A hard laugh burst from me, a spasm of disbelief I couldn’t control. “What are you talking about?”
“The war your grandparents lived through? I stopped it.”
“Yeah, by nuking a planet and poisoning another. And bombing the Outer Zones to pieces. How many innocent lives did galactic harmony cost?” Or had he conveniently forgotten the mass casualties, as dictators do?
“Humanity had been tearing itself apart for generations. It wasn’t the Sambian War, Quintessa, it was the SambianWars. One bled into another, endless. People courted conflict acrossplanets, and I didn’t invent conquest.” The Overseer stood there, bullets in his jacket, armed guards all around him, and something made me stop and listen to him for once. There was a to-hell-with-this tone to his voice that I’d never heard before. It scared the crap out of me. A predictable Overseer I could almost deal with. An unpredictable one was a loose cannon of cosmic proportions.
“Planets’ worth of people had already killed one another because they couldn’t agree on the most basic of things. One faction had to have power over another. Sycophants had to crawl up the ranks. No one was ever happy with what they had,” he spat. “Ever.”
“It’s called free will, asshole,” Merrick ground out. “People argue.”
“Argue?” The Overseer aimed a missile-blast look on Merrick. “They mowed each other down in the name of freedom—a concept that can’t apply to an entity this big. People tried. And failed. Unified needs and desires could barely work on a planetary level. At a Sector level, they started to unravel. No one could agree on what liberty looked like. What it should be. For whom. One person’s utopia was another person’s hell. Each wanted their version of peace and happiness to win.”
“So you came along to impose yours?” I scoffed.
He shrugged. “Someone had to.”
“No, actually, someone didn’t. Democratic planetary rule worked in a lot of places.”
“Until someone ambitious on Planet A decided he or she should rule longer, or without the consent of the majority. And then why not do the same on the rock next door? Why not the whole Sector? That’s how wars start, Quintessa. Don’t you know your history?”
Now he was impugning my schooling? Fuck him. “Millions of people annihilated in order foryourversion of perfection to take over?” His version wasmyhell. “Books burned. History erased so people won’t understand that revoltworks. Unfairly distributed resources and medicines. Power abuse rampant across the military.” My voice almost shook with disgust. “Not a single vote in my lifetime—for anyone or anything. Existence across the galaxy determined by a dictator with zero sympathy and more firepower than anyone else. How many people did you kill to get what you want?”
“Less, I imagine, than what endless war would have eliminated.” His cold, unfeeling response was a slap in the face after my outburst.
I gaped in shock. “Do you actually believe you’re the good guy in all this?”
“I don’t really care anymore, Quintessa, because when I’m done, I’ll have wiped forty years from existence and can start again—thanks to you and your blood.”
I stared at him. He’d just said a bunch of words, but I didn’t understand. Confusion and sudden terror choked off my breath. My heartbeat sped up, battering wildly in my chest.
“You’re bluffing,” Jax growled. “No one can do that.”
Sanaa took a sharp step forward to stand next to Shade. “What do you need from us, sir?”
I shot her an angry look on instinct. She was still playing her role, standing tall and straight, seemingly unaffected by anything the Overseer said, no matter how awful or preposterous. Sanaa’s ability to adapt and carry on, no matter what, kick-started mine and got my brain back online. She was a force of nature, and right then, she reminded me of lava hardened into strong black rock and polished smooth by the trials she and my father had been through to try to contain this lunatic. The time would come when she would heat and crack and fucking explode all over. I couldn’t wait. The Overseer had no idea what was coming for him in the form of Sanaa Mwende.
Or Tess Bailey.
My fingers curled around the flash blast in my hand. I found the detonator switch and rubbed my thumb across the corrugated knob as my gaze whisked over Jax and Merrick. Wrath. Shock. Revulsion. Dread. The same storm crashed inside me. I needed to understand what the Overseer had planned.
Shade kept quiet at the forefront with me and Sanaa, probably thinking his Bridgebane act was up but not quite certain. Not speaking just condemned him further. His disgust came through the mask. No one could hide that kind of visceral reaction. Behind me, Ahern didn’t say a word. Shiori murmured a soft prayer, her lilting whisper a reminder of times and places worth fighting for. I swallowed.
“I don’t need anything at this time, Lieutenant,” the Overseer answered. “Quintessa’s already given me all the answers.”
“Whatare you talking about?” I’d never given this man anything. Not affection. Not trust. Not an inch of me or anything else.
“You see…” The Overseer flipped a switch on his console and lit up a monitor. He swung the screen our way. Explosions popped and burst all over the place. Phaser fire sped across the screen. Unarmed ships and cruisers disintegrated, picked off by blinding flashes as they tried to flee. My eyes widened. There was a war zone somewhere in the galaxy.
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 waselsewhere, 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.
