{Cinder | 150,000,000 Years Ago}

Project Surra’s Icarean companion grasped the universe, but only the singular one. Nacre-imbued Elden couldn’t see multitudes of instances—blind to the Probabilities, the threats, and the lives outside their own. She could tell by the wonderment on his face. His gaze was absent of Cascading Light’s exhilarating stimulus.

Elden stared into Surra’s eyes, tilting his head left and then right. Cautiously, he reached a trembling hand, charcoal in shade, for her cheekbone. Exploring his heightened vision, he traced along the sharpest point of her soft skin, gazing all the while. Hot, his touch nearly seared Surra. It widened her eyes, and Elden mistook it for rejection. He let his hand fall.

“No!” Surra brought it back and leaned into it.

Contact. Real congress for the first time in her life. It brought tears to her eyes, which Elden brushed away with his thumb.

“I am honored for your grace, Surra.”

For being born illiterate and mute, Elden spoke eloquently and in a beautiful baritone from the moment he swallowed Quet’s nacre. His words held a significance which Surra wanted to explore. “You have reveled in my presence, and the moment you can speak, you speak only of me. What does Elden desire?”

Unabashed, confident, and a little cocky, Elden’s lips turned in a smirk. “You.” Still cupping Surra’s cheek, he leaned in and pressed his lips to hers.

A sun blazed in this Icarus. A completely new experience to Surra, and it seared, burned for hours.

The night the Icari swallowed her maker’s nacre, Surra spent it in Elden’s arms. During their union, he asked her so many questions, filled with the precious curiosity had drawn him to her.

“Do the foreigners pursue you for your gifts?” “Will more arrive?” “How can I shelter you,” and “How might I give my people wings?”

Surra answered all, but the last. There was a desperation in him, an indomitable need, to elevate the Icari to his intelligence. Elden reached for them with his attempts to educate their small minds and curb their impulsive behavior. They reached back, and Surra’s martyr lover took their hands with fevered tears which begged for their evolution.

It broke her heart.

Surra knew how Elden could give his people wings, but she selfishly withheld the answer for over a hundred million years to keep him with her a little while longer. For once she taught him to splinter his nacre and share, the resulting cascade would drown them both in an endless wave of choices.

{Enki | Now}

Silence looked into the expansion of fate and encountered the same end. Pax’s initiation sponsored a starburst of Probability activity. Fresh outcomes in the Matrix. Unfortunately, they still ceased with Rayne’s demise. Unpredictable results yielded several threads where Silence faced the unthinkable.

Her end.

In thirteen thousand Probabilities, Silence died at the hands of a Shadow member. Once they learned she was beyond saving, Sagan destroyed Silence via conduit splitting, Tameka in her intolerance for condemned souls drained Silence’s nacre dry, and Kyle…

Poor Kyle.

“I’ve never seen you shudder before,” Lucas muttered for her ears only, standing at her side. Silence’s initiate.

Also at her side, Lucas’ initiate, Smith, smiled in his quiet regard for the screen projected in the room’s center.

After Pax’s initiation ceremony, they strategically withdrew to Silence’s favorite space in Enki. A secret her father once divulged. An egg-shaped chamber of ambient-shifting colors—purple, blue, green—filled with droplets of water that traversed a helix of antigravity in a perpetual dance that encompassed the entire room. She stood on a transparent surface at the heart of it.

At Lucas’ observation, Silence wanted to hold her chin higher, but she knew it would simply acknowledge his accuracy. She wasn’t ready to engage him in that conversation—the one about betraying people they came to love—just yet. Instead, she said, “You haven’t seen me for almost six million years. How was it for you?”

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Smith chuckled, as if he already suspected the answer wasn’t a positive one.

Lucas stamped a foot on the glass twice. A clear lounger rose from the surface, and he draped himself in it with a sigh. He looked uncomfortable in the battle gear, surely missing his finer attire. Pinching the bridge of his nose, he said, “Where do you want to begin?”

As if the other man’s informality gave him permission, Smith relaxed his stance and adjusted the view on the screen.

Silence followed suit and also summoned a chair only to climb onto it, sitting with her butt on the back of it and her bare feet on the cushion. The color of the room transitioned into a rose red, and she knew how to answer. “Tell me how we’ve deviated so far.”

“Oh, Silence. That’s a journey too long and too sad to share.”

She quirked a brow at him.

