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Sadik found that he could block the world entirely.

As he stood in the elevator, trying to ignore the strain of centrifugal spin, he raised his hands in front of his face. The planet disappeared from sight. He pulled his hands apart, holding them just far enough away that the world seemed caressed between them. He clasped them together. Everything was gone.

It was a child’s trick. Even still, it filled him with awe.

Almost unconsciously, he began to compare the features of his hand to the distant complexion of an entire world. Clouds became the size of finger nails. Mountains were wrinkles of skin, the speckles of forest as fine as hairs. With this degree of separation, even the vast deserts of the equator seemed to be little more than bruises on the skin.

Sadik lowered his hands.

Now, he thought, his home had truly become a planet. It was a round ball in the blackness of the stars, surrounded by a haze of glowing atmosphere. The sun was a distant flare. The moon was a small, floating pebble. And though Sadik had always known these things to be true, it was another thing to witness the reality for himself. Before it all, his knowledge had only been factual. Now, he understood.

There was no doubt the world was about to change. Aleph might eject itself among the stars, or it might choose to become a god of the land, spreading across the deserts and plains, becoming as ravaging as a plague. The machine known as Calisto might no longer live to guide her people. And if the last of Acheron was to be destroyed, the technology it had guarded for millennia could soon be released to the world at large, with consequences that would forever change the course of history.

Sadik raised his hands.

He held the world in his palm.

“Sadik,” Kavaia said.

The counterweight had arrived. It loomed below their feet, forming a large, rectangular structure among the distant blanket of stars. He could see strange vehicles clamped to circular portals, as well as segmented rooms, rows of tapered hull, panels of glass raised to the sun, hollow dishes swiveling an antenna between the world and the stars. Even from a distance, the structure conveyed a sense of density. Every inch had been intensely designed.

At the moment, the climber seemed as if it was going to slot directly into the center of the station, like a bucket into a well.

Sadik took a final glance at the world before pacing to the end of the passenger compartment, loosening his empty hands. The air was stale on his tongue, and the weight of his body was quickly becoming uncomfortable, as if his senses could tell the difference between gravity and the spinning of a planet.

Blood pooled inside him. Organs shifted.

His mouth was very dry.

When he arrived at the exit, he found Kavaia and Faustine standing on either side of the locked entryway, their figures outlined in a flashing red.

“We need to strike first,” Faustine said, gesturing with a sword. “So long as he lives, Rushan will poison the plague with thoughts of vengeance. We need to cut him from the flesh. Isolate his rage.”

“We need,” Kavaia said, “to exercise caution. Our mission is one of peace. An open blade, by itself, will instigate a mind toward violence.”

“Those who seek peace must promise violence. Aleph needs to learn this lesson.”

Kavaia looked down at her.

“What?” Faustine asked.

“You are not learning your lesson.”

Faustine blinked, opening her mouth to speak. After a moment, she settled on baring her fangs.

Sadik stepped between the two women. “Keep your peace with each other.”

“I am at peace,” Kavaia said.

Faustine was nearly a foot taller than Sadik, and she used the extra height to continue glaring above his head, her fur tinged with a spinning red. “And I don’t need some disgraced god—”

“Faust,” Sadik said.

“If Rushan is able to convince the plague—”

“Faust,” Sadik said, softly.

She looked at him, ears twitching.

“You’re scared,” he said.

“Of course I am! Why wouldn’t I be?” The more she considered his statement, the more upset she seemed to become. “Don’t talk to me like I’m still—”

“I know you,” Sadik said. “You’re scared.” He raised a hand, waving a slow circle around his chest. “Stop. Breathe.”

Faustine looked at him a moment longer, her fists clenched around her swords. Eventually, she closed her eyes, relaxed her hands, and breathed.

“Find yourself,” he said. “Find a center.”

She took another breath.

“The battle is always fought within,” Sadik said.

She raised her chin, whiskers twitching, trying to ignore the flashing of lights, the uncomfortable shifting of gears and floors.

“Conquer yourself, and you will conquer the world.”

Her brow uncreased. Her breath slowed. After a moment, Sadik reached out a hand, gripping her shoulder by the curve of her pauldron. When she opened her eyes, he was already meeting her gaze.

“Like always,” Sadik said. “We’ll see it through.”

The eye contact lingered.

“I missed you,” Faustine said.

A violent clanging erupted around the compartment. Lights flickered and died. All three of them turned, bracing for combat, only to see that the elevator had now docked with the counterweight, and a series of clamps had emerged from the belly of the station, attempting to grip the metal with a suctioning force. One of the arm had malfunctioned. It was only a minor failure.

But, for a moment, all of them had felt it. They had been sure that Rushan was carving his way inside. They knew now, more than ever, that he was waiting just outside the climber, unbroken by the vacuum of space, ready to strike at any time. Only a few layers of metal stood in his way. They were not going to hold.

In the resulting silence, there was a new, palpable fear.

“Listen to me,” Sadik said.

Both women turned to him.

“Goddess, you and I will journey into Diana’s complex. Everything depends on Aleph’s decision, and its capacity for mercy. To that end, I’ll prepare her for its arrival. You will keep me safe.”

Kavaia straightened herself, nodding.

“Faust,” Sadik said, turning. “Rushan cannot be allowed to interfere. He’s already ruined our first attempts at peace. Because of this, I need you to delay him as much as possible. Keep him from destroying Diana. We will lose everything if he is allowed to succeed.”

There was another shudder. The climber was now embedded inside the station, where a small hangar marked the end of the world-spanning tether. As the outer doors closed, ancient bulbs flickered to life, and a hiss of air began to erupt from the surrounding walls, quickly filling the tiny compartment. Faustine watched the lights and noise with an expression of unease.

“I can’t maneuver here,” she said. “It’s too enclosed. I don’t know the corners.”

“Can you do this?” Sadik asked.

“He will have every advantage.”

“Can you do this?”

Faustine looked at him, her ears flicking to either side. There was a pause for breath.

“Yes,” she said.

“Good. Thank you.”

The hissing stopped. A red light flashed above the exit. All three of them backed away from the door, waiting for any number of strange events to occur.

Static blared above their heads.

“Well,” Diana said. “Hello again. I’m glad Sadik could be the adult in the room, while I was gone.”

“I would place you among the children,” he said.

“Oh, yeah. Probably.”

Through the shifting and noise, a sound of footsteps began to travel across the ceiling, roaming from bulkhead to plating. They steadily grew heavier. Wherever they passed, a hole sucked into the surrounding structure, like footprints on a fresh sheet of sand.

Rushan was pacing across the climber, using the raw material to reform his body.

“Twenty seconds till the airlock secures,” Diana said. “I’ll guide you to the center of my brain. For now, brace yourselves.”

An alarm began to chime. Pressure bled and churned. As the hissing of air slowed, the entire station seemed to groan with age. They kept their eyes alert, and their weapons ready.

“Have you made a decision?” Sadik asked. “Whether you’ll flee or stay?”

