Shock stabbed me in the gut. I nearly doubled over. There was no sound on the monitor, just a savage visual bombardment. One whole side of a huge spacedock blew apart, the damage catastrophic. Great Powers, where is that?
“Is this happening?” Horror flooded me like a toxin that froze my limbs and stopped my heart. “Right now?”
“The enhanced soldiers I created before you stopped my production had one purpose: to find the rebel hideout. This wasn’t their original function, of course, but I revised it as new facts came to light. I began to understand several years ago that the rebel base wasn’t simply hidden, it was elsewhere, in another dimension—and one not just anyone can get into. You had to be special—or have someone special near you.”
Sickness crashed through me in a wave.
The Overseer switched on another monitor. I recognized the shapes on the screen, those connected structures. There was Spacedock 1. That was the Fold going up in flames.
I took a step forward, my heart shattering like the wall that blew outward from the center of the rebel stronghold. Bodies floated like tiny stars in the darkness, lit up by flames and swirling through the void.
“You monster!” Tears blurred my eyes. The Fold wasn’t just a home for rebel soldiers. There were thousands of families. Whole communities. Gone.
“Then you found the wormhole in Sector 14. The Black Widow isn’t a black hole after all, is it? And it didn’t take you anywhere you knew. It took you where you needed to go. Your ship-fixing lover’s basement was filled with several interesting things, including your DNA. He was one of your best hunters, Nathaniel”—the Overseer’s questioning gaze settled on Shade—“or so I’m told by the people who are still looking for him on my orders. Yours, apparently, were canceled. Care to explain?”
I gripped the flash blast so hard it dug into bone. “I ditched him,” I snarled before Shade could talk. “I hate him almost as much as I hate you.”
The Overseer shrugged. “This…pocket in space where you’ve all been hiding. It isn’t a here or a now. It’s a phenomenon the faithful have been whispering about for years. It’s why I’ve indulged them—to learn more. They call it the home of the Second Children. The Mornavail.”
My body could barely keep up with my frantic heartbeat, my blood pumping too fast through my veins. Light-headed, I said hoarsely, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The Mornavail must have come from there, but then they spread out and integrated into our version of humanity. They forgot who they were and where they came from. Except their differences remained, no matter how diluted. One:”—he ticked off a finger—“their incorruptible blood, preventing them from succumbing to any of our diseases. And two:”—another finger—“their ability to slide into an alternate time and place within the fabric of the universe.”
The Overseer flicked on another monitor. There was Loralie Harris—covered in blood and soot and being dragged half-conscious onto a Dark Watch warship.
“The rebel leader is a pure blood. I had others, but you stole them—driving me to this.” He indicated the death and ruination coming across the monitors. I shuddered, so heartsick my stomach heaved.
“Not too long ago, one of my patrol ships stumbled through a gravitational warp in Sector 17 and found what you’ve been hiding all these years. How rebels can disappear so completely. Only the enhanced soldiers survived, though. Two came back to report while a small unit hovered on the edge of the hideaway, following it. It moved, but they were able to keep up. Like a living thing, it tried to shake them. It couldn’t. I’m emptying it now, as you can see.”
Oh, I saw. The destruction of something irreplaceable and unique. Something I cherished. Explosions and murder. People I didn’t know. Friends. Comrades. So many dead. I thanked the Powers the Unholy Stench was at the Mooncamps and not anywhere near this.
I couldn’t watch anymore and looked at the Overseer through a haze of burning hate. This man took. He took with no conscience. “Why? What do you want from this?”
“I want to start over, and thanks to you, I can. With a few tweaks, I can have everything I have now and the love of the people. I’ll be a god to them when I’m finished. And Caitrin will love me. She’ll see me settle the war peacefully and worship me like everyone else. I’ll have her. Our children.” His disdain scraped over me like a rash. “Not whatever you are.”
My brain short-circuited again. “The war’s over. Mom’s dead. You’re insane, and she would hate this!”
The Overseer’s smile didn’t need to stretch wide for his triumph to be huge in it. A little upward tug to his lips was all it took to terrify me into believing he truly had a plan. “She’ll never know. It’ll all be different.”
“How? You killed Mom. You can’t get her back now.”
“I’ve been doing experiments. And do you know what I’ve learned, thanks to you mostly?”
I shook my head, the ache inside me so raw and heavy I knew the weight of it would pin me to this man’s atrocities forever.
“If I jump into the Black Widow at warp speed with Loralie Harris’s blood in my veins, thinking not only about wanting to end up in what I believe you call the Fold, but when, I can arrive where I want, at the time I want, and create a new future from there.”
Wait. When? Was that something he’d discovered on his own? Was that even possible? We never lost time in the Fold. But I’d also never entered it via the Black Widow while thinking about a date forty years ago.
“And your army of super soldiers can go through with you,” I said, sickened and devastated. They were the only invaders who could survive the Fold. No wonder he’d been trying to churn them out in a hurry. He’d put the final pieces together and was ready. For this.
“Precisely. I quell unrest in the galaxy through firm but…less destructive means and rise again less military dictator and more benevolent savior. Caitrin will be pleased.”
He talked about Mom as though she were alive. Or would be again. “You’ll still be you. Mom will see that, and she’ll hate you just as much as the first time.”
“She didn’t always hate me. We were happy until whoever spawned you corrupted her and turned her against me.”
Did he really believe that? Did he suspect Bridgebane? He didn’t act like it. Not really. He’d barely looked at his friend and general in minutes. He was too gleefully destroying me.
I wanted to tell him this whole thing was impossible, but I couldn’t. The Fold was a mystery. It had taken him years and liters of my blood, but he’d figured it out, or at least the potential of it. A potential that a twisted, selfish mind could think up.