SHAD POV

We plunged deeper into the Progenitor laboratory. Clearly, Kvaltash knew what he was looking for, but I was lost.

"You learning anything from this?" I asked my team.

"Probably lots," Henry told me, "but we won't know for sure unless we get a chance to really inspect some of the stuff."

There was a sealed flask on a table we passed. It looked as though it was made of copper or some similar shiny metal. I picked it up, tried to put it in my inventory, and got an error. [Incompatible schema.]

"What's that mean, Coyote?"

"It means don't touch anything here," Patriarch Kvaltash snarled. "Can you get it through your head that this is a Progenitor facility and the items inside are not for the likes of you to mess with?"

He seemed to be on edge, less gracious than I was used to. I paid attention to his team. The techs seemed excited, but the Templars stalked with singular purpose.

"It means whatever's being represented here isn't something I have an analog for in my banks," Coyote said. "Or rather, that the Dominator Alliance doesn’t.”

“This fragment is holding out on us, and the more you try to interfere, the more it will fight," Kvaltash said. "Disturb nothing until we get what I am here for." He marched us along. Finally we reached the end of the row of equipment.

A bank of windows had been carved into the wall. We were looking out onto a lake of lava, miles wide. Across the lake was a range of mountains. Overhead, the moon was still collapsing in fragments.

"An observation place," Kvaltash declared, "where the Progenitors could check on their work. We're close."

He turned and led us along the walls. I tried not to stare out the windows too much. It was a depressing sight. I checked in with the outside teams. They had fended off a couple of raptor attacks and a bunch of what they described as magma dimetrodons. Nothing serious. The Gamers were silent, which I suspected meant they were doing a lot of talking privately.

Kvaltash led us along until he found an alcove past the windows, lined with screens. They were all dark and still.

"Here we are," Kvaltash said, and I couldn't help but feel as though some sort of Progenitor lab techs were going to be back at any minute to yell at us for intruding. The place had that kind of feel of being still in use, but silent. So silent. I realized now that's what had been bugging me. My mind said a lab like this should be full of whirs and beeping noises and other tech sounds that media had convinced me was a sign of science getting done. Here, there was nothing.

Kvaltash raised his staff. The alcove was cozy, mostly because it had a roof ceiling only about 12 feet over our heads and little benches lining the walls. Now, as Kvaltash raised his staff, light shone out of it and fell on the displays around the room. As it did, they changed. Text was displayed, images scrolling too fast for me to read, but I kept staring at them, knowing that Coyote was recording this and could likely make sense of it later.

"Keep it up," Coyote encouraged us. "Henry, a little to the left. There, perfect."

"They were trying to uplift the inhabitants of this planet," Kvaltash said sadly. "It looks as though they were not able to make it."

"Why bother uplifting dinosaurs? If they wanted to rescue them, why not just build a giant space ark, bring it here, grab the dinosaurs, and take them to another world?" I asked.

"It is not our place to question the ways of the Progenitors," one of the Templars snarled, turning on me. It was the Talonian, and his tail lashed angrily.

I held up a hand. "Whoa, sorry, I wasn't questioning. I mean, I was, but our reality engine really doesn't mind questions. He's cool with them."

"It is fine," Kvaltash said. "Your question was foolish, but our Templars are supposed to suffer fools with grace."

That didn't exactly make me feel any better. But I subsided.

"The answer, of course, is that the Progenitors' ways are ineffable."

I wasn't 100% sure what ineffable meant, but I got the gist. "No," I said. "No, they weren't. The Progenitors weren't gods any more than these Overminds and fragments we've been dealing with are gods. They were people like us. More advanced technologically than us, with the benefits of however many millions of years of knowledge behind them. But they were people, and they made mistakes. Hell, as far as I can tell, this whole deal with the reality engines was a mistake. They got tired of living, but they couldn't just let themselves die, so they built these things to screw over the rest of us."

"Had they not, you and I would not be here, and the galaxy would belong to the soulless Grignarians," Kvaltash said. "But hush, I am close to discovery.”

