Houston, Texas, September 20th, 2109.
The Texas sun still burned like it held a personal grudge against humanity.
Even in late September, the heat clung to the air with stubborn determination, baking the old cemetery beneath a shimmering haze. Cicadas screamed from the branches of sprawling live oaks draped in Spanish moss, their ancient limbs casting fractured shadows across rows of weathered graves.
The place felt caught between centuries.
Half the cemetery looked untouched since the Republic of Texas. Cracked stone angels stared skyward through layers of moss and time, while old marble markers leaned slightly into the earth like tired old men finally giving up. Yet beyond the wrought-iron fencing, the Houston skyline glittered with the impossible architecture of the 22nd century—solar-veined towers, aerial traffic lanes full of autonomous vehicles, and massive orbital elevator support spires that weren’t here three years ago.
Past and future. Dead and living. Humanity was constantly trying to outrun itself.
I understood the feeling intimately. Because I belonged to both worlds and, at the same time, neither.
I stopped before a simple granite headstone. There was no elaborate sculpture or religious imagery. Just clean stone and carefully maintained grass.
AMELIA FEDOROV
Beloved Mother
2056 - 2099
Forty-three years old. That was all she got.
Forty-three years of cheap apartments, overtime shifts, unpaid bills, and exhaustion. Forty-three years trying to keep herself and her son alive while the world ground both of them down one disappointment at a time.
She’d only been nineteen years older than the body I now inhabited. That thought never stopped being strange.
“Hey, Mom.”
My voice sounded too loud in the quiet cemetery.
“It’s me. Victor.”
The name still sometimes felt borrowed. Not fake, not anymore, but borrowed. Like inheriting a life already half-written.
The first year after waking up in this universe had nearly destroyed me.
People liked to imagine reincarnation or dimensional displacement as something mystical. Exciting. Transformative. It wasn’t.
It was horrifying. One moment I had been Alan Presco, an aggressively average man from the early 21st century: office worker, video game addict, and science fiction nerd. The kind of person history would never remember because history had no reason to.
Then suddenly I woke up in a filthy apartment in Houston inside the body of a dead drug addict with memories that weren’t mine and knowledge that absolutely should not exist.
I still remembered the panic, the nausea, and the screaming confusion.
At first I thought I was hallucinating. Then I thought I was dying. Then I thought I had already died. The worst part wasn’t the future knowledge. It wasn’t knowing about the Reapers. It wasn’t even the impossible physics sitting in my brain like unexploded ordnance.
It was the memories. Victor’s memories. Not a video clip of a man’s life on a screen, but something raw and undeniably real.
The smell of cigarette smoke drifted through a cramped apartment while Amelia hummed softly in the kitchen. The warmth of her hand against his forehead during a fever. The sound of her crying quietly at night when she thought he was asleep. The crushing shame of pretending not to hear. Those memories weren’t data. They had weight: emotion, love, and grief.
For weeks I couldn’t tell where Alan ended and Victor began. I would look in mirrors and feel disconnected from the face staring back. Then suddenly I’d remember Amelia laughing while teaching Victor how to cook that synth stew without burning them, and the feeling would hit me so hard it physically hurt.
I had inherited someone’s soul-shaped scars, and eventually, terrifyingly, they became mine.
I knelt slowly before the grave, the dry grass crunching beneath my shoes.
“I got married,”
I said quietly; a small smile touched my face despite everything.
“Her name is Alexandra. Alexandra Manswell.”
Alex. Just thinking about her steadied something inside me.
“She’s incredible, Mom. Terrifyingly competent. Runs a multi-trillion-credit corporation like she was born for it. Which, honestly, she probably was.”
I chuckled softly.
“She still makes terrible coffee, though. Absolutely horrific. Weaponized caffeine. I drink it anyway because apparently love destroys self-preservation instincts.”
The breeze shifted gently through the cemetery. I closed my eyes briefly.
“You would’ve liked her,”
I whispered.
“And she would’ve liked you too.”
And I meant it. Because Alex would have understood Amelia immediately.
