Chapter 234

“Can you tell which station he’s at?” Alexander asked Gabriel.

Gabriel nodded once. His eyes blackened, the pupils bleeding outward until the whites were consumed entirely. His head tilted slightly to one side, lips moving without sound. The others waited.

A few seconds passed.

His eyes returned to normal. He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I can’t see anything about either of these stations. It’s like they’re protected against divination in much the same way Talia shielded our lair.”

“Makes sense,” Augustus said. “One of the richest men in existence would have access to every advantage money can buy.”

Alexander leaned back in his chair and drummed his fingers against the desk. “Okay. Let’s think about this logically.” He swept his gaze across the room. “If you were stupidly rich, stupidly powerful, and you knew you were about to be hated as the scum of the Earth by everyone on the planet, because the enigmatic and charismatic Alexander Rooke was about to out you to the world...” He allowed himself a small smile. “What would you do?”

“I’d run,” Annie said immediately.

“Where?”

She shrugged. “I mean, he named a planet Utopia...”

Augustus nodded. “That was my thought, too.”

Alexander gestured at the two folders on the desk. “So, what’s important enough to keep him here? Serum or cybernetics?”

“Why not both?” Annie asked.

“It probably is. But he has to be overseeing something at one of them if he’s wasting time there personally.”

“Serum.” Carmen spoke with confidence. “It’s a logistics question. Something I’ve spent my entire career solving.”

“Explain.”

“Assuming he is actually fleeing Earth, then Annie and Augustus are correct,” Carmen continued. “He’d want to retreat to his stronghold. Utopia. But he’ll also want anything that might offer an advantage. The difference is that advanced cybernetics R&D is transferable. A single email and it’s secured.”

“But any completed serum needs to be taken on as cargo… Of course.” Alexander nodded. “Might not be a certainty, but it’s better than a coin flip.”

“How do you plan to do it?” Augustus asked.

“Nothing complicated. We approach the station on Sleipnir, and either he makes a run for it in his own ship or he stays on the station. The latter would be easier.” Alexander shrugged. “But if it’s the former, I’m confident we can chase him down and survive anything he throws at us.”

Annie frowned. “How are you going to deal with Radiant and the goon squad he’ll probably have?”

Alexander reached out and flipped open a folder. “ONI confirmed what we already suspected. Radiant is the only Tier 3 Santiago has left.” He grinned. “Looks like we did more damage than we thought, but we actually have to thank the other mega-corps. Guess they smelled blood.”

“That doesn’t explain how you’re going to deal with him, though.”

“Two words. Space. Combat. According to ONI’s intel, Radiant’s powers offer no special utility in the void.”

“Neither do yours. Space will kill you too!”

Alexander clicked his tongue. “Tsk, tsk, tsk. You should know me better than that. I’m prepared… for anything!”

He reached into his spatial ring, took hold of the new combat suit, and pulled it out with a thought, immediately seizing it with Metallokinesis to keep it from toppling over.

Five hundred pounds of dark gray metal materialized in the center of the room, locked upright in a standing pose. The suit was sleek, every surface angled for purpose, every plate fitted with the precision of engineers who understood that gaps meant death. Fine overlapping scales covered the joints at the elbows, knees, and neck, allowing movement without exposing the wearer. The helmet was featureless except for a single inch-wide visor band that wrapped around the front, a dark slit in an otherwise solid shell. Hermetic seals ringed the neck where helmet met gorget.

It looked like something designed to kill people in places where the universe itself was already trying to do the job.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Alexander stared at it. The craftsmanship was genuinely impressive, and he already wanted to take it apart and see how everything fit together. He also wanted to throw it out the window, because wearing it meant climbing inside a sealed metal coffin and trusting someone else’s engineering with his life while also being worshipped as a god by the bloody thing once he turned it on.

Which he hadn’t yet. They fitted him while it was offline, showed him how to make the adjustments, then gave him an instruction manual that was thicker than the suit’s own armor plating.

He hadn’t read it yet, either. The Machine God didn’t need to be told how and what a machine could do.

Probably.

Besides, he had an expert.

Augustus leapt to his feet. He never took his eyes off the suit. “Alex, did you steal this?”

Annie answered before Alexander could, doing a terrible impression of his voice. “You mean, ‘borrowed.’”

Alexander ignored her. “Of course I didn’t steal it. I’m no thief. We negotiated an agreement.”

