Camerons and Janet ship the Explorer-2 docked with their father vessel with the subtle connection as if the two ships remembered each other. As Tanya stepped aboard with the other bonded, she felt an immediate sense of displacement that was not just physical, but temporal, as if the ship existed slightly outside normal time. The ship felt alive in a way she couldn't describe.
Janet and Cameron moved through the corridors with the automatic familiarity of muscle memory, their feet finding paths to quarters they'd occupied years ago. The ship's layout hadn't changed, with systems that had been designed for long voyages between stars. The sibling felt the same sense of being aboard something that was more home than vessel.
"It remembers us," Cameron said quietly, running his hand along a wall panel that responded to his touch with welcome patterns of light.
"She always does," Janet replied, disappearing into what had once been her private quarters without explanation.
The central chamber of Stephen's ship served as a meeting point where the five bonded could gather before whatever was about to unfold. Tanya found herself studying her companions with new interest, recognising that they represented forces that would shape the galaxy's future.
Malcolm stood with the rigid posture of military training, though his earlier confidence had evaporated entirely. Without his fleet surrounding him, he looked exactly like what he was—a teenager who'd been given authority beyond his comprehension.
The representative from the Collective introduced himself as Raymond. He was immediately striking in ways that made Tanya reassess her assumptions about the Collective. She had expected a full human with AI helpers. Instead, his left arm was clearly mechanical, integrated so seamlessly with organic tissue that the boundary was nearly invisible. Cybernetic implants traced silver lines along his temples, and one eye held the geometric precision of advanced optics rather than biological vision.
"You're not what I expected from the Collective," Tanya said, approaching him with genuine curiosity.
"Few people expect us to merge organic and mechanical components," Raymond replied, his voice carrying the slight mechanical undertone of enhanced vocal systems. "The integration process preserves what is useful while optimising what is inefficient. I remain human where humanity serves a purpose."
"And your Gardener?"
"Provides computational enhancement and strategic analysis that organic neural networks cannot achieve. We are partners, not individuals."
Lady Flowers noticed Tanya's attention and moved to join their conversation, her movements carrying the grace of someone accustomed to diplomatic encounters. Tanya twice not to show any emotion at seeing the grandmotherly woman who had caused her so many problems.
"Ms. Furrow," she said with the warm familiarity of shared experience. "I wanted to thank you again for the dimensional navigation tools. They proved... instrumental in our recent operations."
Tanya put on her best smile. "I'm not sure thanks are appropriate, given what those tools enabled."
"Technology serves its purpose regardless of the creator's intentions," Lady Flowers replied with understanding rather than reproach. "Your beacons helped us reclaim our homeworld, but they also demonstrated navigation principles that will benefit many factions. Innovation spreads—that is its nature."
"Even when that spreading leads to conflict?"
"Conflict was inevitable regardless of your contributions. You simply accelerated existing timelines."
Stephen moved through the group with quiet authority, and as he approached, Tanya noticed features that matched both Janet and Cameron. He was definitely their father. The bone structure was similar, the way he carried himself, even some gestures that echoed mannerisms she had observed in her teammates.
He asked Tanya how his children have been behaving, and Tanya was about to answer before being interrupted.
Malcolm had been listening with growing agitation. "Are we going to discuss families, or can we address why we've been summoned here? My fleet is holding position, but they won't wait indefinitely."
"Your fleet will wait as long as necessary," Stephen said with the kind of quiet certainty that ended arguments. "The Lady does not operate according to your schedule."
Raymond tilted his head slightly, his cybernetic eye focusing on something beyond normal vision. "Zero detects significant dimensional variance building in the local space. The information connection will begin shortly."
"Information connection?" Tanya asked.
"The Gardeners' primary communication method," Lady Flowers explained. "Though I suspect what we're about to experience will be... different from standard protocols."
Tanya knew she was about to be abducted again to the information dimension, where she had fought with Archon and met with Feravincio.
The transition began without warning or preparation. Reality simply... expanded.
Tanya expected the familiar white plane of infinity. Instead, the space that materialised around them was a city unlike any she had seen or heard of. Floating spheres drifted past as massive buildings, joined by cubes that rotated slowly while displaying complex patterns of light, impossible polyhedra housed what could only be described as living processes. She couldn't begin to identify the materials they were made from.
It was a city from a race that clearly didn't believe in the rules of physics, or had so thoroughly conquered them that they didn't matter anymore.
Some structures moved with obvious purpose, others waited in dormancy, and still others seemed to be watching the new arrivals with forms of attention that transcended normal observation.
"This is not the information domain you know," Sage's voice came from beside her, though he now appeared as a golden-blue sphere of light that pulsed with familiar warmth. "This is a representation of a Builder City. This... is her domain."
Even as he spoke, Sage was establishing a small area of local reality around Tanya, with roots that grew from nothing, creating a stable foundation in the impossible architecture. The domain was defensive, protective, a tiny island of familiar physics in an ocean of advanced technology.
Nearby, Feravincio manifested alongside Lady Flowers in a spreading carpet of green-gold moss that felt heavy with fertility and devotion. The moss overlapped slightly with Sage's roots, suggesting old alliances and shared purposes that predated their current circumstances.
Malcolm appeared with Dominus as a grey-silver energy ball that immediately began generating large soldier ants. They were regimented formations that consumed space with aggressive efficiency. The domain expanded rapidly, pushing against the other established zones with the precision of military doctrine applied to metaphysical territory.