Not the poverty or the struggle. But the strength.
The sheer stubborn refusal to stop loving even when life gave her every reason to become bitter.
“She saved me,”
I admitted softly. The words came easier here in front of Amelia.
“Not physically. I mean…”
I exhaled shakily.
“Mentally. Emotionally. Existentially.”
Because the truth was ugly. The first year after arriving here, I had been unraveling. Alan Presco’s mind was trying desperately to reconcile impossible realities while Victor Fedorov’s trauma and memories bled into mine until sleep became a battlefield.
And beneath all of it, the guilt. God, the guilt.
I looked down at the grave.
“I’m sorry,”
I whispered. The words escaped before I could stop them.
“I’m so sorry.”
My throat tightened painfully.
“When you died… Victor gave up.”
No answer came except the rustling leaves overhead. But I kept talking anyway.
“After finding you…after the dropout…”
My voice faltered.
“He just stopped caring. About himself. About the future. About anything.”
The memories rose unbidden. A dim apartment, pills, powder. Weeks blurred together into chemical numbness. Victor was spiraling into self-destruction because the only person who had ever truly loved him was gone. And then Alan arrived in the wreckage.
I swallowed hard.
“I remember waking up in that apartment and feeling everything at once. Your death. His grief. My terror.”
I laughed weakly.
“Honestly? I think I spent the first month alternating between panic attacks and existential breakdowns.”
The grave remained silent, but somehow it never felt empty.
“I kept thinking how disappointed you’d be.”
That hurt the most. Not the fear or the confusion but disappointment. Amelia Fedorov had worked herself nearly to death trying to give Victor a future. And what had he done after losing her?
Thrown his life away: drugs, isolation, self-destruction.
I carried that shame even now. Because those memories belonged to Victor, and Victor belonged to me.
“I hated him for a while,”
I admitted quietly.
“Which is strange, because I was him. But I kept thinking, ‘How could someone loved that deeply just surrender?’”
My fingers brushed against the warm granite.
“Then I realized he was tired"
—tired of poverty, tired of abandonment, tired of carrying grief alone. And underneath that exhaustion had been something even worse: the belief that once Amelia died, nobody would ever love him like that again. All by himself. Alone.
I closed my eyes.
“But you saved him anyway.”
Because even after death, Amelia’s love lingered in Victor’s memories with terrifying clarity. Not idealized. Not perfect. Real.
The way she always made sure Victor ate first even when she claimed she wasn’t hungry. The way she smiled through exhaustion. The way she defended him from teachers, landlords, neighbors, employers—anyone who looked down on her son.
Unconditional love leaves permanent architecture inside a person.
That was what finally anchored me. Not physics or destiny. Not even the mission. Her love. A love Alan has never experienced before.
Victor’s memories stopped feeling invasive after a while. They became foundations instead. Proof that this life—this strange, impossible second existence—was real. That I was real. And eventually another thing kept me moving forward: the mission to save humanity, to destroy the Reapers.
Because once the panic faded enough for rational thought to function again, I realized something horrifying: I knew how the story ended. I knew what was coming. Entire civilizations harvested. Trillions dead. Worlds burned into silence.
And unlike the games, unlike fiction, this was real now.
“I think that’s why I survived,”
I said softly.
“You loved him too much to let him disappear completely… and the universe handed me a reason to keep going.”
Save humanity. Simple objective. Completely impossible execution. Yet somehow it gave structure to the madness. Every equation. Every invention. Every sleepless night. All of it mattered because extinction was waiting in the dark.
And for the first time in either Alan’s life or Victor’s life, we mattered.
I smiled faintly.
“Alex figured it out before anyone else. So, I confessed everything to her.”
“And she believed me. God knows why, but she did.”
Not immediately. Not blindly. But eventually she saw the truth.
And instead of running or calling the psychiatric ward, she opened the project management document. I still smile wryly at myself in the memory.
“She gave me something to build toward,”
I whispered. Not just survival. But a future, a family, a purpose bigger than fear.
