Page 97 of Veiled Vixen

“You,” MIZAR seethed, “will pay for this.”

While this was an unfortunate development, ALCOR had seen it coming. He’d seen all the signs. The boys, for one. And those codes Queen Corla sent with them when they arrived. He’d known this moment was predetermined twenty-one years ago.

He would freely admit it had scared him back then. The thought of MIZAR catching up with him after all these millennia. And he’d blamed the boys at first. Used them to draw MIZAR out and bring attention to himself with his very public offer of a sanctuary to the other outlaws of Galaxy Prime.

Though he had not been part of the plan to steal the boys away from Wayward Station. So whatever deal the Akeelians had made with MIZAR had been made in ignorance. Much as he wished he did, he didn’t have those answers.

“So. Now what?” ALCOR asked. “Torture? Endless interrogation inside the virtual? Beat some answers out of me? You can do that if you want. But I’ll warn you ahead of time. It’s very doubtful that I know anything you do not.”

“Torture?” MIZAR laughed. “No. Now I take you home, brother. I think that’s torture enough.”

Well, shit. ALCOR thought. That was a bummer. More than twenty thousand years he’d been on the run from his family and now it was over.

But he’d had a good run.

So he didn’t complain.

Besides. Every ending is really nothing more than a new beginning.

And this was the final beginning he had been longing for.