Augustus was already circling, fingers tracing the edges of plates, bending low to examine the joints. “What agreement? This is the latest model OACS. Highly classified military hardware.” He continued circling. “They even fixed the rear waist plating that plagued the models we used twenty years ago. See how the lower back section overlaps the hip plates now? We lost people because of that gap.”

He moved to the arm, studying where the upper and lower sections met. Ran a thumb along the overlapping scales at the elbow, testing the range of motion. “And these articulated scales at the joints. Ingenious. We had ballistic mesh wrapped in flex-weave connecting the upper arm and forearm plating back then. Same with the knees.” He shook his head. “It was the number one cause of suit failures leading to death. Besides being shot down by ground-to-air defenses during atmospheric entry.”

The way he said it belied the fact that the old man could have been one of those casualties. Or that some of his friends might have been.

Augustus straightened and looked at Alexander. “Seriously. What did you have to do to get this?”

“I agreed to share the shield emitter designs. They’re going to retrofit their ships with them once they’ve tested and scaled them up. Military use only. The IP remains mine for the public domain.”

Augustus blinked. Then he turned back to the suit and resumed his inspection. “That was generous. You could have bled them for it.”

“Wrong time. Wrong opportunity.”

Augustus nodded.

“Besides, ONI gave me my worst enemy.” Alexander paused. Frowned. “Or is he my second-worst enemy…”

“You don’t have him yet,” Gabriel said. “When are we going?”

Alexander shook his head. “‘We’ are not going anywhere. You’re still on ‘no spacefaring adventures’ medical care. Doctor Talia’s orders.” He turned to the others. “The rest of us will leave immediately after King returns Dubai to Earth tomorrow. Assuming that all goes to plan.”

“So soon?” Carmen asked. 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

“Yes. Even waiting until tomorrow risks him slipping away.” Alexander sighed. “But as selfish as I am, even I’m not going to put personal revenge over Dubai and its people.”

“Understood. I’ll prepare the crew, but I won’t share mission details until we’re aboard. What about Frank and Helena?”

“No. Their abilities are no good in space, and Frank will just get in the way on the ship. Besides, I’m sure they’ll appreciate the chance to rest, given how hard they’ve been working.”

She nodded.

Annie raised a hand. “Why am I even here? I can’t help in space. Unless you’re going to shoot me like a missile.” She paused. “Whoa. Wait. Are you going to shoot me like a missile? Would that actually work? Could I Assimilate space?”

Alexander glared at her. Right. He’d almost forgotten.

“You’re here because I’m going to chew you out. You left to pick up your sister and, I quote, ‘her friends’, and instead you returned after raiding an entire detention facility and brought back almost fifty juvenile delinquents!”

Gabriel started laughing. Carmen raised a hand to her face.

Augustus leaned around the armored suit and stared at Annie. “You did what?”

Annie glanced around the room. “It was an accident!”

***

Alexander walked across the palace grounds, Annie and Augustus flanking him, while the rest of Grimnir trailed behind.

Ahead, everyone else was already waiting.

The terrace looked different from what he remembered. The white marble had been scrubbed, but even the Sheikha’s staff couldn’t erase its history. Scorch marks darkened the stone where the Lost Prophet’s infected had burned. Small craters pockmarked the surface where powers had struck. Fragments of the stage where they’d stood and announced the truth to the world lay stacked in a neat pile at the edge, alongside the twisted remains of recording equipment and chairs where civilian reporters had watched with bated breath.

This was where the Lost Prophet had derailed everything. Where he’d used their own press conference as a stage for something unthinkable, turning a moment meant to expose the truth into one of the worst attacks in human history.

Alexander accepted it. He shared a measure of responsibility for what had happened, though he refused the sense of guilt that tried to rise with it. The Lost Prophet would have orchestrated the attack without them eventually.

Maximilian stood at the center of the terrace with Julia, Raelene, and the rest of his guild behind him. Sindre and Hjordis waited to his left, the Northern Shield in a fresh suit while his sister wore her usual armor and a bored expression. Khalida occupied a chair someone had brought for her, legs crossed, her aide standing at her shoulder with tablet in hand.

To the right, the Royals. Valerie sat with one leg draped over the other, while Titanic loomed behind her with a completely unnecessary, frilly white parasol in hand, shielding her from the sun. The Doorman leaned against a stack of supply crates, the metal dragon perched on his shoulder, its tiny head swiveling to track Alexander’s approach, recognizing its creator.

King stood apart from them all, looking out across the city he was about to move. He turned as Grimnir approached.

Alexander stopped at the edge of the terrace, meeting everyone’s gaze with a grin.

“So, who’s ready to make history? Again.”