Chapter 225
Carte BlancheThe next morning, Alexander sat behind a desk in a room he’d commandeered from the palace staff.
Going home hadn’t really been a choice. A doorway to Astra Omnia, then another back to the island was all that stood between Grimnir and their lair. But everyone else was staying. Annie was somewhere in the city helping clear the last pockets of infected. Augustus was still running portal relays to the habitable domes. Talia had been coordinating with Khalida’s people throughout the night. Felix was asleep last he’d checked, having exhausted his reserves healing as many people as he could. Even Gilly and Gabriel had barely rested.
So he stayed.
The room was small by palace standards, which meant it was merely the size of a generous apartment living room. He’d pushed the decorative furniture against the walls and dragged the desk to the center, positioning it beneath the best light. Two chairs faced each other across it. A spread of papers covered the surface, alongside a pen he’d borrowed from Khalida’s aide.
The door opened. Talia stepped through, then stopped.
She looked at Alexander. At the desk. At the papers. Then back at Alexander.
“You’re writing? On paper?”
Alexander glanced up with a smile. “Yeah. What can I say? Carmen and Jasmine sold me on it.”
Talia frowned. “Seriously?”
He laughed. “No. Have a seat.”
She closed the door and took the chair opposite him. Her posture was controlled, as always, though the faint shadows beneath her eyes revealed she hadn’t slept either.
“What did you need?”
“A few things.” He set the pen down. “Let’s start with the attackers and their tech.”
Talia nodded. Her expression shifted, focus sharpening.
“Realm of the Mind.”
The office stretched away from them. Walls, ceiling, floor, the desk itself, all of it fading into a white expanse that extended in every direction. Only the two of them remained, seated across from each other as if the chairs floated in nothing.
It wasn’t the first time experiencing it, but Talia’s powers were still fascinating.
Then the white space began to fill.
It happened fast. The palace grounds reconstructed around them, seen from Talia’s perspective. Civilians running for the main entrance. Heroes and villains helping the civilians. Droney’s swarm buzzing overhead.
The faintest distortion appeared ahead of them. Then eleven more. Twelve portals, smaller than System gateways but unmistakable in their signature.
Figures stepped through in pairs. Red and black armor, form-fitting and seamless. Personal energy shields shimmering faintly around each one. Dish-shaped devices raised in unison.
Talia slowed the replay.
The team leader’s voice cut through the chaos, frequency-modulated but clear. “Grab the Nakamura brothers. Take Talia Kim and Raelene West. That will bring the Machine God and the Dragon Lord to us.”
Alexander watched in silence, eyes narrowing at the audacity. Hearing it from Annie’s account was one thing. Seeing it through Talia’s eyes was another.
The replay accelerated. Flashes of combat, though parts of the sequence blurred where Talia’s attention had been elsewhere. The sharp sections showed what she’d seen directly: Annie’s MetaMetal shredding the net, Draven phasing his blade through a shield, Titanic’s powers, still unknown, reacting to threats. The blurs filled in the gaps with her best inference, shapes and movement that were close but lacked the crisp detail of direct observation.
Cash going down mid-stride. The Nakamura twins collared and dragged through portals. Droney’s kamikaze runs against the suppression dishes.
Then the retreat. Portals closing behind the surviving operatives. And finally, Talia kneeling beside one of the dead, watching as the armor began to dissolve. The sludge spread where it touched skin, consuming the body along with the equipment. Breaking down every trace of evidence into nothing.
She released the technique. The office reformed around them.
“I tried to capture as much detail as I could, but there wasn’t much time before everything dissolved.”
“Nanites,” Alexander said. “Self-destructing, too. I checked the grounds where it happened. Couldn’t sense a single thing.”
“That’s what I thought.” Talia met his eyes. “They’re also different from the ones you got from the cube.”
Alexander nodded.
“I could have gathered more information, but I didn’t want to risk touching the dissolution while it was happening.”
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“That was the right call. Don’t worry about it.”
They sat in silence for a few moments. Alexander turned the pen over in his fingers, thinking.
The underlying technology was advanced, but the features and functions were all practical. Capture nets. Personal shield generators. Suppression fields delivered through portable dishes rather than just collars. Impressive engineering. Just not as extraordinary as Annie had made it sound.
The System gateways remained the outlier. They were so far beyond the rest of the equipment that they looked like superpowered manifestations rather than technology. The truth that they were actually technological in nature still remained a secret to most.
The question was whether these people had found a way to access System features nobody else could reach, or whether they were directly involved with the System somehow.
Neither answer was comforting.
Alexander took a breath, then continued filling in the gaps in the documents spread before him. “Cognitive Resonance make any links?”
Talia shook her head. “Identified some materials, but provided no further connections.”
“That’s unusual.”
“Very. I suspect the materials originated off-world. Otherwise I should have been able to trace at least some component to a known source.” She paused. “It’s possible they used metals from obscure extraction sites I’ve simply never encountered in anything else before, but given the breadth of what I’ve studied, that’s unlikely.”
“And the people themselves?”
“Nothing. The suppression fields shut down my powers initially, but they returned toward the end of the fight.” She straightened slightly. “Voice modulation doesn’t affect Cognitive Resonance, either. If I’d ever encountered the leader before, modulated or otherwise, I would have recognized him. I didn’t.”
Alexander absorbed that. Unknown materials. Unknown people. Unknown technology. And a precog who couldn’t see them coming or find them in the future.
“Okay. I need you to shift priorities,” he said, putting down the pen. “When we get back to Earth, I want you to wrap up the AEGIS hack. Pull everything you can with whatever access you already have.” He didn’t tell her what to focus on. She didn’t need micromanaging. “And before you ask, no. I don’t care about the consequences. AEGIS is done.”
Talia nodded. “It would take us weeks or months to get any further, anyway. They’re regionally and departmentally compartmentalized. I’ll focus on training materials and any intelligence.”