I looked skyward for a moment. Above the blue atmosphere waited the stars. Beautiful. Silent. Murderously indifferent.
“I saw Silas.”
The warmth drained from my voice immediately. Even now the name tasted poisonous.
“He came before the wedding.”
The old fury stirred in my chest.
Victor’s fury. Personal and intimate.
The fury of a child watching his mother suffer because of a man too selfish to love properly.
“He wanted money,”
I said flatly.
“Of course he did.”
I remembered the smell of whiskey. The trembling hands. The audacity.
Silas Evans showing up after years of absence because suddenly Victor was important, powerful, and useful.
“I wanted to kill him.”
The honesty surprised even me.
“I genuinely did.”
Not dramatic anger but raw and wrathful violence. The kind born from years of helpless resentment.
“For what he did to you. For abandoning you. For making you wait by windows, hoping he’d come back.” I took a slow breath. “But I didn’t.”
Because Alex had quietly touched my arm. Because Amelia wouldn’t have wanted more hatred. Because by then Silas was already punishment enough. A broken old addict drifting through life like discarded trash.
“He died a few weeks ago,” I said quietly. “A bar fight in Miami.”
A pathetic ending. Meaningless and small. The universe swallowed one more insignificant cruel man without ceremony.
“And honestly?” I admitted. “I felt nothing.”
Not satisfaction or melancholy. Just nothing. Because I had already let him go. That was the real victory. Not revenge. Freedom.
“I’m leaving Earth soon,” I said after a while. The words carried strange weight. “We’re moving to Victory.”
Proxima b.
Humanity’s newest frontier. The first world outside the relay network. The untrodden path to the stars.
The world Alex and I were turning into something greater than a colony.
A bastion. A shipyard. An industrial heart. An engine of war. A promise. A preparation for the war still hidden beyond the horizon.
“I won’t visit as often,” I said apologetically. “Interstellar commute and all.”
A weak joke. Still, I smiled.
“But you’re coming with me.”
I pressed my palm gently against the headstone.
“Not physically, but everything good in me started here.”
The warmth of the granite seeped into my skin.
“I think that’s what being someone’s child really means,” I murmured. “Carrying them forward.”
Alan and Victor. Two broken men fused together by impossible circumstances. But Amelia’s love had shaped both of us in the end. It had taught Victor kindness. It had taught Alan how to stay. And together those things had become enough to keep moving forward.
“I’ll come back,” I promised softly. The sun dipped lower across the cemetery, casting long golden shadows through the trees.
“And next time… I won’t come alone.”
I smiled gently.
“I’ll bring your grandchild.”
The thought filled me with an aching warmth.
“I’ll tell them about you. About how strong you were. About how kind you were. About how you kept going even when life gave you every reason not to.”
The breeze rustled softly through the live oaks. For one fleeting moment, it almost sounded like laughter. I stood slowly, knees protesting. The grief was still there. It probably always would be. But it was no longer sharp enough to drown me. It had become something quieter. Love surviving long after pain had exhausted itself.
I gave the headstone one final look. Then I turned away. Not walking from my past. Walking toward the future she had made possible.
Toward Alex. Toward Victory. Toward humanity’s uncertain tomorrow.
And for the first time in a very long time—I did not feel alone.
Victory (formerly Proxima b), Alpha Centauri, November 2nd, 2109.
The wind on Victory never truly stopped.
It rolled endlessly across the basalt cliffs and iron-red valleys of Proxima b, carrying with it the scent of mineral salt, volcanic ash, and distant oceans churned violently by tidal forces no Earth-born weather system could truly imitate. Even after three years living on this world, I still wasn’t entirely convinced the planet actually liked us.
Which, honestly, was fair.
The crimson dwarf star Proxima Centauri hung low in the sky like a dying ember, enormous and oppressive against the burnt-orange atmosphere. It painted everything in shades of rust and copper. The jagged mountain ranges looked like wounds torn through the planet’s crust, while the oceans below reflected deep streaks of violet-black beneath the alien light.
