I fall, crying and sucking in huge breaths of air. “He has the Resnyx...”
“Do not lie to me, whore,” he says.
“The miners gave it to him for safe keeping. He thought… he thought we could win this,” I say.
“It is not your destiny to win,” he says. “Soon, I will hold the power of the cosmos. I will be one with the universe.”
Pleased with himself, Slain turns.
I run to Akron. Lifting his neck, I try to get him to wake. “Akron, come on. Wake up.”
“I was born to lead the universe to oblivion,” Slain says.
A great rumble causes him to stop.
Vraik lifts himself up the cliff. Lök opens his eyes, groaning.
Akron starts to breathe.
A giant red light shoots across the horizon. A grid forms over the landscape. A computerized voice resounds: “Five minutes remaining,”
“A starfisher?” Slain whispers. “But… how?”
I tear up. “Rekker,” I say. “You thought you were in control, but he knew you would be foolish enough to leave your home. You’ll never get it back. That is why he has the Resnyx. He came here to die with it. He came here to die with you.”
Slain drops back, falling to the dirt. He kicks and nudges away from us. He looks pathetic.
“You won so many bodies, but you have lost the final war,” Vraik says, standing.
Slain’s eyes widen. “No...”
Another sound comes from the opposite direction. A second spacecraft rises above the canyon.
“Yes!” I shout.
Laser beams fire directly at Slain’s body, knocking him into the ground. His chest is impacted, but it heals.
“Rekker...”
I run toward the craft, waving my arms. “Over here!”
Slain tries to stand, but another round of lasers hits him, knocking his body toward the cliff.
“Two minutes until detonation…”
The fast-flying craft is not the only thing I see. A crowd of miners appear over a hill.
They have been subjected to a life of slavery, forced into a system that was fake all along. There were no mates for them, just a dead-end road, a path toward their shallow graves.
They attack.
They swarm the Emperor, violently swinging their tools against his failing body. He screams, choking on his own blood.
Lök, Vraik, and Akron come to my aid. “Come on. It’s time to go,” Lök says.
“One minute until detonation?
?”