If the Council's High Regency is a cathedral of glass and ego, then the "Exile Network" is a trash heap of brilliance and broken circuits. To gather them, I had to travel to the Sub-Sector—a pocket dimension folded like a crumpled napkin between reality and the void.
Lyra walked beside me, her blind eyes fixed on a horizon only she could see. She was still holding the genetic key I'd given her, probably wondering if it was a gift or a curse.
"You're really doing it," she muttered, her feet crunching on the crystallized carbon that served as the ground here. "You're gathering the ghosts."
"I prefer the term 'underutilized assets,'" I said, checking a handheld scanner. "Why waste a perfectly good god-complex on a prison cell when you can aim it at a tyrant? It's basic resource management, Lyra. 101 level stuff."
We reached the center of the Sub-Sector: a sprawling, chaotic tavern made from salvaged starship hulls and rift-matter. Inside, the air was a thick sludge of electromagnetic radiation and despair.
I hopped onto a table. "Attention, everyone! I have a joke. What do you get when you cross a disgraced orbital mechanic, a kinetic user with a drinking problem, and a man who can rewrite the laws of thermodynamics?"
A dozen heads turned. These were the ones the Council couldn't kill because their deaths would have caused localized reality collapses. They were the anomalies. The "Masterpieces" that came before Adam and Eve, back when I was still learning how to color inside the lines.
"You get a coup," a voice growled from the back. It was Jax, a former siege-specialist whose body was now 60% cooling vents and 40% rage.
"Wrong," I said, pointing a finger at him. "You get a severance package. Specifically, one that involves the complete liquidation of the Council's assets. And by liquidation, I mean I'm going to melt their lunar base into a very shiny puddle."
I stepped down, my lab coat flapping in a draft that shouldn't have existed. "I don't need your loyalty. I don't even need you to like me. In fact, most of you have very valid reasons to want my head on a pike. But the Council is currently planning to harvest my sons—your younger, more successful brothers—to power their next expansion. And I've decided I'm not in the mood to share my intellectual property."
"Why should we follow the man who built our cages?" Lyra asked, her voice carrying the weight of the room.
I looked around at the broken, beautiful things I had created. I felt that familiar, nagging sting of being a terrible creator.
"Because," I said, leaning in, "I'm the only one who knows the back-door password to the Council's life-support systems. And because, quite frankly, I have a very limited time before my father-in-law realizes I've left my sons in his care and decides to hunt me down himself. Silas Vance is a much scarier man than the High Regent, believe me."
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a handful of sour lemon drops—the ones Eve had been obsessed with. I popped one into my mouth.
"Sweet and sour," I mumbled through the wincing acidity. "Just like rebellion. Who's in? Or do I have to start using the 'Dad Voice'?"
Jax stood up first, his vents hissing. Then the others. One by one, the anomalies rose.
"Terrible joke, Kwame," Jax said, crackling with kinetic energy. "Let's go kill some gods."
"That's the spirit," I said, the golden fire beginning to leak from the seams of my coat. "Next stop: The Moon. I hope you all brought your own snacks. The catering in the Lunar Sector is notoriously pretentious."
I spent the flight—if you can call folding space through a chaotic void "flight"—conducting a mental audit of my new strike team. It was like looking back through an old sketchbook of ideas I'd abandoned because they were too likely to set the atmosphere on fire.
"Alright, everyone, listen up," I said, pacing the narrow corridor of our hijacked transport. "Since we're about to commit a felony on a planetary scale, I thought we should do some team building. Let's go around the room and share our favorite ways to ignore the laws of physics."
Lyra sat in the corner, her blind eyes fixed on the bulkhead. Beside her was Jax, my "Siege-Specialist."
• Subject: Jax (Designation: Heavy Kinetic)
• The Flaw: His core runs so hot he requires constant venting. He smells like a burnt-out toaster and has the temperament of a cornered badger.
• The Utility: He can punch through reinforced titanium rifts with his bare knuckles.
• My Dad-Joke Assessment: He's got a great personality once you get past the third-degree burns.
Then there was Sloane.
• Subject: Sloane (Designation: Chrono-Static)
• The Flaw: She exists three seconds ahead of everyone else. It makes conversation nearly impossible because she's already bored of your sentence before you've finished the first noun.
• The Utility: She can stop a bullet by simply deciding it's already hit the floor.
• My Dad-Joke Assessment: She's very forward-thinking. Literally.
"We aren't a team, Kwame," Sloane said, her voice echoing strangely as if she were speaking from another room. "We are a collection of your regrets. You didn't make us to be heroes. You made us to be experiments, and when we didn't fit the mold, you tossed us into the Sub-Sector."
"Regrets? That's such a heavy word," I said, adjusting my lab coat. "I prefer 'early access versions.' You were the Beta testers for reality. Adam and Eve are just the 1.0 release with a better user interface and significantly fewer cooling vents."
Jax stood up, his shoulder vents hissing a jet of steam that melted the ceiling tiles. "You're still talking, Doctor. Every time you open your mouth, I remember why I wanted to throw you into a black hole."
"And yet, here you are," I noted, popping another sour lemon drop. "Why? Is it the dental plan? The snacks? Or is it because deep down, in those messy, uncalibrated hearts of yours, you're curious to see if the 'Old Man' can actually pull this off?"
"It's because the Council is worse than you," Lyra said softly. "You're a madman, Kwame. But they're a machine. A machine doesn't care if it breaks the world; it just wants to keep turning. At least when you break things, you have the decency to feel slightly awkward about it."
"High praise," I muttered.
I turned to the main viewscreen. The Moon was growing larger—a pale, sterile ball of rock that housed the Council's main relay. To anyone else, it was a satellite. To me, it was a giant 'Delete' key waiting to be pressed.
"Check your gear," I commanded, the humor sliding away to reveal the cold, calculating Architect underneath. "Jax, you're the hammer. Sloane, you're the clock. Lyra, you're the compass. I'm the guy who's going to make sure the door stays open."
I looked at a small photo I'd tucked into the console—Sarah, laughing in a field of sunflowers long before the rifts, long before the labs.
"Let's go see if we can get a refund on our destiny," I whispered.
I stepped toward the airlock, the Golden Light beginning to spiral around my fingers like a hungry snake. It was time to show the Council that you should never, ever mess with a man who has nothing left to lose but his sense of humor.