Except for the darkness in her eyes.

  He'd lost her twice already. The first time when Vyte had come to their home and killed her while he was gone, unable to protect her or his children. The second time when Iagorth's clone of her had died in his arms, that false version carrying all her memories but none of her soul.

  Now here she stood, the real Natalia. A replacement body, true, but with all her memories, all her intellect, all her love.

  "Please," she said again, and her voice broke on the word. Tears ran down her cheeks, cutting tracks through the thin sheen of protoplasm. "I can feel him in my head, Hayden. He's going to make me do it. Help me.”

  Her right hand trembled, fighting against itself as it moved incrementally toward the sidearm at her hip. The motion was jerky, unnatural, like watching someone's arm being pulled by invisible strings while they fought against the movement.

  Hayden's throat constricted. Every instinct screamed at him to rush forward, to grab her, to somehow tear Iagorth's influence out of her through sheer force of will. But he knew better. He'd seen what happened when they tried to save the others. Haeri's blood still stained the corridor outside. Admiral Shri's body lay among the fallen Inahri warriors.

  "Nat," he said, his voice steady despite the storm raging inside him. "Look at me."

  Her gaze found his, and for a moment, just a moment, he saw her there. Not Iagorth's puppet but his wife, the woman who'd stood beside him through the worst humanity had to offer, who'd created the virus that saved Earth, who'd never once asked him to choose her over doing what was right.

  She'd never want him to choose her over the universe. She understood better than most that some things were bigger than any one person, regardless of anything else.

  "I love you," Hayden said, the words coming out clear and strong. "Always have. Always will."

  Her tears came harder now, but she nodded. Just once. Understanding passing between them without words. She knew what he was about to do. What he had to do.

  “I love you too, Hayden,” she replied in her own voice. Iagorth wanted her to be able to say it. To twist the knife a little harder.

  But Iagorth didn’t understand love. Didn’t understand devotion or sacrifice. He couldn’t comprehend how both Hayden and Natalia would be grateful for the weeks they were reunited, and accepting of where their chosen paths had led them.

  Their eyes locked, sharing that final moment of adoration with one another, a perfect instant of pure, endless love.

  "Go ahead," Hayden said, though saying the words felt like swallowing broken glass.

  He turned his focus inward, reaching for the moiety that burned in his chest like a captured star. The level four consciousness fragment responded instantly, power flooding through him as he directed it toward Preslan, toward the host body that contained Iagorth's primary consciousness.

  The moment his attention shifted, Iagorth acted.

  Natalia's hand completed its journey to the sidearm in one smooth motion. The weapon rose to her temple. The shot was clean, precise, exactly where it needed to be to ensure instant death. Her body crumpled to the deck, joining the growing collection of corpses that marked Iagorth's casual cruelty.

  Hayden didn't look. Couldn't look. If he let himself see her there, if he let himself process what had just happened, the grief would consume him. He'd break apart, and everyone else would die because of his weakness. So he locked it away, that image his peripheral vision had captured—Natalia falling, her hair spreading across the deck, blood beginning to pool—and focused everything on the attack.

  His moiety slammed into Iagorth's consciousness like a battering ram hitting a fortress gate.

  The Ancient's surprise rippled through Preslan's features, her nanocyte-infused face contorting as multiple attacks hit simultaneously. Caleb's level three consciousness joined Hayden's assault, their combined power creating visible distortions in the air around Preslan. Queenie's newly awakened moiety added its strength, raw and unrefined but carrying the full force of her determination. Orin's alien mind brought a different texture to the assault, his Jiba-ki consciousness approaching the problem from angles human minds couldn't conceive. Even Gant, injured and exhausted, pushed everything he had through his fragment.

  "Together!" Hayden roared, though whether the word came from his mouth or just exploded through the connected consciousness, he couldn't tell.

  Iagorth staggered. Physically staggered, Preslan's body taking an involuntary step backward as the combined assault crashed against his defenses. Joseph moved to steady her, his augmented hand reaching out, but she batted it away with enough force to send him stumbling.

