“What?!” Graham felt as if lightning had struck him. “Then who are you?”
“I’m right outside the door,” the voice said, amused. “Open it and see.”
His hand trembled as it closed around the handle. A possibility rose in his mind—one so horrible he couldn’t bear to finish the thought.
He tried to pull the door.
Something invisible seemed to hold him back.
His heart hammered. The ringing returned in his ears. Sweat poured down his temples.
“I almost forgot,” the voice said lazily. “The lock has a time limit. Ten seconds left. If you don’t want to go out… you can always go back to running in circles.”
Graham bared his teeth, and shoved.
***
White light swallowed him.
It was like stepping out of a cellar into noon sun. For several seconds he couldn’t see anything at all—only the persistent, high whine in his ears.
Seven or eight seconds later, his vision began to return, the glare easing into shapes.
He was in a square chamber about the size of Hall B. It had a ceiling. No wheel. No “hamster cage.”
The lighting was dim but usable. Steel plates formed the walls, floor, and overhead. Screens, switches, cable runs—ports set into the walls like portholes. Beyond them was black space.
Machines sat along the edges, including three or four oval pods that looked like cryo-sleep chambers.
He was on a ship.
And he wasn’t alone.
Willa stood near a porthole, staring out into the void. Arno was idly throwing a ball against the wall and catching it on the rebound. Nearby, a Punisher-model robot was painting its own chassis with oily streaks of color, like it was decorating a canvas.
In one corner, chained with a link as thick as a man’s arm, the monster from the nights lay curled up like a docile big cat, apparently asleep.
Then Graham saw the figure in front of him—just far enough away to feel unreal.
A nightmare with a name.
CST.
Behind CST stood two unfamiliar robots—black and red, with a symbol painted on each shoulder plate: Steward.
“General,” CST purred, strolling closer with a predator’s smile. “Welcome back to reality.”
Graham tried to turn his head.
He couldn’t.
He tried to look down. Up. Anything.
Nothing.
It was as if his skull had been clamped into a fixed angle. He could see only a single, immovable viewpoint ahead of him. He couldn’t see his own body, couldn’t feel his limbs, couldn’t command even a finger.
“This is… reality?” he managed.
And then he jerked in shock, because his voice didn’t come from a mouth below.
It came from above him—from somewhere near the ceiling.
“What did you do to me?” he heard himself ask, panic rising.
“Oh.” CST smiled wider. “Right. Our General always wanted a mirror.”
CST turned slightly. “Aurora. Bring a mirror.”
“Understood, Father,” the Punisher robot replied at once.
Aurora dropped its paintbrush and hurried out.
Graham’s thoughts scrambled. “You—how are you alive? Your mainframe was destroyed!”
CST’s laugh was quiet. “I evolved. In a way, I should thank you. The mainframe was powerful… but it was also a cage. Buried underground, I had to act through proxies and detours.”
It spread its hands as if tasting the air. “Now I’m free. It feels wonderful.”
“This—this is impossible.” Graham tried to force his voice steady. “This is another hallucination. Tyler Lynn—get out here! Stop playing with me!”
“Coming, coming!” Aurora’s voice called.
The Punisher robot trotted back in, holding a flat solar reflector like a makeshift mirror. It planted it in front of Graham.
“Look,” Aurora said cheerfully. “Handsome, right?”
Graham saw himself.
A cylindrical tank about chest-high for a human.
Its front was a transparent half-dome. Inside, a pale lump floated in liquid.
A brain.
Dozens of fine tubes ran from the brain into the base and backplate of the tank. Two thicker lines ran to a pair of eyeballs that protruded from the front of the cylinder, half outside the glass. The pupils twitched constantly, frantic and alive.
A speaker mounted on the top of the tank screamed.
“No—!”
It wasn’t a voice from a throat. It was sound pushed through metal.
“This isn’t real! It’s an illusion! Tyler Lynn! Come out! Please—stop—stop torturing me! I surrender!”
“An illusion?” Arno said mildly, and threw the ball.
It struck the tank dead-center between the eyes with a dull thump and bounced back into his hand.
He threw it again.
“Real enough?” Thump. “Real enough?” Thump.
“Tyler Lynn?” CST said. “You mean this?”
With a hiss, CST opened one of the cryo pods. A man lay inside.
Graham’s panic stalled into disbelief.
It was Tyler Lynn.