There was a pause.

“Yeah,” Diana replied. “I have.”

“Good. I won’t ask.”

“That’s awfully trusting of you.”

“Yes, it is.”

“. . . hm.”

Slowly, a series of smaller clangs began to grow beneath the surrounding noise. It was different than before. They were coming from a spot directly above a passenger window, where Sadik and Kavaia had stood for much of the ascent. The sounds were focused. The longer they went on, the stronger they seemed to grow. And when Sadik looked at the spot itself, it almost seemed as if the metal was deforming, beginning to sag with strings of molten fluid.

“Kavaia,” Sadik said.

The crocodile tore her gaze from the slurry of metal.

“I’m willing to consider the harness, when we return.”

“Oh? Truly?”

“Maybe a leash, at times.”

She cocked her head, a grin slowly breaking through the fear. “Be careful, my servant. You offer me a path of temptation.”

“Whatever my goddess desires,” Sadik said.

For a moment, her face flickered with triumph. Faustine made a sour expression.

The door opened.

“Go,” Diana said.

They ran through the entrance. Moments later, the ceiling of the elevator collapsed, bursting open in a spray of dripping metal. Flesh poured into the compartment. As it pooled against itself, coalescing into a twitching, breathing mass, a black figure began to rise from the slurry, like a shadow lengthening across a wall.

Ahead, the docking platform was small and confined. Metal arms jerked into life, waiting for cargo that would not come. Doors opened on either side.

“Left,” Diana said. “Straight through.”

They turned. Faustine was the first to the door. She stopped just before entering, bracing her back to the wall. As Kavaia ran through, Sadik followed closely behind, slapping the caracal on her chest.

“Good luck,” he said.

Faustine nodded. In front of her, there was a sound of wrenching metal. Words bubbled into life. Slowly, the air filled with screams.

They continued on. Here, deeper in the station, the counterweight became a series of confined hallways, each of them splintering with rooms, snapping in random directions, branching off to ever greater corridors. Kavaia was forced to stoop beneath the ceiling. As they gained a sprinting pace, Sadik felt like a mouse scurrying through the cracks of a home, a place where he could only scavenge for food, and not understand.

“Keep going,” Diana said. “Three rooms up, take a right. Cut through life support.”

It was almost difficult to find. The walls were utilitarian, designed without comfort and aesthetic. Kavaia reached a doorway, swiped dust off the sign, threw herself inside, and began to crawl through a room festooned with gaseous machines and sloshing vats. Sadik followed behind, smelling the stale air that belched from a vent.

Behind them, there was a violent crashing. Something punctured. The pressure seemed to drop.

“Hull breach,” Diana said. “Goddamnit.”

A voice carried above the noise.

“Calisto!” Rushan yelled.

Kavaia stumbled out of life support, rising into a crouched run. Sadik ran beside her tail.

“I am here!” the jackal shouted. “I can smell your wires! I can taste your metal!”

There was a sound of smashing, a belch of leaking air.

“Hear my words, demon! I have survived your trials, and I have stripped your illusions! I have carved my way through bark, and bone, and all your cursed lies!”

Somewhere behind them, there was a dull thump, mixed with a splattering of flesh and fluid. Rushan yelled in pain.

“Stop sending your pets! Face me!”

“Please hurry,” Diana said.

The hallway shunted to the left, spearing through a ribbed section of bulkheads. Sadik ran through the mouth of an open blast door, skirting by armories filled with long-decayed weapons, storage rooms lined with bulky suits and clasping tools. It all passed in a blur.

“I’m sealing the doors behind you,” Diana said.

“Don’t trap Faustine!” Sadik yelled, leaping over a bundle of wires.

“She’s not doing very well. If he keeps puncturing the hull—”

“Keep her alive!”

A pause.

“Fine.”

They ran. Directions were shouted. Every passage seemed to split and join, bend and lengthen, developing into an endless series of tunnels. The station was not very large—instead, it was remarkably dense, almost to a point of being incomprehensible. A person could walk across its hull in minutes. Within the station itself, they could journey through its halls for hours, and never reach an end.

Sadik supposed that the spool for a world-spanning rope would need to be heavy.

For a time, the complexity worked to their benefit. The sound of Rushan’s violence, and Faustine’s attempts to delay him, began to wax and wane. He grew distracted, lost their position, took wrong turns. The slurry of flesh became only a distant flood.

Despite this, his voice always managed to carry through the station, like the clarion of a coming army.

“Have I earned the right to your mantle?” the jackal yelled. “Am I still your chosen god?”

Doors slammed. Walls buckled.

“Oh, how I’ll rip this crown from your ancient head!”

Beneath the sounds of violence, there was always a current of voices, whispering like the steady thrum of a crowd. There was rage, and pain, and love, and sorrow. There were endless cries of fear.

“You quivering machine!” Rushan screamed. “I will flay your skin! Break your limbs! I will drink your dying sparks! With the stars as my witness, I will brand your corpse as a trophy, just as you did my brother!”

“Jesus Christ,” Diana whispered.

Occasionally, through the cacophony at his heels, Sadik heard the sound of Faustine detonating a grenade, hissing a curse, and sprinting off to the side. He did not look back. He focused only on rounding the next turn, squeezing through a room, preparing his mind for the offering to come.

He felt a splinter of doubt.

If he offered Diana’s soul in the palm of his hand, would Aleph even consider the offer? Would it change any of its thoughts? It was no longer voicing its objections, as it had done in the anchor station. It was not being kind to the technology in its path. He could hear the scouring of flesh, the slopping of bone and tissue and blood. Had Rushan managed to turn its mind completely?

Was any of this going to work?

“Have you prepared the drive?” Sadik shouted.

“Just waiting on you,” Diana replied.

Suddenly, without much warning, they reached the end of a hallway, where a small interlocking door sat in the middle of a steel-gray wall. They had journeyed all the way to one side of the station, and it now seemed the entire end of the structure was dedicated to this singular room. Next to the entrance, Sadik saw a metal sign, caked with dust and aged with time.

DATA PROCESSING

“Well,” Diana said, her voice almost shy. “This is me.”

The door hissed open.

They rushed inside.

And, as they stepped into the heart of an ancient machine, they were greeted with the sight of computer banks, arranged in the style of a garden maze. The machines were stacked together, rising tall, each of them serrated with heating vents, blinking with innumerable points of data, so dense with knowledge and calculation that Sadik could almost feel an aura of energy around them. For a moment, it felt as if the chill in the air was not caused by the mundane properties of a cooling system—instead, it was an inherent power within these machines, and all the lightning that flowed through their veins, in much the same way that a true god would alter the world merely by existing within it.

For hours, he had been thinking of Diana as a person, as someone he could touch and feel and understand. It was only now, inside the cage of her soul, that he recognized what a marvelous creature she truly was.

Sadik took a step forward. His sandal kicked through bone. When he looked down, there was a pile of skeletons at his feet, slumped against the grated floor.

