MY CRUEL PROTECTOR
One moment, we were in the warm, rosemary-scented air of Sicily; the next, we were standing in the biting, oxygen-thin cold of the Martian desert.
Chryse Planitia was a landscape of rust and shadow. In the center of the archaeological dig stood the "Awakener"—a three-hundred-foot spire of black, non-reflective obsidian that seemed to swallow the light of the distant sun. It wasn't geometric like the Source; it was organic, twisted like a frozen scream.
At its base lay the bodies of the archaeologists. They weren't harvested. They were "Overwritten." Their skin had turned to a translucent silver, their eyes glowing with a cold, pale light. They were the first of the "New Vanguard"—the puppets