The news that the thirty-day doomsday clock had been paused was met with a massive, galaxy-wide sigh of relief. On the "Odyssey," the mood went from tense and terrified to cautiously optimistic. It wasn't a full-blown party—everyone was too tired for that—but there was a definite feeling of a great weight being lifted. For the first time in a long time, they weren't just reacting to a crisis; they had a real, actual advantage.
Ryan, after sleeping for a solid twenty-four hours and eating a meal large enough to feed a small army, gathered the Matriarchs and Regent Vorlag for a new kind of war council. This wasn't a meeting about how to survive. It was a meeting about how to win.
"Okay," Ryan began, pacing the bridge of the "Odyssey." "The good news is, we have time. The Gardener is confused and recovering, like a supercomputer that just had a very bad day. The even better news is, I stole something from it."