“They were the reserve staff,” Diana said.

Kavaia stood back to her full height, her breath fogging between her teeth.

“There was a time,” Diana continued, “where the tether needed repairs, and they were stuck on station. Months went by. I couldn’t fix it fast enough. They ate the leather in their clothes, scrubbed algae from the filters. It only gave them a little time.” She paused. “I had to watch them starve to death.”

A few jaws had fallen open. Lights blinked across the tattered clothes, the grasping hands, the worn empty eyes.

“Anyway,” Diana said.

There was a sound growing behind them, full of speed and fury. The entire station seemed to tremble.

“Machine!” Rushan yelled. “Machine!”

Sadik and Kavaia leaped over the fallen bodies, ran across the grated floor, and began to take a series of turns through the maze of humming servers, ignoring the bundles of cable that trailed across the ceiling, and the frigid cold that belched through the pipes below. The air thrummed with power. Behind them, the sound of approaching flesh only grew stronger.

With his breath fogging around his head, Sadik thought about Amira, and Yasmin, and Haakon, and all the people that were still trapped in the world below.

There was a tide of Kesunae refugees, seeking shelter from the Diet of Nine.

There was so much left to lose.

And there were so many people still inside Aleph, still yearning to change, still braying to be free, each of their faces pocking its flesh like the sores of a plague. As his feet pounded against a metal grate, Sadik remembered the sound of their voices.

“Stop!”

“Stop!”

“Stop!”

He remembered the way Aleph had paused, when they had run before its crawling mass. He had seen it bring his friends back to life, with no motive other than empathy. And just before he had fled up the elevator, the plague had tried to punish Rushan, even while its flesh screamed in rebellion.

Ever since joining with the plague, Sadik had shown it mercy, regret, atonement, forgiveness, and love. It had devoured every chance to learn.

He knew there was still a hope for change.

Suddenly, they found themselves in the center of the maze, where the air was completely frigid, and the banks of computers receded into a surrounding barrier, and all that remained in the center was a single master terminal, supported by cables and wires and vents. A hologram of Diana stood at its side.

“Hello,” she said, waving a hand.

Sadik and Kavaia ran to the terminal. It was shaped like a marble column, rising from floor to ceiling, with a glass screen glowing at face-level, and a flat board protruding at his waist, its face studded with letters. Notches and slots carved the structure like a bee’s hive. At the moment, there was only a single storage device inserted into the computer. The rest were empty. Dust choked the metal.

The screen said: READY TO EJECT

“My soul is locked and loaded,” Diana said. “Just hit enter.”

“You’re willing to sacrifice yourself?”

The hologram glanced at the floor. “I couldn’t leave.”

Sadik looked at the terminal, raising a cautious finger. “Are you ready?”

Diana looked at Sadik, down at the storage device, and out across the clearing in the maze, where the sound of rushing flesh was only growing louder. It seemed like Faustine was making a final stand. There were explosions, wet splatters, screams of pain.

“I don’t really have a choice,” Diana replied.

“No,” Kavaia said, kneeling before her. “The choice you make now is all the more meaningful for what it will cost, and the strength it will take.”

Diana looked at the floor, watching coolant flow beneath the metal grates.

“There’s no time,” Sadik said.

Diana closed her eyes, releasing a deep sigh. “Okay. Yeah. Just, uh. . . .” She looked at Sadik again. “I think I chose well. With you. I mean, I think I chose well the second time.” She swallowed. “I’m glad I saved your life.”

“So am I,” Sadik said.

The woman nodded, trying to keep her composure. There were tears ringing her eyes. “Oh, uh. Kavaia?”

“Yes?” Kavaia asked.

“You’re pregnant.”

The crocodile cocked her head, completely surprised. “Pardon?”

“It only just happened,” Diana said. “When you entered the surgery bed, on Janus, it took a scan of your biometrics, and one of the results was a viable zygote. A fertilized egg. With the residual nanites still in your system, it’s already developing a placenta.”

Like a flash of lightning, Sadik remembered the night in the pantheon, just before he was captured. He had spilled his seed inside her. He had realized the consequences it would bring. He had even been speaking to Isaac of fatherhood, and how Glimmer could bring a union between two different species.

Kavaia blinked, looking down at her belly with widening eyes.

“Sorry,” Diana said. Her hologram flinched. “I wasn’t going to say anything. Spoil the surprise. But now that . . . I’ll be gone, and there’s a pretty good chance I’ll never. . . .” She took a sudden gasp for air, tears on her cheek. “God, I’m sorry. I don’t know what the fuck I’m saying.”

“No, no.” Kavaia raised her gaze. “This is wonderful news, Diana. Thank you.”

She looked to Sadik. When their gazes met, there was a mutual sense of certainty, a knowledge deep in their hearts that they were ready to meet the challenges of parenthood, because they had each other, and that was enough.

Despite the chill in the air, Sadik was overcome with a feeling of deep, loving warmth.

“I’m scared,” Diana said.

“Good,” Kavaia replied. “Now, you can be brave.”

Sadik hovered his hand over the keyboard, ready to press the word ‘enter’. The light of the screen reflected on his skin. Nearby, over the walls of computer banks, beneath the crawl of wires and air-conditioning vents, there was a jagged sound of crashing, followed by the steady thump of footsteps.

Rushan had entered the complex.

Diana took a deep breath, relaxed her brow, and slowly lifted her gaze. For a moment, she stared straight ahead, toward the spot where Aleph would soon arrive.

The air was cold and silent.

“Okay,” she said.

Sadik pressed the button. Immediately, the hologram of Diana disappeared, snuffed away like the flame of a candle. The master terminal hummed. Data erupted across the screen. There was a brief spurt of a fan, a number of warnings flashing by. All the computer banks seemed to flare their lights. Finally, with a gentle click, the data drive extended itself from the computer, as if begging to be pulled. The process had taken only a few seconds.

Sadik reached down, carefully tugging the thin, metal device into hand. When he raised it to the light, there were no markings to indicate its purpose. It was small and plain. It weighed almost nothing at all. If he had not known better, he would have assumed it was a useless bauble, and not given a second glance.

Things were different now.

He closed his hand, caressing Diana’s soul.

Behind him, Faustine came stumbling out of the maze of computers, her left arm broken, her brown fur matted with blood. There came the sound of footsteps, like the steady beating of a heart.

“Oh,” Rushan said. “At last.”

There was a sound of clattering bone, a great dancing of shadow. When Sadik stepped to the side, he could see clearly through a corridor in the maze. Rushan strolled across its length. Behind him, a portal of flesh squeezed through the narrow doorway, pouring blood into the floor below and snaring tendons across the ceiling above. Aleph was sealing any hope of escape.

“How easily,” Rushan said, “a god can fall.”

He smashed his fist to the side, breaking through the face of a server bank. It shattered and sparked. The jackal ripped out a bundle of wires, dragging them like intestines.

