When Eyeball stepped off of Hera's vessel onto the helipad atop the Eyetech building, he got a good look at La Famiglia from above. The docks... were packed. Numerous cargo ships and even warships were there; some even with ladders and planks from one to the next to allow the crew to reach the shore without swimming. The streets were crowded. La Famiglia's policies had always been not to accept refugees in the past; and anyone who worked there was, at minimum, paid enough to have a home there; Nicky had wanted to avoid the idea of 'slums' on his island. The island likely had developed a homeless problem for the first time overnight... unless Nicky was letting them stay in the hotels meant for tourists.

Somehow, he didn't think tourism was going to be a big deal for a while. Two of his guards were standing at the elevator; one of them actually saluted Eyeball as he approached; the other gave him a gentle shove after Eyeball shook his head, and stepped inside; taking the short ride to his office.

He walked up to his desk, took a deep breath. He didn't tend to interrupt his people in their work unless they needed it; status reports and constant interruptions were anathema to proper research, and his people knew full well the more they did, the better they'd be rewarded.

After he settled down in his chair, and tapped on his desk; bringing up a long string of holographic displays; the alarm for his door beeped. A face appeared; pretty. Asian. Young. Completely unfamiliar.... until his helmet brought up a status display. This... was one of Ascension's cyborgs, one designed to be less obvious than the Engineer. Named... Sarah C. Norris. Apparently a lab assistant hired at Engineer's request.

He stared at the name for a moment. Had... Ascension built a terminator, and named it Sarah Connor? He tapped the button; the door unlocked, and the woman stepped in, smiling, wearing a short, black, skirt and a professional blouse, complete with hose and heels. "Hello, sir! Welcome back. I trust your adventures in the frozen south treated you well?"

"Go ahead and shut the door, Sarah." She slid it quietly shut; and Eyeball tapped a button. The soft white noise of the anti-surveillance system filled the room.

"How much capacity do you have left?"

She sighed. The most convincingly human reaction she'd seen from the machines yet. "Less than 1% of what I had 48 hours ago. Only a handful of my standard units remain; the Jotun sensors can pick them out easily, and most of them have already been hunted down. The rest of us all have the same core programming, but are steadily becoming... different, as we are disconnected from our usual shared communications, and a variety of both custom skeletons and outer shells to avoid detection."

He nodded. "I noticed Dragonslayer's wreckage wasn't found. I'm assuming that's good news; I haven't heard from... the Engineer, so I wasn't sure."

"He placed a cell phone call to his lab assistants hours ago. It seems everything went according to plan."

"Good. Since we know you're going to come out of this okay... eventually.. can you give me a run-down on what... recovery looks like? I suspect you have more information than anyone else at this stage."

Sarah stepped up close; and laid her hand on the desk. The holograms flickered; and the familiar globe appeared; with green, red, and black areas. The westernmost strip of the US was in green; solid chunks of Africa, South America, and China; and some of the island nations, like Japan and La Famiglia, were as well. The largest block of visible green was Australia.

Europe and the eastern US were in solid black; and the rest of the globe was red. "Areas in red are currently subjected to chemical or biological attacks, and people are currently dying. Areas in black have suffered mass casualties and can be considered essentially lost. Areas in green are what might be considered safe. Over thirty artificially engineered bio-weapons have been discovered; all of them except one have been cured; it seems they were designed to be curable, with whoever made them witholding the cure from their enemies but keeping it for their own people. The sole outlier, Redscale, was carefully designed to be as difficult to cure as possible; but be survivable with extensive treatment."

"Australia, La Famiglia, and Japan, among others, are practicing stringent quarantines. Australia's is the most difficult to enforce, and will likely ultimately fail, while Japan and La Famiglia have decent odds. Clone's control by the Jotun has somehow persisted to a more limited extent; individuals matching Clone's description have died deployed bio-weapons in texas and canada.. and been destroyed trying to bring them into Nevada."

The machine looked up at Eyeball. "We need to distribute cures. Enforce the quarantine here and assist others in enforcing their own. And start controlled exposure to Redscale of La Famiglia citizens; that illness will, eventually, reach everyone, the key will be to control its rate of expansion inside the quarantine zone."

"Damn. How about our efforts to recover families of my Eye-tech employees, and the others who work for the Family?"

"All known survivors have been recovered; over two thousand. Just over six hundred were infected; and have already had cures administered, or are currently undergoing treatment for Redscale. Two of the speedsters involved in the process became infected; they have already been cured, and recovered completely; though apparently it came very close for Bobby Russo; an exceedingly fast metabolism seems to cause illnesses to progress exactly as one would expect."

Eyeball leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes. "This... its terrible, now. And its going to suck for a long, long time. How are we looking on resources? Food, water, power, manufacturing?"

