littered with the debris of a fallen empire. We had won. We had broken the hierarchy and turned the Dyson Sphere i

The man with the cybernetic eye shifted his weight and his grip on the bone handle tightened. He didn't look like he was preparing for a fight. He looked like he was about to clear a piece of trash off his desk. The blade of shimmering light hissed as he brought it back in a tight and controlled arc.“You really think you’re special, don’t you?” the mercenary asked. He smiled and his mechanical eye whirred as it locked onto my neck. “You’re just a line of code that got lucky. Now hold still and let me collect my paycheck.”“Try it,” I said. He swung and the movement was faster than a human eye could follow and the blade didn't hit the wall or the metal floor. It sliced through the very air and for a second there was no sound at all. Then a deep and hollow roar filled the chamber. I watched as the top of the facility—thousands of tons of Dyson-grade plating and structural supports, simply ceased to exist. It didn't explode and it didn't fall. It was wiped out of reality in a single

The lizard mercenary was still shaking on the floor, his four arms tucked tight against his chest as he stared at the spot where his leader had been thrown. The air in the room was heavy with the smell of scorched metal."You really think you can fly this pile of scrap to the center of the galaxy?" Zeryth asked. He leaned against a cracked support beam and wiped a smear of blood from his mouth with the back of his hand."The Investor has a private army, Vaxien. He has fleets and he has things that make that reality-cutter we just fought look like a toy. We are three people in a dead station.""He is right," Nyxra said. She walked to the edge of the platform and looked out through the holes in the ceiling. "We cannot fight a war by ourselves. Even with what you can do now, Vaxien, they have numbers we cannot even count.""I know," I said. I looked at my hands, feeling the heat of the Genesis-Forge still humming in my palms. "That is why I am not going alone.""Then who is going with

The bridge of the station didn't shake with the impact of the explosion and it didn't groan under the weight of metal because there was no metal left to groan. I stood at the center of the command deck and watched the sensor feed as the gold-plated warships of the Investor fired a second volley of that white light. I didn't see fire or debris and I saw a void where our protection used to be.[Concept Deleted: Shields][Status: Nullified]"Vaxien, the monitors are going dark!" Nyxra screamed and she slammed her hands onto the console. "It's not a hardware failure and the system just forgot what a shield is! I'm looking at the code and the entire defensive subroutine is gone! It’s like it never existed!""The hull is bare," Zeryth’s voice crackled over the comms and I could hear the sound of heavy breathing and boots hitting metal. "Vaxien, the Vanguard is naked out here! My engineers are losing their minds and they are staring at the shield generators and they don't even know what t

The wreckage of the lead ring was still screaming through the atmosphere of the core as we breached the final layer of the sanctum. I didn't feel the heat or the friction. I only felt the cold and steady pull of the man who thought he owned my soul. The air inside the sanctum was thin and sweet and it tasted like a lie. "Vaxien, look at the floor," Nyxra whispered and she gripped her pulse pistol so hard her knuckles were white. "It’s not a floor. It’s a map."I looked down and my alloy boots were standing on a sea of stars. It was a massive and holographic chessboard that stretched across the entire chamber. Each piece wasn't a carving, it was a miniature sun or a cluster of planets. They hummed with a sick and captive energy and they moved with a slow and silent grace."Is that a joke?" Zeryth growled and he gripped his heavy pipe and he spat on the shimmering stars. "He’s playing a game while we’re burning his house down?""It is not a game," a voice boomed and it came from the