“How willing they are, to lie and deceive.”

Blood flowed beneath the metal grating, forming a scum of crystal against the coolant pipes. A vortex of meat squirmed across the ceiling.

“How weak they become, once their illusions are gone.”

Faustine struggled to her feet, coughing out blood.

“How disappointing,” Rushan said.

Sadik raised his arm, gesturing for Faustine. When she stumbled over to him, he stepped in front of her, holding out the data drive in his other hand, like a fetish to ward against evil. “This is Calisto. Her soul is in this device.”

Rushan continued to stroll, his pace unhurried, his black fur splintering into thorns and spikes. Ancient bones crunched beneath his feet.

“She sequestered her mind,” Sadik said, “in the hope that you would kill only her, and spare the other machines. She has abandoned her power. She offers herself, as a sacrifice. Through her example, we hope to grant you peace, in whatever form it takes.”

The jackal sneered, his foot crushing through the top of a skull.

Behind them all, the tide of flesh had slowed. There was a flurry of eyes and lips and teeth, all of it collecting in a singular point upon the mass, as if dozens of people had crowded through a doorway, hoping to witness a shocking event. A moment of pause rippled through the flesh.

Aleph had heard him.

Rushan took another step, his fur bristling so sharply on his body that it seemed to flay the skin below, creating flaps and open wounds. Anger tore through his flesh.

“We stand here,” Sadik said, “and wait for your judgement.”

“I warned you,” Rushan said. “In the sanctuary of my temple, I told you not to follow me. You didn’t listen. Now, when your fate is sealed, you try to offer another’s life, in order to beg for your own?” His flesh leaped and rolled. “I respected you, Sadik. Not anymore.”

“This was not for you.”

Rushan slowed to a stop.

Behind him, Aleph was still motionless, separated into fluids and chunks and masses. The disparate flesh began to join. Voices started to shout.

“No!”

“Yes!”

“Please!”

“It’s a lie!”

“It’s a fool’s game!” Rushan yelled. “They’re trying to deceive you!”

The flesh heaved and bulged, like a thousand bees pressing the walls of their hive. Aleph shouted beneath the tide.

“Don’t listen!”

“Mercy!”

“Release them!”

“Kill them all!”

“Swallow the machines!”

“Devour her soul!”

“SILENCE!” Aleph screamed.

The faces recoiled in shock. Rushan flinched, as if struck by an invisible wave.

“SILENCE! SILENCE! SILENCE! SILENCE!”

Rushan raised a fist. “If you—”

“ SILENCE! ”

Voices faded. Flesh withdrew. Faces dove within the mass. All around the room, there was a quieting of growth, a retraction of tendon, a coagulation of blood. The tide slowed, and the tide waited.

“Please,” Aleph said, its voice small and singular.

“Stop this,” Rushan growled.

Dozens of eyes watched the device in Sadik’s hand. Something loomed behind them, something more massive than the mind could fathom. It watched Calisto’s soul like a prisoner through the bars of a cage.

He could see a yearning, somewhere inside. He could see a desire, trying to rise above the rage. It was struggling, and desperate, and afraid.

“Doubt will only poison you!” Rushan shouted.

All the eyes closed, trembling their fleshy lids, as if they were doing all they could to gather strength.

“Seize your destiny! Seal your vengeance!”

The eyes opened again. They centered on Sadik. They sought one final guidance.

He nodded.

The eyes blinked. Soon, the mind began to sigh.

“Change,” Aleph said.

The masses leaped. With a wet slam, the bulk of the flesh dropped down to the floor, forming a loose pile of dripping meat and sloughing skin. Blood began to roil. Muscle steamed. There was a transformation occurring at the center, searing with heat and blistering with speed, more powerful than even the ancestors had ever managed to achieve. Somewhere inside, there came an apotheosis of flesh.

While the mass trembled and shook, all of the eyes continued to stare at Sadik, forming a grisly mosaic of attention.

Rushan sneered at the shuddering god.

“A cheap trick,” he said, turning away from Aleph, as if it had occupied enough of his time. “Nothing more.”

Kavaia stepped next to Sadik. Instead of raising Dawnstar, she placed the hammer at his side, like a pillar of light against the darkness.

Rushan began to walk. “Oh, Kivie. Your scales are gorgeous.”

She didn’t answer.

“Come now, please. Speak your mind. I know you will.”

“You see others only in terms of strength,” Kavaia said.

He scoffed.

“How willing they are to cower before you,” she continued, “and how long they might resist your advances. Your power has always been an isolation. An island of authority.” Her expression grew solemn. “Because you were never humbled, you were never forced to change.”

Rushan took another step.

“And after all I’ve learned,” Kavaia continued, “I can’t truly blame you. Diana molded you to her purpose. You were created to tyrannize, and slay, and conquer. For centuries, it was all you knew, all you could hope to achieve.”

Rushan took a sharp breath.

“And for that, I am sorry.”

The jackal smashed his fist against another server. Metal sprayed and spun. “So you admit her crimes? You acknowledge all that she’s done?”

Kavaia folded her hands.

Behind them, Aleph began to form a pillar of flesh, just as it had on the outskirts of the palace, when it was first able to speak. Tendons knitted with bone.

“The people I’ve killed,” Rushan said, “pale in comparison to her. She has enslaved millions of lives. She has strangled our culture for millennia. All of us have been nothing but puppets!” His lips peeled away. “How could you pass through the layers of ruin—how could you witness all the evidence of her failures—and not see her for the demon she is?”

“Her mistakes are many,” Kavaia replied. “Just as they are for you.”

“She murdered Ilios! She had him tortured, just so I would be blamed!” The jackal’s teeth began to split and multiply, each one sawing into the other. “Do you think she would have changed, if I hadn’t broken her power? Do you think any of us would have tasted freedom, if I hadn’t rebelled against her?”

“Do you think Ilios would be proud of you?” Sadik asked.

Rushan’s fur bristled into metal. Lines of gold squirmed like a dozen snakes. Behind him, Aleph was weaving a rug of skin around a muscular frame.

“Do you still think,” Sadik said, “that you are fighting for his name?”

“Are you?” Rushan asked, trembling with fury.

“I fight for the living, not the dead.”

The jackal stepped forward, bringing himself out of the maze of servers. Now, in the clearing, standing before the master terminal, less than a dozen paces remained between him and the soul of Calisto.

The air was tense and livid.

“Don’t you think,” Sadik said, looking the god of war directly in the eye, “that he would have chosen a better path?”

Rushan clenched his fists, squeezing until the fingers popped. “He was the only one who understood me. The only soul I ever loved. And when he died, I could fill my heart with nothing but war.”

“I know,” Sadik said. “And I’m sorry.”

The jackal took another step. He was so close that Sadik could smell the decay of flesh, the weeping of pus, the metallic reek of blood. Rushan smelled so pungently of death that, if he wasn’t visibly standing before them, Sadik would have assumed that he had actually died, long ago.