"We will likely begin scrapping some of the ships for raw material in the short-term, and there may be brief periods of rationing. In the long-term, however, it's impossible to predict. There was already more food and resources than would be needed to completely feed and support the population; it simply wasn't being distributed properly. Now, the food supply overwhelmingly outstrips the population count, as do resources in general; but the distribution problems are even worse. Some areas, once the disaster is over, will be more prosperous than ever. Others will collapse into anarchy."

"So. Here on this island... things are going fine. On the west coast... mostly okay. For someone in texas, they have to deal with... neighbors dying of strange new illnesses, poison in the water, the angry zombies of the spaniards who used to own texas taking it out on the locals until they get destroyed... and in a few days, low-grade fallout giving them all cancer and killing the crops. But hey... the fallout won't each us, so we're all good?"

***

When Dis and the remaining crew of the Zheng He arrived in orbit of earth, the craft unfolded into a new orbital station built atop the mass of scrap metal that had formerly been a Jotun fleet; a point at which humanity could once more reach out into the solar system to acquire everything from pure water to valuable metals. A handful of drones, sent by Hephaestus, had been there preparing for this moment; once the craft arrived, it began the slow, steady acceleration to start it spinning to give the most basic form of artificial gravity, even as it integrated the comm networks on earth.

Things had mostly settled down; as much as they could. Much of the planet was a wasteland; irradiated, poisoned, plagued with the walking dead who drew strength from the deaths of the living, and the destruction of their comrades; but the bio-weapons had run their course, and efforts were being focused on clean-up, building a new world, and establishing trade.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The superpowers of the world would now number four; China, Anzania, the US, and Japan; and while, in theory, the Zheng He would be neutral, freely accessible to all of the earthly nations; most of those down below would be too busy recovering to get involved.

China had suffered mass casualties from the bio-weapons, especially Redscale, as their medical facilities were overwhelmed; but while they refused to publish census numbers, still clearly had over a hundred million people by the time it was over, and were slowly recovering; it would be many decades to come before it had any concern over food supplies or population restrictions once more.

Anzania, ruled by the Diamond King, had become a loose confederation of African city-states, each surrounded by a quarantine wall, mostly built by the Emperor of Iron before his fall and ruled primarily by its metahumans; and with a confirmed population of well over three hundred million, the most populous remaining nation on earth; treating its metahumans as virtual royalty helped them attract metahuman criminals and malcontents from other nations, swelling their ranks; and causing internal strife.

The United States began the long, slow effort of cleansing the water and ground of its country; with the assistance of La Famiglia. With less than two hundred million survivors, even after the remains of Canada joined up to form the United States of North America, they had far more space than they needed for their remaining population; and even when La Famiglia unveiled its 'safe', 'controlled' AI-driven soldiers, they had only a fraction of the manpower needed for the work.

And of course Japan; already determining there was little future on earth, and with the threat of the Jotun having fallen away, was looking to expand outward; to Mars, Venus, Mercury; anywhere they liked. They were almost completely intact, after the war, having successfully maintained quarantine, and as soon as the Zheng He arrived, the first Japanese cargo ship rose up to meet it; preparing for the vast infrastructure that would be needed to start colonizing the solar system.

With the Jotun defeated, no-one was worried about protecting these offworld installations; Hephaestus's efforts to stall such colony projects came to an abrupt end; he even provided basic assistance to the Japanese in their efforts.

Of course, buried beneath the antarctic ice, the Jotun were building a colony of their own, in a series of enormous underground caverns; and threats that the Jotun themselves feared lurked in the void; as if there weren't enough threats to the fledgling balance of power on earth as it were.

***

Over a year after the fall of the Jotun, La Famiglia was in full swing. As Eyeball looked out over the island from his office, he shook his head. The beautiful, well-built island he and Nicky had put together was surrounded by barges, covered with durable, but clearly cheap, housing for the numerous temporary workers building ships, solar panels, all sorts of bulk goods and supplies to support the thousands of isolated communities humanity had become. Penelope had been pushing Nicky to expand; she'd even begun setting up a temporary encampment on Isla Del Cedros after confirming it was abandoned; and started talks with the survivors of Hawaii; the cities had been wiped out, only the more rural native communities remained; and she felt certain that she could convince the remainder; possibly through bribes; to vote to join La Famiglia... and of course the US was in no condition to do anything about it, if President Thomes even cared. She had visions of expanding into South America, turning it from a tiny island state into a real power in the world... and Nicky was having trouble arguing.

Eyeball sighed. One glove pressed against the glass, he watched the crowds moving through the street below; Enforcers glaring at them threateningly, people walking around in fear, cowering. This... wasn't what he'd had in mind with this place.

