Total pages in book: 210
Estimated words: 200837 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1004(@200wpm)___ 803(@250wpm)___ 669(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 200837 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1004(@200wpm)___ 803(@250wpm)___ 669(@300wpm)
“OK.” I’m not sure what to say to that. He just smiles at me, his hands folded on the desk, like he’s waiting for me to say something else. “So… what the fuck do you want?”
His smile grows into a chuckle. “I have always admired your rebellious attitude, Tyse. What do I want? Well, I want you to kill some gods, obviously. It’s completely out of control.” He pans a hand to the door. “Hence, the meeting.”
“I don’t understand. Aren’t you collecting gods?”
“Yes. And”—he puts a hand up, palm first, like he’s warding off my next question—“don’t worry. Anneeta is just fine. All the baby gods are. You see, if we get them early enough, it works out. The babies aren’t the problem. It’s the teenagers.” He rolls his eyes. “Fucking teenagers. Am I right?”
I shrug. “Yeah. I guess. They’re always a bunch of assholes.”
“Exactly. So… yes. We need to kill them. And that’s where you come in. You and your partner will be deployed.”
I stand up. “What?”
“That Spark Maiden? Oh, she’s lovely, Tyse. And the two of you? The way you worked together to save that shit-stain little spark plug? No offense, but Anneeta is…” He blows out a breath. “Quite a challenge. She had absolutely no supervision, did she?”
“Um. No. Not really.”
“This is our problem. Anneeta will learn, I’m confident of this, and she will grow into a responsible god. Eventually. But there are so many of them out there now, Tyse. So many little shit-stain gods running around these towers. We can’t have it. We simply can’t have it. So the Alphas and I”—he nods his head to the door to indicate the other gods in the meeting outside—“well… it’s war.”
“War?”
“That’s right. Well, it’s a game as well.” Delta smiles. “It’s all just a game, isn’t it?”
Is it though?
Stayn’s words as we were escaping from Tau City come back to me now.
There’s a war, Tyse. The Game of Gods. Ever hear of it?
It’s a real thing. And every city needs a god if they want to play.
We play or we die.
Delta must read my hesitation as confusion, because he stands up and starts tapping his desk. “Let me fill you in on what’s been happening.”
I’m already standing, so I just step forward and look down at the glass that has now turned black and is lit up with a map.
“This is the line.” Delta points to a line that runs right down the center of the map. “It’s a line we do not cross. It’s a line in the sand, literally and figuratively. It’s a line so bright, you cannot miss it.”
“It’s the… train?” I look up at him, confused.
“Indeed it is. The train is our line. It’s a waystation between worlds. You can’t cross worlds—well, you can, because I had you augmented. But people riding the trains can’t cross. They are in the world they are in.”
“I’m not following.”
“We live in a world of many worlds. They are not copies, per se. They are not anything like that tired old theory of the fucking ‘multiverse.’” He does air quotes when he says ‘multiverse.’ “That theory was ludicrous to begin with. There are no doppelgangers, Tyse. There are no other ‘yous’ out there. There is just one of everyone. But the worlds are many. And the gods… well, as I have said, it’s gotten out of hand.
“We, the Alphas”—again, he nods his head towards the door to indicate the gods out in the meeting—“we’re old, Tyse. Thousands of years old. We’ve earned our right to exist. We Swept the worlds clean with dust and remade them in our image for our own purpose. That’s why we’re gods. We live on the line in the central cities. Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and all the way down the alphabet to the Omega.” He’s pointing at the map as he talks, tapping on each city along the line. “But above, and below, and between the line there are many worlds. You can see them. I know you can see them.”
I consider lying, but it’s pointless. “Yeah. All right. I can see them. So what?”
“Well, that makes you very special. Because if you can see them, you can cross over. You can interact with other worlds. You’ve done it. I know you’ve done it.” His smile drops here. “That’s how you kept Anneeta and Clara alive.”
I don’t admit it, but he doesn’t really need me to.
His smile returns and he taps the map again. This time it changes to something else. Something similar, but not exact. “This is our problem dimension at the moment. This is the one you will be clearing first. This is the factory world. They make Spark Maidens here.”
I stare at the map, then look up at him. “That’s Clara’s world.”
“Yes. All gods have Spark Maiden factories, Tyse. We all use the spark. But we don’t all use it in the same way. None of this is the point, though. The point is that these factories, they’re rebelling. And there is one particularly annoying Worker—from Clara’s home factory, actually—who is blowing up the Looking Glasses in that world. He and one of the products are travelling the line and cutting ties with this world. The home world. This is not something I can tolerate.”