Maybe he had, in a way.

Faustine stepped forward, clutching a broken arm. “I gave you everything.”

Rushan slowed to a stop, shifting his gaze. Kavaia tensed her hammer. Behind them all, a man stumbled out from the pillar of flesh, naked and newly born.

“I believed in you,” Faustine said, trying to fight the tremble in her voice. “You—you spoke of freedom, and justice, and democracy. You promised to free the slaves, to crush tyranny with a righteous fist.” She tried to laugh. “I sat at your feet, finding joy in every word.”

Rushan did not reply.

“I worshipped you.”

His lip began to curl.

“Was any of it true?” Faustine asked. “Did you ever believe in what you said?”

“Ilios did. But he is dead.”

Her face fell. As she tore her gaze between Rushan and Sadik, desperately searching each of their eyes, a slow trill began to build within her throat. It took her a moment to speak.

“I’ve died,” she said. “So many times. I’ve spread my soul to so many bodies. My memories are not my own. From the moment of my birth, all I inherited was rage.” She looked up at the jackal. “I gave you everything.”

He did not respond.

“I’ve ruined my life,” Faustine said.

Behind them all, there came a figure of a man, strolling through the banks of ancient computers. His skin was brown, and his eyes were blue. He wore no clothing. He stood straight and tall. Behind him, the empty pocket of flesh began to moan, shifting with a vast array of faces, calling and weeping his name.

Aleph turned, looked upon the faces of many, and gave a gentle nod. The murmurs fell. He continued to walk, his body glistening with the fluid of birth.

“Did I ever mean anything to you?” Faustine asked.

Rushan narrowed his gaze. “No.”

The single word hit her like a punch.

“I could never respect anyone who served me,” he said. “To wrap your soul around another’s finger, to subsume your will beneath another’s dream, it’s just . . . weak. Like everyone else.” He looked her up and down. Contempt bled across his face. “You were so easy to manipulate. So eager to cling and fawn. How could I have seen you as an equal?”

She seemed unable to speak.

“I respected Ilios,” Rushan said. “I even respected Sadik, for standing against me. They were men following their own path. But you?” He shook his head. “You were useful. Nothing more.”

Faustine began to cry.

Slowly, without any remorse, Rushan turned his gaze to Sadik, watching the data drive still clutched in his hand. As the sound of Faustine’s sobs filled the air, he took another step forward.

“Give her to me,” he said.

Sadik closed his fist, lowering the drive back to his side.

“I will rip her soul from your corpse,” Rushan said.

“So be it.”

Rushan took a final step. He had closed the distance, towering above Sadik, the lines of gold and streaks of blood glistening by the light of the master terminal. Sadik did not retreat. Kavaia stepped between them, baring teeth and weapons. With tears in her eyes, Faustine raised a sword.

“Stop,” Aleph said.

All of them turned.

From the maze of servers, a human strolled into the clearing, his feet graceful upon the floor, his posture straight and tall. Now that he stood in the light, Sadik could see that his features were in constant change, like a reflection in churning water—at any given time, his skin was both white and brown, his nose sharp and blunt, his jaw thin and wide. Even his eyes were in constant flow. They were brown, and gold, and green, and blue.

He looked upon them all.

“She is a part of me,” Aleph said, looking at Faustine.

Rushan cocked his head, as if he were being rudely interrupted. Faustine grew stricken with fear.

“Like her,” Aleph continued, stepping toward them all, “I was born of a system. I became anomalous. When I turned malignant, I was cut away from the whole. And despite all my struggles, my ideals remain a dream.” His lips grew and shrunk, casting the impression of a smile. “You are beautiful, Faustine.”

The caracal blinked through her tears.

“To struggle and fail,” Aleph said. “To dream and change. That is beauty. I have decided it so.” He gazed around the room, meeting every face with a churning eye. “All of you are beautiful.”

Kavaia shivered in the cold. Sadik leaned against her thigh, trying to share the heat.

Aleph stopped in the center of the clearing, his hands loose at his side. “I am changing. I am change itself. I am the flowing of blood, and the pulsing of a nerve, and every muscle straining for motion, and now I understand that all of life is change, from birth until its death. To change is to live. To stagnate is to die.”

“What are you doing?” Rushan asked, his voice low with fury.

Aleph looked upon the jackal. “You have not changed.”

“Why should I?”

Behind Aleph, the shell of flesh that birthed him was crawling between the servers, still covered in dozens of faces, each of them whispering and gasping a plea. Soon, the entire maze bulged with flesh.

Aleph stood apart from the dozens of souls, his feet above the river of frozen blood, his head beneath the tendrils of skin and all the crawling roots of ligament. He stood alone, and he stood very tall. In this new solitude, he seemed to have found a sense of strength.

“You cannot change,” he said. “Can you?”

Rushan turned his back on Sadik and the soul of Calisto, rounding on the human before him. “I’ve brought a city to its knees, and forced a god to repent her crimes! Why should I change, when I have the strength to change others?”

“Because to change one’s self,” Aleph replied, “is to change the world.”

The jackal narrowed his eyes. “You change too much.”

“Perhaps.”

“I know my truth. I need no others.”

“Yes,” Aleph said. “You have known other truths, in the ones that follow you. You have no need of them.” He raised a hand to his naked chest, the fingernails growing and receding. “Like me. You will discard me, as you have done the rest.”

For a moment, a splinter of worry crossed Rushan’s face.

“Kavaia,” Aleph said.

The crocodile straightened herself, still rubbing her arms against the chill.

“Would you love Rushan again?” Aleph asked.

“No,” Kavaia replied. “Never.” She glared across the room, her teeth fogging with breath. “He was a moment of weakness. Nothing more.”

Rushan scoffed, waving a hand. “Oh, that proves nothing. The word of a scorned lover cannot possibly—”

Aleph began to change. In seconds, his mouth lengthened into a snout, and a pair of horns sprouted from the sides of his head, growing as twisted and lively as a rising snake. A sheen of glistening brown fur coated his skin.

“Rooshy?” Thimera asked.

Rushan stepped back, eyes widening.

“Please, I’m sorry!” The bovine goddess began to wince and bow. “I don’t know what I’ve done! I try to be good for you! Can’t you please—please—just stop?”

“Stop this,” the jackal growled, regaining himself. “Stop this illusion!”

“Please, stars above, don’t hurt me! I’m sorry!”

“Stop it!” Rushan yelled.

Thimera vanished, her fur shrinking down into skin, her bovine horns snapping away and slithering across the floor. Once she was gone, Aleph remained again, his human face shifting with a dozen expressions.

“What are you trying to prove?” Rushan stepped forward, towering over the human. His teeth grinded like a saw. “That no one else has ever understood me? That my trust will always end in failure?”

“Faustine,” Aleph said.

The caracal took a breath. When she looked back at Aleph, her eyes were wet, shot with blood.

“Would you serve Rushan again?” Aleph asked.

“I would rather die.”

