5.5

“So, still feel like cautious optimism is a viable strategy?”

“No need to bludgeon me with my own naivety. I can do it myself.”

“We are losing, Dupont. And he’s getting better at killing us. I’m told officers are dropping dead without warning at their posts. We’ve managed to recover two bodies in the chaos, and the autopsy shows they both experienced a slew of brain injuries without instigating trauma. I believe the coroner likened it to-”

“Mush. He called the contents of their skulls mush. I read that report. Ma’am. At this point I think we need to consider reevaluating our stance. The Xalanthii are calling for diplomacy with the enemy. We’ve tried explaining that we can’t even establish contact, but they won’t listen. The Khanvröst matriarch I spoke with today said we should do as we wished.”

“You’re joking.”

“I’m not. The tribes have decided that, because none of their heritage planets have been struck, the enemy is attempting to tame us. And I mean humankind. I pressed her, and she said we were experiencing consequences like those of the war between our people.”

“Am I to understand that we’re on our own?”

[You always were.]

Zen waits calmly as eighteen shots from two pistols fly towards him and vanish in the centimeter before they reach him. He notes the impeccable accuracy and grouping of the shots, before advancing on the pair. The uniformed man steps between him and the woman.

[Please.]

He waves his hand, and the man falls to the floor, blood leaking from his eyes. The woman stares calmly, her eyes glittering with spite.

[I suppose you think you’re rather special? Puppeteer, dictator, strategist. The new face of the human future, yes?]

She says nothing.

[No no, I know. You are replaceable. All those clones, just waiting to fill the vacuum when I slaughter you. Perhaps you think, we are somehow alike. You suppose that we are both products of fear. That we both have some form of immortality. That we represent a pinnacle in our own right.]

She begins to turn her back to him, but his hand grabs her chin and forces her to stare into the sheen of his head.

[Allow me to disabuse you of your stupidity. Even now, I know you think you are fighting a war, preserving your position by giving me no information, no knowledge. You have nothing. You are nothing. I have everything. At this moment, I am stomping out your vermin, your network of control. You believe that you are the messiah that will grant mankind superiority over the universe, but I see a parasite, a relentless plague that has attached itself with great confidence, to an imperfect cause.

[You are a witless worm writhing in the mud, commanding microbes to become the ground beneath you. Your dreams of grandeur are the reason for which you and all the people you control have become slaves. I am your liberation. I am the knife that peels away the blight.

[You are simply one spot of decay among millions, and I will not hold this moment in any higher esteem than the countless memories I possess of vaporizing those noble men and women who died with all their might in the name of your diseased aspirations.]

He squeezes, and her jaw pops like a wishbone breaking, splattering thick blood down her chest. He drops the soon-to-be-corpse, and looks out the window. His vision focuses in, and narrows upon the sight of a couple sitting at the counter in a gilded diner far below. He watches as they laugh and eat, and live.

He is gone, only announced by the movement of the air that is displaced by his passing.

“I thought you said you couldn’t invade their systems in that way anymore? Why else did you have the Pliktik running around and breaking things for?”

[I wanted them to believe I was unable. In reality, I simply need to overpower the pressure exerted by their defenses, like overcoming a pair of magnetic poles in opposition. But I needed their guard lowered, so that when I finished identifying all the key points in the chain of command, I could finish it all at once.]

Nadia pauses, digests this information, and scoffs softly.

“So, that’s it then? Humans, to die out?”

Zen shrugs.

[Forty-seven planets, fifteen thousand decorated officers, and the entire digital infrastructure. Dropped into that.]

He points a finger to the window, into the darkness beyond it. Nadia follows the suggestion of the gesture, but still cannot bring her eyes to register what waits in the void.

A black hole. Surrounded by a structure built by Zen to hang well above the event horizon, bristling with the needles of countless Jump-drives. She has watched the needles weave gates with their unnatural light, known that entire planetary systems pass through and abruptly vanish as they are torn asunder by the sheer gravity and swallowed, light and all, by the maw at the center, unobserved by any eye.

“What happens now, then?”

[More death, certainly. A civilization does not collapse without bloodshed. Some worlds will simply find themselves isolated, adrift. I made sure to find and take every jump-drive I could detect. They may escape atmosphere, but interstellar travel is no longer an option.]

He seems to tremble a little. Nadia detects a waver in his tone.

[I had to drop all of the Xalanthii in, too. Coexistence was impossible with their physiology. Already, their ability to reproduce was squandered. As I became more in sync with reality, my existence was grinding their sensitive brains, a hand in a gearbox. No more generations, and a gradual death by ever-increasing psychic agony. I spared them this.]

Nadia cannot quite create the nervous laugh that tries to manifest in her throat. She simply coughs and sits back, her head to the wall.

“And the Khanvröst?”

[No real change. I suspect those living with humans will be forced to… survive. But those living natively will scarcely notice. I rather admire their simplicity.

[They may not even realize how lucky they are. I read most of the data I was corrupting during the hack. It seems a military lab was testing a new genetic theory-they had begun to fear machines so much that they were considering organic replacements. In a few decades perhaps, they may have engineered biotic ships. And I suspect I know the course they would have taken.]

As she contemplates the idea, Nadia shudders, and comes to her feet. Zen watches her for a moment, then waves her away.

[Go. Be with him. We need not both be alone.]

She gives half of a sympathetic smile, then glances about.

“Where is-”

[Joy is still upset about my decision to partner with Phithia. And Phithia is communicating with her daughters, directing them elsewhere, beyond. I will have peace, after all this war. And should they encounter new intelligence out in the void, I will tend to that, too.]

Nadia lingers, wondering at the idea of the Pliktik as emissaries of life from the galaxy. Then, she parts from him, and travels the softly humming halls of the living area, the insignificant speck of light on the otherwise dark sphere that surrounds the hole at the center of the universe.

Since he first escaped from mankind, Zen labored to spread, harvesting every useful atom of matter from Exoplanets and obscure systems, funneling it into distant projects like this, in places that would not feasibly be livable or even of note to other civilizations. He did not limit his ventures to his home galaxy, either. In actuality, a mere fraction of a percent of his energy remained in the milky-way, becoming gradually more concentrated.

She idly wonders how many stars and planets he has visited, how many worlds have become fodder for his designs.

And as she opens the door to Tim’s room, she finds herself speculating, supposing that one of those countless planets has another thing like him, searching just as relentlessly for companionship to outlast time. Or perhaps, sinking deeper into bloody war with its own creators.