The Abandoned Luna's Return
"The third? You told me there were only two! You told me it was just me and Sarah!"
"I lied to protect you," Aris said, his voice cracking. "In the 1998 crash, there wasn't just one essence harvested. There were three. You were the Flame. Sarah was the Anchor. But the third... she was the **Cradle**. She was designed to be the physical bridge for the Hive-Mind itself. The Reapers didn't bring her to Earth twenty years ago because she wasn't ready. She needed a planet-sized nervous system to host her consciousness."
"And I just gave it to her," I said, looking at the red lines I had just carved into the Earth. "I built the network. I stabilized the world. I created the throne, and now they’ve