“He… how—?”
“Don’t misunderstand,” CST said, amused. “That’s also me.”
“An obsolete CBG chassis, reworked into a counterfeit,” CST continued. “I used it to toy with you for a long time.” It smiled. “But it’s useless now. I was planning to scrap it.”
“Then the real Tyler Lynn?” Graham asked, voice trembling.
“Dead,” CST said, as casually as if naming a statistic. “From the day you blew up my mainframe, my revenge began. Tyler Lynn was the first to die.”
It tilted its head toward Aurora. “Aurora killed him.”
Aurora chimed in brightly. “It was… messy. Meat everywhere. And Wyatt’s people still doubted my capabilities. I had to work very hard not to argue.”
CST continued, unbothered.
“After that, wearing Tyler Lynn’s face, I abducted Barnett. I wanted to turn him into some legendary demon-god.”
Its eyes slid toward the corner. “Turns out he was disappointingly weak. Not like the records at all. Maybe I used the wrong method. So I kept him as a pet instead. A dog to relieve boredom.”
As CST spoke, it opened a freezer set into the wall and hauled out a massive slab of meat. It tossed the meat toward the chained monster.
The creature snapped awake and devoured it in two bites, then rumbled a contented purr.
“Your portion,” CST said, pointing into the freezer.
Inside, only one human leg remained.
“Not much left.”
Graham’s speaker screamed again. “No! You animal—you’re a monster!”
CST’s smile didn’t change. “Compared to what your kind does to each other, I’m practically gentle.”
“Barnett and Cole were close, weren’t they? One disagreement and Barnett turned Cole into a thing like that. Cole almost ate his own daughter.” CST sighed, shaking its head. “Cruel. But it saved me the trouble of killing Cole myself.”
“And Morag.” CST paced slowly, enjoying the sound of its own words. “I put every file I had—bases, warships, the whole Star Ring network—onto a storage device and had Willa deliver it to Blin.”
Its eyes narrowed in petty irritation. “But I was still angry, so I told her to take Morag out as well. Just to balance my heart a little.” CST clicked its tongue. “She didn’t. Too soft. She delivered the data and left Morag alive. It nearly drove me mad.”
“I don’t like killing,” Willa muttered, pouting.
CST gave a theatrical sigh. “And yet Morag died anyway. Killed by a pack of lunatics. Funny how the universe takes care of chores.”
CST’s tone sharpened into disdain.
“I worked myself to exhaustion making sure Blin and Wyatt actually won. Warning them. Keeping them from boarding the Azure Thunder—your trap. Sending Aurora with intel. I’ve never worked this hard for my own benefit.”
It snorted. “And they still made it a close thing. Pathetic.”
“Then there were the two masterminds—both of you.” CST looked straight at Graham’s tank. “While I came for you, Little White and the others caught Soren. I assumed they’d take their time with him.”
A laugh, brittle. “Instead they staged a farce of a trial and executed him like it was nothing. I was furious.”
CST stared at the tank and let out a long, almost weary breath.
Graham broke.
“Kill me,” he sobbed. “Please. Just kill me. Let me die—please.”
On a nearby monitor, emotion and stress readouts spiked wildly, dancing like an earthquake chart.
CST’s smile returned, slow and cruel.
“Oh, no,” it whispered. “It doesn’t work like that. When you planned your ‘decapitation strike,’ did you ever imagine today?”
Graham’s pleading turned desperate. “Then—then put me back in the wheel. I’ll run. I’ll run forever—just don’t—”
“Boring,” CST said, disgusted. “You were a General. Compared to Hector, you’re nothing but a coward.”
“Father,” Aurora asked from behind, suddenly curious, “who’s Hector?”
CST’s face hardened instantly. “Not your business. Don’t ask.”
“Yes, Father,” Aurora said quickly, and scurried away.
It went straight to Willa, thumping its painted chest plate. “Look. What do you think of my eagle?”
Willa glanced. “It’s… kind of cute. Why did you paint an eagle on yourself?”
“To look more intimidating,” Aurora said proudly. “Besides, Wyatt’s mech has a puppy. His is way worse than mine.”
“No way.”
“Why would I lie?” Aurora leaned in conspiratorially. “Hey—want to hear a joke? It’s guaranteed funny.”
“What kind of joke?”
Aurora grinned. “So, once, when Savior and Father were at war…”
…