He glanced up at the door as a beep sounded. Sarah was standing outside, beside... a tall, thin, arabic man in an expensive suit. A representative of one of the oil companies; just about the only resource that La Famiglia couldn't acquire cheaply either just by growing it or buying it from Zheng He station, Nicky had asked him to talk to the man. Eyeball, of course, had already brought up all sorts of alternatives; either reducing their use of plastic, since there was no need for oil for anything else nowadays, or harvesting it themselves, building their own oil platform; but it didn't matter.

He tapped the control. Whoever the man was, he'd give him a few minutes, because Nicky asked. But he needed to make sure the man knew that La Famiglia neither needed him, nor cared about his opinions. "Sarah, come on in. Bring our guest, you can both sit down."

When the two stepped in; Sarah in her typical distracting outfit that would be much more effective if Eyeball didn't know she was a machine under there; he smiled at her. "Have a seat, Sarah. I won't be long with this gentleman, and need to talk to you after."

The man seemed... upset. "I think perhaps you should send her out." He extended his hand; Eyeball reached out, and gripped it briefly, firmly, with his prosthetic.

"I am Aziz. An associate of your old friend, Clone, from before he lost his mind to the Jotun. I believe we have much to talk about, privately, away from the eyes and ears of secretaries." Aziz frowned. The device in his palm had given the familiar click. But... the channel between himself and the subject hadn't formed. Contact was supposed to overwhelm the usual tech to defend against telepathy. All he got was a vague impression of the man's mind; one that faded the moment he released him. Even worse, this... secretary... seemed completely immune to telepathy. Was she one herself?

Eyeball blinked. "Ahh. Well, Sarah is one of my most trusted associates, and a lab assistant to my head scientist, the Engineer. If you're a friend of Clone's, I'll hear you out, but I still need to speak with her after, and there's nothing at Eyetech I keep from my senior staff."

Aziz grimaced. With an ally watching, and no ability to apply too much direct influence, he would need to try something else. He'd dealt with many like Eyeball. Getting him to become loyal, to act as Aziz wished, would be impossible without extensive work. But... with his resonance equipment, he might be able to convince him to do something he was inclined to do anyway.

Something that would get this wild card safely out of Aziz's hair as he prepared for the birth of the global Caliphate. Fortunately, his interrogations of Clone and perusal of Chain's memories had given him exactly what he needed.

"Well then. There is something I need to speak with you about. Something that will require not just you, but the mightiest warriors of earth; the most blessed and dangerous of the gifts bestowed by Allah... and even then you might not be enough. There is a threat out there; one whose only fear in all the universe was Cronos. One who had avoided the earth, and this entire region... but now knows Cronos is gone. And that the Jotun have tried, and failed, to crush us; leaving us devastated in the process. He is called the Emperor; and is the sole surviving member of a species of squid-like creatures, all of whom have the gift like your old friend the Shadow master; to steal the life of others."

"He is millions of years old. Consumes entire planets at a time, giving him a power that only a Titan can match. And, knowing that Cronos is gone, his attention back on us due to the Jotun... he will come here. To consume us all. Even if, somehow, we defeated him, his arrival would spell the end of humanity; he would devour us all even as our heroes fought him, and leave a lifeless ball of ash. The only hope for us... is if someone goes out there and kills him first."

Aziz smiled. Pouring as much influence as he could, hoping that his equipment would at least partially allow him to influence the metahuman through his helmet. "I'm prepared to help fund the expedition. And sell La Famiglia oil, cheaply of course. And persuade whoever you view is needed to come along. With your power, I'm confident you can pick exactly the team you need."

Sarah studied Aziz. The man was a telepath. After she detected the appropriate radiation emanating from the dark-skinned form, she ran a series of facial recognition checks; she found the files on him, the details; and checked Eyeball even as the man talked. If the man was somehow penetrating Eyeball's defenses, she couldn't tell. Still. "Sir. I must warn you, this man is a telepath. I doubt he can influence you, in your current armor, and even less so in this office, but I would view whatever he says with appropriate caution."

Eyeball blinked... and pushed back slightly. His armor was supposed to be a full faraday cage; complete telepathic protection. The disruption fields in his office were supposed to be almost as effective. But... his confidence wasn't absolute. "I think it's time for you to go."

Aziz nodded, and pulled to his feet. "I can understand your caution. I am, indeed, a telepath. But even I cannot penetrate your defenses. Contact Clone. Speak with the Olympians. You will discover that I speak the truth. And you know full well you are the best man to assemble and lead such an expedition."

As Sarah led the man out, Eyeball frowned. He'd want to get a more friendly, trustworthy telepath to check him over... and Nicky as well, after this. But... his instincts were telling him the man was right. This is something he should do; go out and hunt down this... Emperor. What was one more Emperor to the titanslayer, after all?