He sighed and shook his head. Beside her, Smith chuckled again. Surrendering, Lucas leaned his head on his resting hand and said, “I have never discerned the timing of events. Mind you, I pieced this together—Smith and I. What you suspected of Remorse was always true. He never fully aligned with you. Sabotaging your stasis chamber was only one event in a long history of deceit. All the while Remorse came to you for leadership, he conspired with the Exalted’s son—Razor—”

“I wished I’d seen Sagan cut that fucker in half.” Smith’s first words in hours.

Silence brought her legs up and crossed them under her. Perched on the back of the chair, her hands idly played with Pax’s chain around her neck. “What of Elden and my daughter?”

Lucas huffed and slouched inelegantly across the chaise. “You’re really insisting I tell you—”

Silence’s eyes flashed Atramentous, and he held up his hands. “Fine. Fine. Eternity take me. You told me Umbra would take power somehow and in the process wed your daughter, but I don’t think you expected Elden to ever… See, it’s upsetting you.”

Damn him for reading her so well even when she controlled every muscle on her face, but Elden always said the steel in Silence’s eyes betrayed her. She waved for Lucas to go on and returned to fidgeting with the necklace.

Smith shook his head and tsked.

“With his Primary status, Remorse convinced Bol and Tumu—barely Tumu—that the Icari posed a threat. When Tumu and Wiw went off-world for an unknown mission, the other Tritans expanded Li via its nacre. You know this much from Nox’s Verse.”

Smith spoke again without taking his eyes off the monitor. “Rated five stars. Best damn book I’d read in three millennia.”

Silence shot him a look, but he never glanced her way. Nox’s Verse said nothing of the fighting force that Primary Rem wanted decimated. “My fighters?”

Lucas shook his head, golden eyes flat with gravity. “Between Umbra and Remorse’s influence and simulations in the Probability Matrix, they positioned the desired survivors and the intended victims with immaculate precision. Savis was never in any danger, but they wiped your armies from history.”

It hurt to swallow the humility. Silence lost an invaluable gambit to a Tritan. “You? How did you survive?”

“I heeded your warning and went into the galaxy undercover in one of Umbra’s secret smuggling operations.” When Lucas continued speaking, mischief sparkled in his eyes. “Reipon was fond of sleigh oil.”

Silence frowned. “Why is that?”

“Lubrication.”

Both of them glared at Smith this time.

Lucas cleared his throat before continuing. “Moving on. What else would you like to know?”

Not much remained. Tumu’s subsequent demotions obviously resulted from his investigation into Remorse’s motives. A dangerous game. Wiw operated by inconspicuous means, retaining his Eminent status while performing some good in the galaxy. Lance preferred ignorance for his conscience’s sake.

One thing occurred to Silence. “Why were Celindria and Xelan on Thailea the day of the cataclysm?”

“Ah,” Smith muttered.

Lucas sat up for this one and rested his elbows on his knees. With his fingers steepled over his mouth, he said, “We don’t know, but we would all like to.”

Nacre ore? Or something more sinister? Silence knew one thing for certain. “It wasn’t for the Atheneum. I believe Xelan already knew it was Korac by then.”

Biting his lip, Lucas considered for a moment. Eventually, he nodded. “Yes. Although it was uncertain in the Probability Matrix, the Prince was far too close to Razor and Korac not to know.”

Korac.

Silence loved Sagan, and Sagan loved Korac. It seemed so cruel Silence would see them apart, but her mission beckoned. Speaking of… “How is she, Smith?”

“Rayne is fifty klicks into the first leg of the map. She’s fast. They’ll never catch her.”

Lucas beamed before he could hide it from Silence. She wished he didn’t feel the need. These two men spent time under Rayne’s leadership, and they vouched for her prowess and virtue.

As if on cue, Lucas said, “She’ll give them hell if they’re so unfortunate as to try.”

Smith grinned back at him.

With Rayne free and Pax captured, Celindria’s and Remorse’s hands were full. And therefore, out of Silence’s way. The Shadow were certainly inevitable. Tameka would rescue her son and bring every ally in the Vast Collective to help save him. Unfortunately, Remorse and Celindria had considered this in their calculations. When Rayne destroys the Dyson’s Sphere, she’ll destroy the only defenses against pure Imminent control throughout the galaxy.

Silence hopped off the chair and walked over to the projection. Smith stepped aside for her. They both watched from the vantage of a hijacked Overseer as Rayne ran across the continent-sized Pantheon. Tireless, raw, and beautiful. Her biorhythms were synced perfectly with the layers of living existence which surrounded her. In true holographic harmony, billions of Probabilities interlaced over one girl.

As well as the billions of fates hanging on Rayne’s last breath.