  "Impossible," Iagorth snarled through Preslan's lips, though the word came out distorted, as if multiple voices were trying to speak through the same mouth. "You're fragments. Echoes. Shadows of shadows of my consciousness!"

  The Ancient pushed back, and the force of it was staggering.

  Hayden felt his knees buckle as invisible pressure drove down on him from every direction. The moiety in his chest went from burning star to molten agony, as if someone had poured liquid metal through his veins. Blood ran from his nose, from his ears. His vision fractured, showing him multiple versions of the bridge overlapping—one where Preslan stood alone, another where she was surrounded by writhing shadows, a third where her nanocyte-infused body had begun to literally glow with accumulated power.

  Queenie grunted beside him, her hands pressed to her temples as she fought to maintain the assault. Her enhanced body was handling the strain better than a normal human would, but even she had limits. Blood vessels had burst in her eyes, turning them red.

  "Can't..." Orin's musical voice came out strangled, the Jiba-ki dropping to one knee. "The pressure...Orin cannot..."

  They were losing ground. Iagorth's primary consciousness was too strong, had existed for too long, had accumulated too much power across too many galaxies. Their fragments, even combined, were like candles trying to outshine a sun.

  “Cal!” Hayden called out. “The Stackers!”

  Caleb nodded just enough to signal he had heard the command, and would use his moiety to pass the order on to the ones they had placed within the clones.

  Within seconds, the combined assault began to intensify. What had been five consciousness fragments attacking suddenly became twenty-five, then a hundred, continuing to add on as more Stackers joined the mental attack.

  Iagorth's control slipped for just a moment. Preslan's hands rose to her head, fingers digging into her scalp. Through her lips came a sound that might have been pain or might have been rage.

  "More!" Caleb gasped from where he'd collapsed against a console. Ishek had gone silent, the Advocate's consciousness barely a flicker against Caleb's own. "Keep them coming!"

  The bridge doors opened. Hayden glanced back as nearly three hundred Inahri arrived. Not the ones they'd fought in the corridor but others who'd been locked in Obado's lower decks when Iagorth had taken control, that Queenie or Orin had passed moieties to. They added their strength to the assault without hesitation, their warrior discipline allowing them to maintain focus despite the crushing psychic pressure.

  Still not enough. Iagorth adapted to the assault, his defenses solidifying. He compartmentalized the attacks, dealing with them in groups rather than as a unified force. The weaker moieties began to falter, their hosts collapsing as the strain became too much.

  Hayden reached out to the Free Legionnaires he had passed moieties to, sending the signal to add their power to his own. Their khoron-human hybrid nature made them particularly effective at maintaining the mental assault, especially with the Collective under Keesha’s control. They poured every ounce of both human and khoron psychic energy into the attack, increasing the pressure tenfold.

  The tide turned.

  Hayden felt it the moment they gained the advantage. Iagorth's defenses didn't break but they bent, compressed, began to crack under the combined weight of over a hundred consciousness fragments all focused on a single point. Preslan's body convulsed, her nanocyte-infused systems overloading as they tried to channel the Ancient's desperate defense.

  For a moment, Hayden thought they had him. Thought they'd actually won.

  Then Iagorth started laughing.

  The sound came from everywhere at once. Not just from Preslan but from Joseph, from the surviving controlled crew members. A chorus of identical laughter that grew louder, more manic, more terrifying with each passing second.

  "You think this is victory?" Iagorth's voice boomed through every mouth simultaneously. "You think your little rebellion means anything? I am eternal! I am absolute!"

  The Ancient's consciousness exploded outward like a psychic shockwave.

  The weaker moieties shattered instantly. Stackers dropped, their fragments torn from their minds and reabsorbed into Iagorth's consciousness. Some screamed. Others simply collapsed, their nervous systems overloaded by the violent extraction. The level ones fell like wheat before a scythe, their hosts convulsing as Iagorth reclaimed what had always been his.

  "No!" Hayden pushed harder, pouring everything through his level four fragment, trying to hold the line.

