The question echoed through the Nexus. On the bridge of the *New Beginning*, now the flagship of the Librarian fleet, a much older but no less formidable Kendra stared at the message that had just appeared on her command console.
"What is it, General?" her first officer asked.
"'What if a perfect, happy ending is not an end at all?'," Kendra read aloud. She looked at the source of the message. It was a place that did not exist on any of their charts, a ghost in the machine of the multiverse. But she knew. "It's him," she whispered. "The old man is starting trouble again."
In his opulent office in the heart of his trade empire, Gorok received the same message. He dismissed his council of sycophantic underlings and stared at the words, a slow, predatory smile spreading across his face. "So, the quiet life was not to your liking after all, my old friend," he mused. "You have just proposed a new market. The market of ideas. And I will be the first to invest."