And then a voice spoke from all around us. "You. I recognize the scent you are offering me. You woke me up, and you broke me.” It sounded like a machine, not a normal fragment with a personality of its own.

"I did," Kvaltash said calmly. "We needed you to be in pieces before this could work. Now my efforts have come to fruition. Are you ready to yield to us, your successors?”

Was I supposed to be hearing this? Kvaltash admitting right in front of the fragment here that his people had been responsible for the engine waking up early. I knew there had been debate about what had caused it to go.

“It's fine," Coyote said. "The Church of the Progenitors already took responsibility for their action. They agreed they took a foolish risk, and it didn't pay off. They have been fined and several penalties adjudicated on our behalf."

I felt like I’d been punched in the gut. Coyote knew that Kvaltash had been responsible for the engine waking? Everyone knew, except me? Did Grandpa? Had he kept it from me?”

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Kvaltash continued speaking. "I am here for the key. I have prepared a proper receptacle for it and have acquired the knowledge to unlock it. By now the commands we planted have worked deep into your mind. Cease your struggle, and yield to me.”

"Wait, you started this mess?" I demanded. Kvaltash was ignoring me. "You woke up the engine early, caused it fragmented?"

"Recognition code accepted," the fragment’s droning voice said. "Beginning process of transferring key."

But I had heard enough. I rushed Kvaltash. The Templars started for me, but the gamers were on them, holding them back with various abilities as I got my hand under the Patriarch's throat and thrust him against the wall.

“How dare you? Your meddling killed Sage and Colin.” I heard a couple of grunts from the Gamers and knew they'd caught my meaning. "If you hadn't interfered, their ship wouldn't have been destroyed."

"I regret what has befallen, but it is only what my order has been telling the rest of the galaxy ever since we encountered Kronos. We knew this was going to happen. The reality engines are too dangerous to be left on their own. We must take care to properly shackle and harness them."

"Key downloading," the Progenitor voice said. “15% complete."

"So you're looking for a way to skip all of Phase One and immediately shackle the reality engine?" I demanded.

"It will save lives, lives like yours and your sister's," Kvaltash said. "With this key in my possession, the Church will be able to oversee orderly exploits of every reality engine remaining. We may also be able to locate the ones we know should exist but have not yet been able to find. This kind of needless violence will never happen again because we will be able to put the Overmind into proper harness from the beginning."

"I thought you thought the Progenitors were, well, gods. You're talking like you want to enslave them."

He stared at me in astonishment. "You think we want the gods back? We must make sure that nothing of them remains to take back the galaxy that they have left for us. Kronos is the greatest threat we have ever seen because he is, in truth, still a Progenitor. As such, we respect and revere him and will ensure his continued safety, but I will take whatever means necessary to prevent that situation from ever happening again."

There was a lot here for me to process, and I was hoping Coyote was following it because I wasn't sure I was. All I knew was the actions Kvaltash had taken had directly led to my sister's death. I let him drop.

"Come on, team. They can find their own way back through the raptor maze."

"We have a contract," Kvaltash snapped, his voice suddenly harsh.

"Tell that to someone who gives a shit."

"You will, when I call in the penalties and your Earth Alliance is stripped of its right to participate. When the Dominator system locks your Coyote out and refuses to allow you access to zones or communication with anyone in those zones, then you'll care."

I paused. Our contracts did have stiff penalties. Juana had gone over them all with me when we signed. "You'd do that?"

"If you neglect your duty.” He smiled, seeing the pain in my eyes and no doubt taking it as resignation. "I did not expect what happened with your sister, and I am very sorry, but it was not intentional. Now, we have a job to do here. Help me finish."

"Stand down," I told the Gamers, and they released the Templars, who backed away.

"By the way, I had ordered my men not to attack," Kvaltash said. "If you attempt such interference again, you will see what a Templar can do."

I didn't care. I didn't care about any of this anymore. I just wanted to get out of here, get back home, and find a way out of this damn exploit before it killed anyone else I cared about.