  But they were losing ground fast. Half the Stackers were down. A third of the Inahri had collapsed. Even some of the Free Legion warriors were faltering, their hybrid nature offering some protection but not enough against Iagorth's fury.

  The Ancient's laughter grew louder as he reclaimed fragment after fragment, each reabsorption making him stronger. Preslan's body stood straighter, her nanocyte systems somehow containing power that should have destroyed any physical form.

  "Did you really think," Iagorth said, his voice carrying the weight of eons, "that you could defeat me with my own power? Every moiety you carry came from me. Every fragment is part of my consciousness. I can reclaim them whenever I⁠—"

  Preslan's words cut off in a strangled gasp.

  The Asura leader materialized directly beside her, one massive clawed hand already moving. But instead of trying to grab her, instead of attempting to phase her away, the Asura's hand erupted with electricity.

  Not normal electricity. This was something else, something that crackled with otherworldly power, branching patterns of energy that seemed to exist in multiple dimensions simultaneously. The lightning hit Preslan's nanocyte-infused body and reacted violently with the artificial components.

  You will not deny us our newfound sanctuary.

  The voice echoed through Hayden’s mind with a fury he had never heard from the Asura. They had sworn not to get directly involved. Clearly, they had changed their collective minds. Losing to Iagorth meant losing their new home, and returning to the wasteland of their homeworld.

  They weren’t about to let that happen.

  White gel erupted from her pores as the nanocytes fried. Her skin bubbled and cracked, the careful balance between organic and artificial collapsing in seconds. She tried to scream but her throat had already begun to dissolve, the nanocytes that had replaced her blood boiling away.

  The body that had been Preslan Juno, that had served as Iagorth's primary host, literally fell apart. Not dramatically, not explosively, but with horrible thoroughness. The nanocytes dispersed, the organic components liquefied, and within seconds there was nothing left but a puddle of white gel mixed with dissolved tissue.

  Iagorth's moiety hung in the air above the remains, visible now as a distortion in reality itself. The primary consciousness, the level five fragment from which all others had been born, searched desperately for a new host.

  It lunged toward the Asura leader, but the alien phase-shifted away instantly. The moiety couldn't follow, couldn't penetrate the dimensional barrier. It spun, searching, and Hayden could feel his desperation. Without a host, Iagorth was greatly weakened. He needed an anchor, a physical form to inhabit.

  Joseph was too far away. The other controlled crew members weren't strong enough to contain him. Iagorth started to move toward Hayden, recognizing him as a viable host, someone already carrying one of his fragments that he could re-absorb.

  Without warning, Max materialized between Hayden and the moiety, his skin shimmering as he dropped the holographic projection that had cloaked him from view.

  “Revelation. Observation. Max has been waiting to make his dramatic appearance. Hahahaha. Hahaha. Haha."

  Already, his synthetic hands were closing around the distortion. The Axon Intellect's fingers reformed as they gripped, becoming something between solid and liquid, creating a cage that the moiety couldn't escape.

  "Salutation," the Intellect continued, his featureless face somehow managing to convey satisfaction. “Observation. Calculation. Preparation. Assessment. Max is a good Max. A clever Max."

  Iagorth's rage was palpable, the moiety thrashing against Max's grip. But the Intellect's hands had become something unbreakable. He brought his hands to where his mouth would be if he had one. The synthetic flesh of his face opened, revealing the nanocyte interior.

  He swallowed the moiety whole.

  For a moment, nothing happened. Max stood perfectly still, his head tilted as if listening to something only he could hear. Then his entire body convulsed, synthetic flesh rippling as Iagorth's consciousness fought for control from within.

  "Negation. Explanation. Nanocyte density increased. Impermeable. Iagorth cannot control what has no true consciousness to control. Cannot escape what has no exit. Conclusion. Max wins. The Sheriff wins. Max is a good deputy. Hahahaha. Hahaha. Haha."

  With Iagorth's primary consciousness trapped, the battle shifted completely.