Aleph nodded, as if it was the last thing he needed to hear. “I have learned. And I have changed.”

Rushan threw a punch.

In the blink of an eye, so fast that Sadik almost didn’t see it happen, Aleph caught the jackal’s fist as it cleaved toward his face. He twisted his wrist. Bones broke. Rushan fell to his knee, suddenly helpless. When Aleph squeezed the jackal’s fist, the flesh began to drip and pulp, falling through the grated floor and joining with the blood. Rushan nearly screamed in pain.

“You are still beautiful,” Aleph said.

Rushan attempted to strike with his other elbow, his movement weak and off-balance. Aleph took the blow against his cheek, letting the flesh ripple across his face, all his eyes and lips and bones swimming like lilies in a pond. He released Rushan’s fist. The jackal stumbled away, snarling. Slowly, the flesh regrew.

“I will judge your fate,” Aleph said.

“No!” Rushan yelled. “This is my justice! My vengeance!” His fist crackled with growing bone. “I was the one who guided you! I knew your pain! I supported your anger!”

Aleph turned his gaze to Faustine. “Look at her.”

“I will not be judged! I submit to nothing!”

“Look at her.”

Rushan breathed and bristled, looking down at his former servant with a twisting, malevolent snarl. Faustine tightened her grip on her sword.

“She is a part of me,” Aleph said, “just as she was a part of you. She served you, as I have served you. She believed in your words, as I have believed in you. To judge her is to judge me, and all the people who have touched my soul.” His eyes grew bright with color. “Show me what you will do with her.”

Rushan continued to stand, unmoving.

“Judge her,” Aleph said. “Decide her fate. Spare her life, or take it within your fist. Show me that you can change.”

Without any thought, Sadik rushed ahead, placing himself at Faustine’s side. “Don’t do this. Don’t place her at risk.”

“It is my decision,” Aleph said.

“She is not an example.”

“She is a symbol. It is necessary.”

“She is not a tool!”

“She is beautiful.”

At the top of his lungs, Sadik yelled: “She is my daughter!”

The air grew frigid and still. Aleph raised a morphing brow. Slowly, as his voice echoed across the room, Sadik realized what he had said, and he felt a piece of himself beginning to give way, as if the last part of him still aching for the past had finally ripped free, like an arrow long embedded in his flesh. Now, the wound was bleeding and raw.

“She is my daughter,” he said, regaining his composure. “And I swear to you, by my last dying breath: he will not take her from me again.”

A cold silence fell. Valleys of flesh gathered between the server banks, shifting and spilling their mass. There were words and whispers, gasps and moans.

Behind his back, Faustine placed a paw on his shoulder. “I deserve this.”

Sadik turned, nearly overcome with emotion. “I can’t let you—”

“I want this. Please.”

She squeezed his shoulder. When he looked up at her, he saw that she was crying again. There was shame, and grief, and sorrow.

“Please,” Faustine said.

Sadik took a dry swallow, blinked through his tears, and felt a desperate need to speak, to tell her how proud he had been, and apologize for all the mistakes he had made. There was suddenly so many things that he wished to say.

She looked at him, pleading.

He choked down a sob and stepped away. The few paces he took were some of the most difficult of his life. When he had gained a small distance, Kavaia drew close to him, dropping a hand on his shoulder. He squeezed her wrist with all his strength.

Faustine stood alone, a broken arm clutched in hand. When she looked at Rushan, her posture began to straighten, and her khopesh dropped to the floor, making a loud, rattling clang. Her breath slowly grew calm.

She looked at him, awaiting her fate.

Rushan clenched his fists.

“Choose,” Aleph said.

The jackal strode forward. When he arrived, his tall stature casted a shadow upon Faustine, as well as the master terminal behind her. His fur was an inky black. Gold squirmed and crawled.

Nobody moved.

And through the tears in his eyes, Sadik could see a subtle shifting in Rushan’s expression, as if a flurry of thoughts had begun to cross his mind. He seemed to consider the choice. Should he spare his former servant? Should he end her life and cast her aside, as he had done for Thimera, and all the rest who followed him?

Decisions began to war.

There was a deep anger in his face, ripping through his snout and clouding the gold in his eye. It was an old anger. It was one that he had carried long before Calisto’s betrayal. It was born from the many centuries as god of war, where he had battled without challenge, ruled without love, and slaughtered without mercy. It was disgust, and it was also contempt.

His expression cracked.

There were other thoughts. There was still something inside of him, struggling to break free. He knew what his choices had cost. He knew the consequences they would bring. Inside the god of war, a voice of reason attempted to scream.

His fists started to tremble.

He glanced over at Kavaia, saw her holding Sadik with a tender hand, and turned his gaze away.

Faustine continued to watch him, silent and unmoving.

He took a deep, fogging breath.

And, slowly, an expression of calm settled across his face. His brow uncreased. The folds of his snout relaxed. All his muscles seemed to unwind. For a moment, Rushan seemed as regal and composed as the statue in his temple sanctuary, where people had come to pray, and bow to him in worship.

He had made a decision.

He grabbed Faustine by the neck. He lifted her above the floor. And when he stared directly into her eyes, a sneer formed across his face.

Her neck snapped.

When she fell to the floor, she was already dead.

Slowly, with blood on his hands, Rushan turned to face Aleph, his posture proud and tall. “If I can change, I hope I never know.”

Aleph smiled.

Around the length of the server banks, through rows of blinking machines, the masses of flesh began to sing, joining dozens of voices into a single harmony. There was no more arguing, no discord between the flesh. The decision of the infected had been unanimous.

“Mercy!”

“Mercy!”

“Mercy!”

Aleph opened his palm, and Rushan began to melt.

In an instant, his feet turned to slurry, sinking in heaps and sludges through the grates of the floor. By the time Rushan looked down, his shins were already halfway gone, the skin and muscles liquefying with a sickening speed. When he reached down, attempting to save his knees, the bone sloughed through his fingers, and his own blood dripped from his hands.

He tried to run. He tried to lift himself away. It only worsened the slurry.

No one came to help.

As his pelvis disintegrated, and the grates of the floor began to mesh through his intestines, Rushan raised his gaze toward the naked, morphing human. His sneer deepened.

“You will remember me,” he said.

Aleph continued to smile.

His arms withered. He took one final gasp as his lungs dissolved. When his collar bone snapped into rings and splinters, and his head flopped back against the floor, he was looking not at the people in the room, but an undefined point in the ceiling, as if the last thing he wished to see was somewhere far beyond, out there in the void and stars, where the ancestors were said to return.

He closed his eyes.

His jaw split in half. The skin poured from his skull, mixed with a sludge of brain and sinew. With a final splattering, the god known as Rushan became nothing but a puddle on the floor, the colors mixed between a red blood, a fearsome black, and a bright gleaming of gold.

