MY CRUEL PROTECTOR
"I was getting tired of the quiet anyway."
Leo stood up between us. He looked at the relay, then at the stars beyond. He didn't look like a toddler. He looked like the first of a new species—a god born from a massacre, protected by a murderer, and loved by an Architect.
"The Eye is watching, Mama," Leo said, his voice now a perfect, human clarity. "But it doesn't see us. It only sees the ghosts. It doesn't know that the ghosts have teeth now."
The Vanguard-01 exited the slipstream, a silent titan of glass and light, emerging into the cold dark of the abyss. We were 9.3 billion miles from home, and the real war was just beginning.