Beautiful, brutal, and alive.
Victory lacked the gentle charm of humanity’s prettier colonies. Avalon had emerald plains and soft blue seas. Dawn had endless silver forests and postcard-worthy sunrises that looked engineered by a tourism board.
Victory had tectonic scars large enough to swallow cities.
Its gravity was heavier than Earth’s by enough to constantly remind you that you did not belong here naturally. Storm systems formed with frightening speed, sometimes swallowing entire coastlines beneath walls of crimson lightning. Even the native microbial ecosystem seemed vaguely offended by terrestrial biology.
And yet—
I love this world. Because Victory felt honest.
There was no illusion here. No comforting softness pretending the universe was kind. The planet demanded resilience from everyone living on it, and in return it offered something rare:
Strength.
I stood near the edge of the cliffside overlook, coat snapping violently in the wind, and stared out across the sprawling landscape below.
Three years ago, this view had been untouched wilderness.
Now half the horizon belonged to humanity.
Hephaestus rose from the rocky coastline like an act of technological rebellion against nature itself. Towers of carbon lattice and reinforced titanium rose from the rocky basin below, their surfaces threaded with lines of blue-white light. Massive pressurized domes shimmered beneath defensive shield grids, while hundreds of cargo drones moved through the air in disciplined swarms like schools of metallic fish.
Far above the atmosphere, visible even from the surface, the orbital elevator stretched upward into the heavens—a silver spear piercing the sky. Around its distant anchor point hung the skeletal framework of the Hephaestus Shipyard, a circular megastructure so large it looked unreal.
Hephaestus had not been built by human hands alone.
AGI-coordinated fabrication swarms, mass-effect assisted lifting frames, titanium shipments, and self-expanding orbital scaffolds had done in three years what old-world engineering committees would have called impossible across three decades.
Twenty-four ship berths.
Twenty-four.
Even the UNSC at its peak during the Human-Covenant War would have stared at something like this in disbelief.
Element Zero changed everything.
That was the funny part about this universe. Humanity here had discovered magical gravity rocks before they truly mastered industrialized megastructure construction. The technological tree was crooked in the most fascinating way imaginable.
The result was a civilization capable of building wonders while still behaving like nervous children playing geopolitical chess with antimatter warheads.
I watched a pair of fusion-powered shuttles streak toward the ring, their engine trails briefly illuminating the darkening sky.
Three years ago, this entire valley had been nothing but jagged basalt, radioactive storms, and enough seismic activity to make geologists cry themselves to sleep.
Now it was the industrial heart of humanity’s future.
Not bad for a death world.
“Brooding again?”
Her voice cut through the wind like warm sunlight through cold glass.
I smiled before I even turned around.
Alexandra Manswell stepped out from the sleek black rover parked several meters behind me, the vehicle’s turbine engine winding down into silence. The red light of Proxima caught in her golden hair, turning it molten. She wore a charcoal-gray command coat over a fitted black jumpsuit, practical and elegant in the unfair way only Alex could manage.
There were CEOs who tried to look powerful.
Alex didn’t need to try.
She walked toward me with that calm, purposeful confidence that made entire boardrooms nervously reconsider their life choices. And yet the moment she reached me, her expression softened into something private and infinitely more dangerous to my emotional stability.
“You disappeared from the conference call,” she said. “Again.”
“I escaped,” I corrected. “Important distinction.”
“You left Admiral Rickert mid-sentence.”
“He was explaining procurement logistics for atmospheric thermal plating.”
“You designed the atmospheric thermal plating.”
“Yes, which means I already know how boring it is.”
Alex laughed softly, the sound warm beneath the endless wind. She stepped beside me and looked out over the city.
For a while, neither of us spoke.
That was one of the things I loved most about her. Alex understood silence. She didn’t rush to fill it just because humans were biologically allergic to quiet.
The city lights reflected in her cyan eyes.
“It’s beautiful tonight,” she murmured.
I followed her gaze. The orbital ring was beginning to illuminate section by section, enormous construction lights igniting across the framework like a second constellation.