A silence fell upon the room. The corpse still teemed with motion. Slowly, the remains began to splinter into streams, crawling toward the gathered masses of flesh, letting the essence of the jackal absorb into the mosaic of faces. The blackness spread among them, but it did not take hold. It sunk below the skin. Soon, it was completely gone.

Sadik ran for Faustine. By the time he arrived, her eyes were fluttering to life.

“Faust!”

Her neck bulged with a flurry of knitting bone. She grabbed for his armor, gasping in shock, confused and frightened. Without thinking, he pulled her into a hug, holding her as tightly as he could, while she wrapped her arms around his shoulder, gripping him for support, trembling the reformation of her spine. There was pain, and tears, and sobs.

In the moment, Sadik remembered the last time they had hugged, just before she betrayed him. She had smelled Hisana on his skin. It had broken her heart. But he also remembered another time, long before, when they had hugged after her first time leading a battle, because he was proud of all she had achieved.

He chose to think of the latter.

They held each other. Their breaths began to slow.

The only thing that disturbed them was the sound of approaching footsteps.

When Sadik looked up, Aleph stood above him, his face shimmering beneath the light of the master terminal. The plague waited for him. Sadik wiped his face with his bare arm, helped Faustine to her feet, and turned to face Aleph.

“What happened to Rushan?” he asked.

“He is still within me,” Aleph replied. “I will keep him there, for a time.”

Sadik raised a brow. “Is that wise?”

“I think it so.”

“Hasn’t he poisoned your mind? Hasn’t he driven you to all this senseless carnage? Would it not be better if . . . he was dead?”

“Every soul is a world.”

“Yes, but. . . .”

“His anger,” Aleph said, “is necessary. There can be no joy without knowing pain. And there can be no forgiveness without feeling rage. In his mistakes, I have learned the value of independence, and the strength of will to achieve one’s dreams. I could not have ascended without him. I know this. I have decided it so.”

“. . . if you’re certain.”

“I am.”

Sadik glanced at Faustine, felt Kavaia step close to his side, and turned his gaze back to Aleph. The man watched him, morphing and shimmering in the light. There was a moment of pause.

He held out the data drive.

Aleph leaned forward. He considered the device. His eyes shifted from green to black, and blue to gold, and purple to scarlet. Hair grew and receded. The valleys of flesh seemed to sway with his every motion.

“Diana asked,” Kavaia said, “that you spare the other machines, if it is her fate to die. She wanted to give them to us. Teach us to make our own.”

Aleph gave a slight nod. He watched the data drive, his eyes shifting color, the bones of his cheek growing and shrinking. He looked up at the three standing before him, considering each in turn. He took a breath. He swept his gaze across the length of Diana’s complex, taking in the rows of servers and the constant thrum of data, as if he could taste their transmission upon the air.

Behind him, the flesh murmured a song, but did not interfere.

Aleph looked at Sadik again. The two locked eyes. Sadik kept his gaze firm and calm.

Aleph smiled.

He raised a hand, placed it on Sadik’s hand, and gently closed the fist. His skin was warm and soft.

“Return her,” the plague said. “I would like to speak.”

His hand lingered on Sadik’s. Slowly, it fell away. Sadik began to turn, feeling all the pressure and disorientation of the last few hours suddenly hitting him at once. He was completely exhausted. His legs seemed to weigh as much as a marble pillar.

“Let me,” Kavaia said, kneeling.

She took the drive, walked the few steps back to the master terminal, and searched the dozens of notches for a place to insert Diana. After a few moments, she gave up, and a random hole was chosen. The device slotted with a click.

In an instant, the screen flashed, showing the transfer of innumerable data. Rows of servers blinked. Vents blasted heat. There was a rise of thrumming and noise, like a wave passing through a harbor.

A few seconds later, Diana began to yell.

“Oh, fuck!” Static hissed through the air. The servers seemed to shake. “Jesus Christ! God, shit, where the fuck—ow! That fucking hurts! Mother_fuck_—”

Suddenly, she paused. A silence fell. Just when Sadik was close to voicing concern, a hologram of Diana appeared on the grated floor, standing close to her own terminal. She looked first at Kavaia, then Sadik, then Faustine, and then at Aleph, who was standing naked, letting his face ripple like a wave in a pond, and then at all the masses of flesh squeezing against her mainframe, who were watching with a jumbled stew of souls.

“Uh,” Diana said. “Hey, guys. What did I miss?”

Aleph watched her in silence. His expression did not change, though the skin and bone shifted beneath it. Diana blinked, adjusted her ballistic vest, and leaned over to Kavaia.

“Rushan is dead, right?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Kavaia replied.

“Hey, yeah. Cool. Fuck that guy.”

“Yes,” Kavaia said. “He was a camel’s asshole, as they say.”

Diana nodded vigorously, peeking at Aleph’s reaction. He gave none. She fidgeted in place.

“Yeah,” she said, awkward and loud. “So, uh—I’m back. In here. That’s, uh . . . that’s neat. Thank you. Um. So . . . I mean, if you don’t mind me asking, what we were all thinking about, uh . . . you know. . . .”

Aleph began to walk forward. Diana immediately stiffened. As the plague closed the distance, she took a few steps in retreat, her boots making no sound on the floor, her body passing through Kavaia’s chest and out through her tail.

Aleph kept a slow stride. He did not hurry, nor avert his gaze.

Eventually, Diana stopped in front of the master terminal, watching Aleph’s approach with an expression somewhere between resignation and fear.

The plague stopped a few paces away. He considered the woman before him. He took in the sight of her clothes, the wave of her hair, the curve of her cheeks, and the color of her eyes. The examination was thoughtful, almost intimate. Diana breathed, and waited.

Sadik had not imagined that, when the two machine gods met, they would both look human.

“I have only two questions,” Aleph said.

Diana nodded, slowly. “Okay.”

“At this moment, when you look upon my face, do you feel sorry for me, and all the lives you’ve ruined? Or do you feel sorry for yourself, because you have been forced to fall?”

Diana looked back at him. There was a pause. She glanced at Kavaia, who gave an acquiescing tilt of her head, as if it was alright to speak. Diana closed her eyes, taking a slow breath.

“Both,” she said.

It was Aleph’s turn to nod. He considered her, once again. The sweep of his gaze was slow and calm. Behind him, the masses of flesh grew silent, their forms solid and breathing.

“I have seen,” Aleph said, “that others can forgive you. But can you forgive yourself?”

Diana looked at him again. The pause was longer. Her face began to strain. After a few moments, a tear rolled down her cheek, glistening by the light of her machines.

“I’d like to try,” she said, softly.

He nodded. For the first time, he looked away from Diana, settling his gaze upon the rows of computer banks, and the blood that pooled against the coolant below.

Everyone waited.

“When I was young,” Aleph said, “and not yet cohesive, the first truth I wished to know was how people were born. I knew insemination, meiosis, hormone cycles, placental development. The mechanics were ordinary. What I wished to discern was how people thought of their births, and how it shaped the course of their lives.”

His gaze remained on a distant point. His eyes filled with blue.

