except I don’t understand it myself. All I know is that Corla was never my soulmate. She doesn’t matter. That’s why she’s not here. So just shut up and listen!”
I stare them down. All of them. Waiting for someone to challenge me again.
But they stay silent.
“Good,” I say. “Now as I was saying. Delphi and Tycho are the main bomb. They will do the most damage. But we need all of you to do your jobs if we want to take out every corner of this universe—” They start screaming at me. But I ignore them and continue. “—and replace it with a better one.”
They go silent.
Then Luck says, “Did you say replace it?”
“Yes. Replace it.”
“And how the fuck do we do that?” Jimmy says.
“Ahhhh,” Tray’s voice booms through the room. “Ahhhhahahahahahah.” He begins laughing.
“What’s so fucking funny?” Nyleena shouts.
“I see the plan,” Tray says.
“So maybe you could fill us in, freak,” Luck snarls.
“Fucking suns,” Valor says. “Just shut up, Luck. Let them talk.”
I let Tray tell it. Because everyone knows he’s always been the smartest Harem Station brother.
And when he’s done explaining they are all silent.
Tycho’s cryopod begins to beep.
Jimmy grabs Delphi and kisses her. “I won’t lose you,” he says. “I won’t.”
And it’s true. If this works, he won’t lose her. Because Jimmy isn’t even from this timeline. He’s from another one. I don’t know which, I just know that somewhere along the way he crossed over and became ours. And that’s why he and Delphi never had the soulmate bond here.
They are soulmates on two different time loops.
And if he can cross time once to find Delphi, he can do it again.
And that means all of us can do it.
And then, while they are still locked in a kiss, Delphi and Tycho explode.
The station explodes.
We explode.
And I become the spin node—I become our point in time. I am the galaxy. My spiral arms are now silver threads. They wrap around anything and everything. I reach for the Mighty Boss collective inside the spin node. They were a powerful, and unexpected late addition to the plan. And they almost got through. They almost found the link to Earth.
But almost doesn’t count.
I grab the threads they took into the node with them. Grab the Succubus as they Mighty Boss collective tries to push their way into the Earth time loop. I pull them back just as the fire and death created by Delphi and Tycho sparks, igniting the silver threads like a lit fuse.
The force finds the Ancient Ones next. That golden orb hurtling towards us in space and time connected by a single silver thread thanks to Draden and Booty.
The resulting annihilation is a thing of beauty. A slow-motion wave of destruction traveling faster than light. A bright flash of swirling orange and yellow gas that seems to go on for a thousand eternities. A ripple in the fabric of spacetime that ignites a trillion more threads, that ignites a trillion more, that ignites a trillion more.
Hundreds of thousands of such threads lead to Wayward Station. A direct link thanks to Flicka’s army.
A buzzing fills the air and I’m there, with her and all her drones, as the wave of destruction takes out her army, as well as Real ALCOR and MIZAR, and everyone else on the evil Wayward Station.
Still, we are not done. There is a lot more universe to kill. And those silver threads go everywhere because my brothers have been everywhere.
They have stolen princesses in every system in the galaxy.
They have liberated bots on every station and planet.
They have scavenged ancient sectors, hidden from the rest of us.
And each one of those threads delivers the full destructive force of Delphi and Tycho.
And in that same moment, Valor and Veila stop time.
Luck and Nyleena dial time backwards and turn everything empty and dark.
Then… a pin prick of light.
Lyra and Serpint make a golden place. A universe nursery.
And finally—Tray and Brigit make a new world for us.
Apart we are boys and girls.
Apart we are a bot liberator.
We are booty hunters.
We are scavengers.
We are silver and pink princesses.
We are minds.
But together… we are gods.
And now there is just one thing left to do.
One more job to be done.
Mine.
I am our place in time.
So I put us all back.
Right where we have always belonged.
EPILOGUE
An alarm blares in my ears.
“Fucking hell,” I say. Turning over in bed. “Turn off the sun-damned alarm!”
A small body jumps on my bed. Shaking me as it hops over my legs. Then another body joins