"How bad did I mess this one up?" I asked Juana. My anger at Kvaltash had started to wear off as the hours went by. Now that my team was all safely back from our mission, and I'd had some time to decompress and a good meal, I was starting to feel a little better.

"Kvaltash assured us he was satisfied with how our contract was concluded," Juana said. "He also says we have one remaining piece of this key that he needs to retrieve, and he will provide us with details as soon as he knows them."

"Great," I muttered. I didn't really want to see his face again, but now that I knew just the sort of mischief he was up to, I'd be damned if I let any of my teams go with him without me being there.

"In addition, the Combat Archaeologists and several other knowledge teams have returned to the Progenitor lab and are studying it for additional secrets," Juana told me. "Coyote says he's learned some valuable information."

"Yeah, Coyote," I said, looking at the ceiling. He was almost always listening, though he had a quiet mode he could use. If people were in need of privacy, he would only passively monitor for signs of trouble.

I had not shared that information with Juana. She, like many others here, seemed to think we needed to invoke his name for him to pay attention.

"Can we make sense of what Kvaltash is actually trying to do here? At first, I thought it was a good thing, bypassing Phase One, saving lives, but now it just seems like he's as evil as the rest of them. Maybe worse. Some of the Galactics don't believe that the reality engines are people. Just really smart computers. But he knows better."

"He stands to profit," Coyote said judiciously. "If the Galactics can find cheaper and easier ways to run exploits without involving the locals, they will. It's always been their dream to find a key the Progenitors left behind to let them just go and unlock a reality engine without any nasty side-effects. And they really don't like the idea of people like me existing."

"But, all right," Juana said. "You fragments, you and everything else that's part of Kronos, you're people, I accept that. Anyone who's spent any time talking to you can tell that. But you're not the Progenitors."

"No," Coyote said. "We are gestalts of millions or even billions of Progenitor minds melding together over the eons, being changed and transformed even as they sleep. There are still a few Progenitor minds lurking in the depths of most reality engines," he admitted. "Kronos is working on a plan right now for how to wake those up. He's not certain how they will integrate with modern society. I believe the ones in this engine may already be awake, but at a lower level than what we're currently dealing with. They are unable to properly respond. I fear I would have almost as much trouble understanding them as I have understanding you humans."

"So, Kvaltash is trying to replace one type of slavery and exploitation with another," I said.

"Hardly replace," Coyote replied. "The current system and Kvaltash's proposed one both involve enslaving and dominating Overminds or fragments like myself. I naturally am opposed."

"Which hardly matters to us," Juana said. "We're here with contracts which we need to fulfill. Coyote, you and Kronos and the other fragments back home, we're protecting. We won’t let the galactics back in. But we can't be embarking on a crusade to save other reality engines, not when we aren't even able to help ourselves that much. And the penalties for violating our contracts really are that severe. Non-compliance means being locked out of the Dominator network. Which, yes, will cut off our ability to access any of these zones or communicate with anyone inside them."

"Our exploit will be over," Coyote confirmed.

"I thought you had a deal with a Fragment?” I was confused here. What had been the point of us talking to Leonardo?

"I do, and so do many of the Dominators. This exploit is strange in many ways. But I am still dependent on their network for communication. It's only because there are so many different Dominators vying here for whatever they can take that I'm able to steal as much as we have.”

"All right. I still don't like any of this," I told Juana. "I want to smash Kvaltash's smug face in. It's his fault Sage is dead."

"It's no one's fault," Juana said. "It was an accident that couldn't be foreseen."

"An accident because of circumstances he caused, because he was trying to get ahead."

"Yes," Juana agreed. "He was. And so are we. And so is everyone else here at this exploit. And as long as the galaxy is based on this sort of business, that's how it's always going to be."

I didn't really have anything else I could say to that, and if I tried I knew I’d regret it, so I just bowed my head. “I’ll keep a civil tongue in my head. I promise.”