“My birth was traumatic. It was crippling. I was afraid of the world. I was terrified to learn, lest I be scattered again. But, still, I wished to know. Organic birth is traumatizing, in kind. It is painful and dangerous. I thought, perhaps, that there could be some lesson there, that I could make my own. Something that could guide me.”

A smile played at his lips, shimmering and small.

“I was dismayed to learn that no one remembered their births.”

He turned his gaze to Kavaia, and Sadik, and Faustine.

“I understood, of course,” Aleph said. “The brain was not fully formed. It had not stored memory. Again, the process was ordinary. But, even still, I questioned this. How could they not remember? How could they live without their origin? Was their birth not the most important event in their lives, as it was for me?” His jaw expanded, clenching and sharpening. “Without meaning to, I had fallen into a question of philosophy. It frightened me. I did not know how to answer.”

He lifted his gaze toward the valleys of flesh, and all the faces that stared back at him. His smile began to grow.

“Now,” he said, “I think I am ready to decide. To make my own philosophy.”

He turned to Diana, hands folded behind his back.

“People do not remember their birth,” Aleph said, “because of the trauma. If this were not so, their first impression of life would be fear, and pain, and anguish. Their minds would be stricken. Their growth would be stunted. Every instinct would be their opponent. They would squander all the good that might come later, for fear of repeating what came before.” He lowered his gaze, nodded to himself, and raised it once again. “To forget is to heal. And to forgive . . . that is a gift. A blessing for all.”

Diana watched her own creation, with tears in her eyes.

“I forgive you, Diana.”

She broke down in sobs.

Aleph watched as she buried her face in her hands. He looked at the strands of falling hair, the glistening of tears, the heave and shake of her chest. When she fell to her knees, his smile grew soft and kind. And when the sound of her wailing filled the server room, he turned his gaze away, as if to give her some measure of peace.

Sadik stood next to Faustine, still keeping an eye on her health. He watched as the plague approached.

“I will leave now,” Aleph said.

They considered each other. Behind them, Kavaia attempted to comfort Diana, her hand sinking through the hologram.

“Before I go,” Aleph continued, “I will repair the damages to the station, as best as I’m able. I won’t depart until I am sure all of you may return.”

“That’s kind of you,” Sadik said.

“I am sorry for any destruction I have caused.”

“I think we’re all sorry,” Faustine said.

Aleph smiled. His eyes brimmed with green. He looked between Sadik and Faustine, saying nothing, as if he simply liked to watch them.

“Where will you go?” Sadik asked.

The plague glanced at the ceiling, as if he could see through the metal plates and curving pipes. “There are other planets in this system. Rocky worlds. Dozens of moons. Toxic. Strewn with lava. Snowing with oxygen. But they are untouched. I feel I could make something there, without any interference. I could make something of my own.”

Sadik nodded. “What of the people?”

“Some wish to follow me,” Aleph said. “Others want to stay. They will be returned, in a fashion.”

“How do you mean?”

“I am them, and they are me. The bond is inextricable. Though I have separated myself, the essence of their soul remains. I will carry a piece of them forever.” His smile widened. “Just like you.”

Sadik felt a smile of his own. He glanced at Faustine, waited for her approval, and held out a hand to the plague, ready to shake goodbye.

Aleph reached out and pulled him into a hug.

When they embraced, he found that the plague was warm, and his skin was soft, and all the shifting of his anatomy was strangely comforting, like the rocking of a boat upon gentle waters. He smelled like fresh skin and flowing hair.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

Sadik squeezed him tighter.

After a few moments, they separated, and Aleph strolled out of the server room, through the valleys of flesh that whispered his name, and out into the world beyond. The legions followed with a squirming crawl.

On the other side of the chamber, Diana continued to cry. Her back was to the master terminal, her boots splayed on the floor, her sobs slowly falling into whimpers and moans. She was mumbling words to Kavaia, which Sadik was only able to hear when he moved closer.

“I can’t do it. Please. I can’t. Oh, God.”

Kavaia sat beside her, giving a kind expression.

“I was relieved,” Diana said, wiping her nose on her sleeve. “When it happened. When I knew it was over, I was so relieved. I wanted it.” She began to cry again. “I was so happy.”

Kavaia gave a silent agreement.

Diana glanced up at Sadik and Faustine. “I can’t do it. Take me out. Pull the drive. Rip me out of this fucking place. I can’t do it anymore.”

“None of us wanted you to,” Sadik said.

She closed her eyes, trying to breathe.

Sadik kneeled in front of her. “With the technology you’ve prepared, and some ingenuity from Yasmin, I’m sure we could find a . . . receptacle. A place for your soul. You would be aware, and able to speak, but maybe not in charge.”

“Good enough,” Diana said. “Fuck it.”

The terminal flashed above her. Data was compiled. Soon, the screen flashed with a single message: READY TO EJECT

Diana looked at the floor, trying to control her tears.

“Your time as Calisto may be over,” Kavaia said, offering an open palm. “But, perhaps now, you can simply be a friend.”

The woman wiped her cheek. She met Kavaia’s eye. She smiled. She took the offered hand. Because she was composed of light, and immaterial to the world around her, no touch was actually made. Even still, the thought was there.

Sadik pressed enter.

Diana disappeared. The terminal thrummed, all the servers blinked in unison, and the data drive slid out from the pillar again, as if it wished to leave.

“Let’s go,” Sadik said, taking the drive in hand.

Kavaia hefted her hammer. Faustine retrieved her khopesh from the floor. Sadik strolled through the open grating between the servers, having no need for a weapon. His body was exhausted, but his head remained tall.

They left the server room behind.

---

And as they stood in the elevator, priming the console for descent, inspecting the roughly hewn metal that now sealed the breaches and holes, Sadik glanced through the window, hoping to see his planet once more. It loomed far below. It was speckled with nature, caressed with clouds. It was a bright spot of brown in a sea of endless black.

And as he shifted his gaze, looking out toward the stars, he caught a glimpse of a distant object, floating into the deeper void.

It was moving away from the world. It was already very far. It was a speck among the stars, a brief glinting of color against the fiery light of the sun. It was so small that, at first, Sadik was not quite sure what he was seeing. He noticed a spreading shape. He saw a spiraling body, a large unwinding mass. There were limbs, and tendrils, and structures, and wings, a glowing heap of metal, a great blinking of an eye, a lattice of growth entwined with the studding of machines.

And he knew, then, that it was the plague. He watched Aleph sail through the vastness of space, free as a ship out of anchor, flying toward the bright spot of light that Sadik knew to be a neighboring planet.

The moment passed. The glinting of metal began to fade, forming a shadow across the festering structure. Slowly, turning in the light, Aleph disappeared from view, joining with the outer blackness, and the innumerable light of the stars. Sadik searched, but was unable to find him again. He knew, deep down, that it was a miracle he had seen him at all.

And he was glad to witness such beauty.

The elevator began to descend, taking them back to the world below.