  Hayden pushed again with his moiety, and this time there was no coordinated defense. The fragments Iagorth had been reclaiming scattered, their hosts gasping as control returned to them. Those who had fallen began to stir, the moieties that had been torn from them flowing back, weakened but intact.

  "Now!" Hayden shouted. "Focus everything on Max! Destroy Iagorth at the source!"

  The assault shifted immediately as they concentrated their attack on Iagorth's primary consciousness. Max's form became the focal point of their combined will, hundreds of moieties working in concert to crush the Ancient trapped within.

  Hayden felt Iagorth's panic through their connection. Max's body convulsed as the conflicting consciousnesses warred within the synthetic frame.

  No! Iagorth's voice echoed through their minds. I am eternal! I am⁠—

  The concentrated assault was too much. Hayden felt their combined will crushing down on Iagorth like a vice, the moieties working in perfect synchronization. The Ancient's consciousness writhed and twisted, trying to find escape routes, but they had him surrounded on every level of thought.

  Max's synthetic body began to vibrate, his chest shifting and writhing as the battle raged within. The Ancient was fighting with everything he had, drawing on power accumulated over millennia, but it wasn't enough. Not against this unified assault.

  I have walked between stars! Iagorth raged. I have consumed civilizations! I am unstoppable!

  The pressure increased. Hayden pushed harder, feeling Caleb and Queenie and Gant beside him in the mental space, their consciousnesses intertwined in shared purpose. All those carrying lesser moieties—Mitchell, Washington, Nicholas, the Stackers, the Inahri, the Legionnaires—added their strength to the assault. Together they formed a crushing weight of pure will.

  Something cracked.

  Hayden felt it like the sound of breaking glass resonating through his skull. A fissure had formed in Iagorth's consciousness, a fundamental break in the Ancient's sense of self. The crack widened, spreading like fractures through ice. Iagorth's scream of denial reverberated through every connected mind, a psychic death cry that made several people on the bridge clutch their heads in pain.

  Then, like a dam giving way, Iagorth's primary consciousness shattered completely.

  The Ancient's millennia-old existence, that vast accumulated power and knowledge, simply came apart. Fragments of memory scattered and dissolved—glimpses of alien worlds, extinct civilizations, the faces of countless consumed victims—all of it dispersing like ashes in a hurricane. Max's body went rigid, every joint locking at once, before suddenly going completely limp.

  "Confirmation," Max said, his synthetic voice strained. "Iagorth is gone. Hahahaha. Hahaha. Haha."

  But it wasn't over. The destruction of Iagorth's primary consciousness triggered a cascade reaction Hayden hadn't anticipated. Every moiety, every fragment that had been part of Iagorth's distributed consciousness, began to dissolve.

  All across the bridge, people gasped and stumbled. Joseph fell to his knees as the fragments controlling him evaporated. Bridge crew members dropped where they stood, suddenly free but disoriented. The moieties weren't being reclaimed or freed—they were dying, their very existence unraveling.

  Hayden felt it happening to his own level four fragment. The consciousness that had burned in his chest throughout the battle began to dissolve, unmaking itself from within. It wasn't painful, exactly, but the sensation was deeply unsettling—like feeling part of his mind simply cease to exist.

  The dissolution spread through the hierarchy. Every level three, every level two, every level one that had originated from Iagorth's consciousness was systematically erased. The Ancient's accumulated power, spread across galaxies over millennia, vanished like smoke in the wind.

  Hayden reached for his moiety one last time, but there was nothing there. Just an absence where power had been. The alien consciousness that had saved them was gone, leaving only exhaustion so complete it felt like gravity had tripled.

  Still, they had done it. They had destroyed the Ancient at his source, and the death of the primary had taken every fragment with it.

  Iagorth was no more.

  CHAPTER 42

  The dissolution of the moiety hit Caleb like having his skeleton removed. One moment the alien consciousness burned in his chest, a captured star of power. The next, it simply ceased to exist, evaporating into nothing as Hayden's command rippled through the connected fragments.