“Terrifyingly beautiful,” I admitted.
“Same thing, sometimes.”
“Spoken like a woman who runs a corporation large enough to have its own weather patterns.”
She nudged my shoulder lightly. “Flatterer.”
I slipped an arm around her waist, pulling her closer against the cold wind. She leaned into me instinctively, resting her head briefly against my shoulder.
The warmth of her grounded me, and that mattered more than she knew.
Because sometimes, standing here on Victory, looking at the impossible scale of what we were building, I felt dangerously close to forgetting I was human at all.
The Slipspace drives.
The AGIs.
The shipyards.
The military contracts.
Every year the gap widened between me and everyone else around me. Not because I was smarter—God no, half my advantage came from narrative plagiarism on a cosmic scale—but because I knew where the road ended.
Most people were planning for elections, trade disputes, and market trends. I was planning for the apocalypse. And the terrifying part was that the apocalypse had a schedule.
Alex tilted her head upward to study me. “Where’d you go?”
“Hm?”
“That look.” She poked my chest gently. “The one where you disappear into your own head and start trying to outthink destiny.”
I sighed.
“Is it that obvious?”
“To me? Always.”
I kissed her forehead lightly.
“I was just thinking about how impossible all this should be.”
“That’s because you say that every week before inventing something else that violates at least six laws of physics.”
“Physics and I have a complicated relationship.”
“So I’ve noticed.”
The wind shifted, carrying distant thunder from the western sea.
Victory’s storms were legendary already. Entire atmospheric systems formed and died within hours beneath the gravitational influence of Alpha Centauri A and B. Lightning storms here could ionize the sky so intensely they turned clouds blue-white.
It was magnificent. If Earth was humanity’s cradle, then Victory was its proving ground.
Alex studied the horizon for a moment before speaking again, quieter this time.
“You’re thinking about the future again.”
Not a question. I considered lying. Then I remembered who I was talking to.
“Always.”
She nodded once, unsurprised.
“I do too, sometimes,” she admitted. “Especially when I look at this place.” She gestured toward the city below. “Hephaestus feels… bigger than a colony now. Bigger than a company town. It feels permanent.”
“It is permanent.”
“You sound very certain.”
“I am.”
Because in another timeline, this system was forgotten.
A dead expedition.
A historical footnote discovered decades too late.
Now?
Now Alpha Centauri would become the fortress of humanity long before the Reapers darkened the edge of civilized space.
Orbital defense platforms, battle fleets, planetary defense networks, and millions of people prepared to fight like hell for every inch of red stone.
Would it be enough?
Probably not.
The Reapers were an extinction event masquerading as a civilization.
But I intended for the Reapers to choke on every inch of ground they tried to take.
Alex turned slightly in my arms, watching me carefully.
“There it is again.”
“What?”
“That look.”
“Oh no.”
“Yes.” She smiled faintly. “The ‘Victor is about to say something deeply concerning in an alarmingly calm tone’ look.”
“I do not have a look.”
“You absolutely do.”
“I’m offended.”
“You’ll survive.”
“Debatable.”
Her smile widened. God, I loved that smile.
For a moment the weight lifted. The impossible future. The endless calculations. The fear.
It all faded beneath the simple reality of her standing here with me beneath an alien sky.
Then Alex’s expression shifted subtly.
Business mode.
“There’s another reason I came looking for you.”
“Should I be worried?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s ominous.”
“The security breaches at Hephaestus are getting worse.”
My mood darkened instantly.
“How bad?”
“Two infiltrations this week. One attempted data siphon from the propulsion division.”
She crossed her arms.
“Professional work. Not random corporate espionage.”
“Casual industrial sabotage. How nostalgic.”
“I’m serious, Victor.”
“I know.”
And that was the problem.
The moment humanity started advancing too quickly, predators appeared. Governments. Competitors. Intelligence agencies. Fanatics.
Everyone wanted a piece of the future.
Or wanted to stop it.
“I’ve already started addressing it,” I said.
Alex blinked. “You have?”
