MY CRUEL PROTECTOR
"We’ll find a place where the grid doesn't reach. Or we’ll build a wall so high that no one can ever look over it."
"And the baby?"
Nevan looked at my stomach, and for the first time, I saw a flash of the "Shield" return to his eyes—not the violet fire, but a cold, grey resolve.
"We’ll raise him to be a man," Nevan said. "And if he becomes a god... then we’ll be the gods that raised him."
He leaned down and kissed my stomach, a seal of the second genesis.
We were the Sovereigns of the Void, the monsters of the digital age, and the architects of a new world order. But as I sat in the dark with Nevan, I realized that the greatest architecture I had ever designed wasn't a city or a network.