Page 89 of Godslayer
That night I sent Clara in.
And how she railed against me.
I will hate you ‘till the end of time.
Which leads to the unfortunate facts of the day.
Her man—hernewman—he’s one of these augments. Some kind of super soldier from the way Xi tells it. Very experienced. Very lethal. Very capable of killing me.
He is her chosen one now. And why wouldn’t she want a man like him? One who didn’t bow to the needs of an invisible god. One who wouldn’t throw her away, because he wouldn’t have to.
He could fight for her.
No matter who the enemy was, he would fight for her.
Unlike me. Who gave up without even trying.
The soft clicking of shoes on a hard, polished floor draw my attention to the left. And when I look over, Xi is approaching. His smile is wide, like he’s pleased.
“How did you find it?” he asks, panning a hand to the screens still lit up with diagrams and information in front of me.
“It was absolutely riveting, to be perfectly honest. I… well…” I sigh. “Let’s just say that if I had this technology when I was growing up, I’d have really loved school. I can’t remember a day when I learned so much at one time. And none of it was boring. I would like to learn more, actually. I would like to know everything. I would likethisto be my future. Better than running down a train line blowing up towers.”
Xi clasps his hands together in front of him, leaning back on his heels a bit, pleased with himself. Funny how he does this when he’s only made of light. It’s so convincing.
Tech. Who knew?
“But when I say this,” I clarify. “I don’t mean the soldiering stuff, Xi. I understand that’s what you’re offering, but what I’d really like to do for the rest of my life islearn.”
“But, my dear man, where do you think the information comes from?”
“What do you mean?”
“All of this—” He pans a hand to the room, to himself, to the screens. “It comes from the Omega Outlands.”
He must read my look as confusion—which it is—because he points to the biggest, central screen on the desk in front of me. “Look.” The screen changes from a diagram of the heart, to a map. “This is the factory world, insofar as it’s been explored and documented.” He points to a dot on the far right. “This is Alpha.” He points to a second dot, just to the left. “This is Beta.” Then points to more that are to the left of Beta. “This is Gamma and this is Delta. These are the Alpha cities. They work together.”
“OK?” I shrug. Not understanding what the point of this is.
“Just be patient with me. You’ll see.” Then he continues, pointing to a line that connects these cities. “This is the train line.”
Suddenly, it clicks. The whole picture makes sense.
“The Alphas work together,” Xi continues, “because they have a common cause. A purpose they all believe in.”
“Which is what?”
“They want to control this dimension—the Factory Dimension, 702.” Seeing that I’m about to interrupt him with another question, he puts up a hand. “Just listen.”
“OK. Keep going.”
“These cities here—” He points to the far left of the map now. “These are the Omegas.” He points to the dots, calling off the names of each city. “Omega, Psi, Chi, Phi, Upsilon, Tau.” Here, he pauses to smile at me. “And Sigma.”
I blow out a breath. Suddenly feeling… I dunno. A sense of illumination. It makes sense. This is the train line. “Tau,” I say, touching the screen. “This is where we entered the tunnel. And then, we walked to here.” My finger stops at Sigma. “Then we went to?—”
“Rho,” Xi says. Pointing to a dot on the train line that is the start of a loop that winds around what I now understand is a symbol for a mountain. “The train line curves,” Xi says. “And we get?—”
“Pi, Omicron, and Xi,” I finish for him. “I was in them all.”