“I’ve been speaking with Rodriguez.”
“The Admiral?”
“The very same.”
“That’s usually a sentence that precedes international incidents.”
I ignored that.
“He’s helping me recruit personnel.”
“What kind of personnel?”
I hesitated.
Alex narrowed her eyes immediately.
“Oh no.”
“What?”
“That was the hesitation of a man about to explain why he secretly hired mercenaries.”
“They’re not mercenaries.”
“Victor.”
“Mostly not mercenaries.”
She stared at me.
I sighed dramatically.
“Fine. Retired special forces. Intelligence operatives. A few black-ops veterans. Several individuals whose official personnel records have mysteriously caught fire.”
“Victor.”
“I’m building a private security division.”
“You’re building a private army.”
“Private security sounds much friendlier.”
“Private security doesn’t usually come with orbital insertion training.”
“You’d be surprised.”
Alex pinched the bridge of her nose.
“You cannot casually create a paramilitary organization because corporate espionage annoyed you.”
“I can if I file the paperwork correctly.”
“That is not reassuring.”
I grinned. She tried very hard not to smile back and failed.
“What exactly are they going to do?” She asked.
“Protect critical personnel and infrastructure. Escort sensitive shipments and personnel. Provide security for R&D facilities.” I paused. “And test prototype equipment.”
“There it is.”
“There what is?”
“The real reason.”
I shrugged innocently.
“If I’m designing advanced combat systems, I’d prefer feedback from professionals instead of watching interns accidentally concuss themselves.”
“That happened once.”
“He launched himself through a wall, Alex.”
“In fairness, the gravitic recoil compensator was experimental.”
“It exploded.”
“A learning experience.”
She laughed again, shaking her head.
“I swear sometimes you sound exactly like Angelo.”
“That is deeply offensive.”
“It’s true.”
“He got the sarcasm from Beckett.”
“Mhm, doubtful.”
We stood quietly for another moment before I spoke again.
“There’s something else.”
Alex looked up immediately.
That tiny shift in her posture told me everything. She knew this mattered.
“What kind of ‘something else’?”
“The dangerous kind.”
“Victor.”
“I’m considering beginning development on a third major project.”
Her expression changed instantly.
The warmth faded, replaced by sharp concern.
“No.”
“I haven’t even said what it is yet.”
“I know you.”
“That’s fair.”
She stepped away slightly, folding her arms against the wind.
“Tell me.”
I looked back toward the city.
Toward the future.
“Genetic engineering.”
Silence.
Not shocked silence.
Worse.
Careful silence.
Alex stared at me for several long seconds. The wind screamed across the cliffs. Finally, she exhaled slowly.
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s…” She rubbed her temple. “That’s not a small project, Victor.”
“No.”
“That’s not even a medium ethical crisis.”
“Also no.”
She turned away, looking out over the sea.
“My aunt would have an aneurysm.”
I smiled faintly.
“Yes, she probably would.”
Alex’s aunt was one of the most respected medical figures in the Sol System. Founder of the largest biomedical nonprofit organization on Earth. A woman famous for humanitarian reform, ethical medicine, and making powerful executives cry during ethics hearings.
I had met her exactly twice.
Both times felt like being psychologically dissected by a very compassionate hurricane.
“She already thinks you’re dangerously comfortable operating in gray areas,” Alex said.
“She’s not wrong.”
“She once described you as ‘a brilliant man sprinting toward moral catastrophe while insisting it’s for everyone’s own good.’”
“That seems a little dramatic.”
“She was being polite.”
I sighed.
“Fair.”
Alex looked back at me; all the humor was gone now.
“Why now? You has avoided touching that particular knowledge for years.”
There it was. The real question. Not what but why. I stepped beside her again.
“Because the timeline is accelerating....and because I realized that the galaxy doesn't care about what I'm affair of.”
Her jaw tightened slightly.
“The Reapers.”
“Yes.”
The word hung between us like distant thunder.
Neither of us spoke for several seconds.
Alex already knew everything. The cycles. The extinction events. The indoctrination.
The horror. She’d carried that burden with me for two years now without breaking. I still didn’t know how.
“If indoctrination works biologically—neurologically—then it can potentially be disrupted biologically too,” I said quietly. “If I can understand the mechanism, maybe I can create resistance.”
Alex frowned.
“A biological firewall.”
“Exactly.”
Against any other threat, fleets mattered.
Against indoctrination? One compromised mind could destroy civilizations from the inside.
The Illusive Man proved that. Saren proved that. Hell, entire species proved that.
“I’m not talking about building Spartans tomorrow,” I continued. “At least not yet.”
“That ‘yet’ is doing terrifying things to this conversation.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
I nodded slowly.
“A cure is medicine,”
Alex said quietly.
“A shield is defense. But enhancement? Heritable redesign? Military selection? Those are different doors, Victor. And once opened, they do not close politely.”
“I know.”
The truth was uglier than I liked admitting aloud.
Humanity wasn’t ready.
Not really. Not psychologically. Not politically. Not evolutionarily.
We were clever primates throwing ourselves into a galaxy full of ancient monsters.
And eventually we would meet something smarter than us.
Much smarter.
Unless I changed the equation first.
Alex moved closer again until our shoulders touched.
“You’re scared,” she said softly.
I blinked.
“What?”
“You only get this intense when you’re frightened.”
I almost denied it automatically.
Then stopped.
Because she deserved honesty.
“Yes,” I admitted.
The word came out quieter than I intended.
“I’m terrified, Alex.”
Not of failure. Of success. Of becoming the kind of person who could justify anything if the stakes were high enough.
A fleet could defend humanity. A private army could protect the future. Genetic engineering could enhance humanity for the harshness of the universe.
All true.
Also true: every tyrant in history had loved words like protect, shield, and future.
That was the trap. That was always the trap. Every tyrant in history believed they were saving the future.
Alex reached up and touched my face gently.
“You know what I think?”
“That I’m insane?”
“Well, obviously.”
“Comforting.”
“I think,” she continued softly, “that the reason you’re afraid of crossing the line is because you still know where the line is.”
I looked at her silently.
She smiled sadly.
“Bad people don’t worry about becoming monsters, Victor.”
God.
Sometimes I genuinely wondered if she’d been engineered in a laboratory specifically to dismantle my emotional defenses.
“That’s unfairly insightful,” I muttered.
“I’m very talented.”
“You are terrifying.”
“And yet you married me willingly.”
“One of my better decisions.”
Her smile warmed again.
Then she took my hand and guided it gently downward.
Onto the slight curve beneath her coat.
I froze. Our child. Even after the doctor’s confirmation, even after the scans, even after Alex had started pretending she was not tired in the mornings, the reality of it still struck me with absurd force.
A future. A real one. Not just survival. Not just war preparations and contingency plans and desperate engineering miracles. A family.
“I understand why you’re doing this,” Alex whispered. “I do.”
Beneath my hand, faint and impossibly fragile, was a life that didn’t exist in any timeline except this one.
“I just need you to promise me something.”
“Anything.”
“Don’t lose yourself trying to save everyone else.”
The wind softened briefly around us.
I rested my forehead against hers.
“I won’t.”
“You can’t promise that lightly.”
“I know.”
“Victor.”
I closed my eyes.
“I spent my first year in this universe barely holding myself together,” I said quietly. “I know what it feels like to lose who you are.”
The confusion.
The grief.
Alan Presco and Victor Fedorov colliding inside one skull until neither identity felt fully real.
Amelia’s memories anchoring me. Alex saving me. Humanity needing me. Somehow all of it had become enough.
“I remember what matters,” I whispered.
Her eyes softened.
“Good.”
We stood there together overlooking the impossible city beneath the burning sky.
A/N: This chapter also mark the end of opening arc, Next chapter would be the beginning of First Contact War arc. Chapter 10 will be posted on July 2, Thursday next week. Thank you all for your supported for this story and myself. Hope you all wonderful peaple the best.