Zero and his bonded Raymond materialised in a lattice of blue digital space that resembled the geometric perfection of advanced computation. Code scrolled through the air around them, surveillance nodes formed and dissolved, and the entire domain mapped its surroundings with cold analytical precision. Unlike the others, Zero's space didn't expand. it simply covered the two of them and started gathering information.
Then the city itself reoriented.
Structures shifted subtly to align with new gravitational centers, sound dropped away until even thought seemed muffled, and space itself began behaving with the kind of correctness that suggested fundamental forces were being managed by conscious will.
The Lady and Stephen arrived on a floating throne that moved through the dimensional space without displacing anything around it. The Lady herself was entirely white but not glowing or radiant, but defining brightness itself, as if light had decided to take human form and walk among lesser illuminations.
Everyone present felt the shift immediately. This wasn't dominance or force. It was the presence of one who ruled over others, the natural order asserting itself. Even the Gardeners quieted in her presence, their various domains settling into respectful stability.
"Thank you for coming," The Lady said, her voice carrying clearly despite the absence of normal sound transmission. She addressed Zero and Feravincio specifically. "Your presence is appreciated. I was glad that you replied to my summons, even if your results have been... limited."
Then she began her systematic examination of each faction, and her tone shifted from gratitude to something far more pointed.
"Dominus," she said, turning to Malcolm's grey-silver domain. "You continue to play at war games. Your forces are loud, brittle, and temporary. They consume resources without generating sustainable results."
Malcolm straightened in the formal posture he'd been trained for, speaking for his Gardener. "The military applications are necessary for—"
"War is your role, not building," The Lady interrupted with quiet finality. "You know this. You have always known this. Yet you persist in mistaking tactics for strategy, force for effectiveness."
The soldier ant formations wavered slightly, their perfect discipline showing cracks as Dominus absorbed the rebuke.
She turned to Feravincio next. "Where is your army? I approved significant resource allocation for recruitment and awakening protocols. The cost of your emergence from dormancy was enormous—even with assistance from Sage and myself, the energy expenditure should have produced measurable results. Yet your army was almost destroyed, and reports show you have not been rebuilding quickly enough."
Lady Flowers responded for her Gardener, her voice carrying defensive undertones. "The awakening process encountered unexpected complications. Human consciousness has evolved since our last active period. Integration requires—"
"Excuses," The Lady said simply. "Resources were provided. Guidance was offered. Results were expected. Where are they?"
The moss domain contracted slightly, its fertility dimming under scrutiny.
Zero received his evaluation with typical analytical detachment. "Where is the intelligence network you promised? The Scourge approach vectors should have been tracked and reported by now. Why do we still lack basic operational data about the primary threat?"
Raymond spoke for his Gardener with mechanical precision. "Tracking protocols have encountered systematic interference. Something is masking the approach signatures, introducing noise into our collection systems. The Scourge appears to have developed countermeasures for our surveillance methods."
For the first time, The Lady showed something approaching concern. "Evolved countermeasures suggest learning capacity beyond our previous models. This is... problematic."
Finally, she turned to Sage, and Tanya felt her partner's domain tremble slightly under that absolute attention.
"Where is the protection fleet?" The Lady asked simply.
Sage's response carried the honesty that Tanya had come to expect from him. "I don't know. My access to historical data has been fragmentary since awakening. The fleet construction protocols you're referencing... I don't have that information."
Stephen and The Lady exchanged a look that contained volumes of unspoken communication. Not anger—pity, mixed with something that might have been regret.
"The Custodians paid a heavier price than I realised," The Lady said quietly. "The gaps in your knowledge run deeper than anticipated."
She reached out, not physically, but with intention that crossed dimensional barriers and information flooded into Sage like water into a broken reservoir. Tanya felt it through their bond: pain, realisation, vast empty spaces in memory suddenly filling with context that had been missing for millennia.
Sage reeled under the information transfer, his golden sphere shuttered as processing systems that had been dormant began awakening to purposes they'd forgotten.
//The fleet,// he said privately to Tanya, his mental voice filled with wonder and horror. //My mission was to guide you in building protection fleets and forge worlds. Not just ships but entire manufacturing civilisations capable of generating evacuation armadas for star systems under threat. The shipyards, the construction facilities, the coordination networks, the planetary engineering systems... it was supposed to be our purpose together.//
//I was meant to help you establish self-sustaining forge worlds that could rapidly produce evacuation fleets when the Scourge was detected. Entire planets converted to shipbuilding infrastructure, capable of evacuating billions within months rather than years. We were meant to be the galaxy's emergency response system. But I... I had forgotten. All of it.//
The Lady continued aloud. "Circumstances have changed. The test approaches whether we are prepared or not."
She turned her attention to the bonded rather than the Gardeners, and her expression became something that might have been maternal if it hadn't carried the knowledge of geological ages.
"A test is coming," she announced simply. "The same test that has always come, will always come. The cycle repeats because it must."
The city around them began shifting, structures rearranging themselves to display new configurations. Images formed in the dimensional space, not projections, but memories given substance.
"The Scourge will devour the Garden," The Lady continued. "It always does. Gardeners alone cannot stop it. We learned this through repeated failure. I have failed in my own mission to discover where the builders have hidden themselves," she set her sights on all the bonded. "That is why you exist. To assist us when we inevitably fall short."
The vision that materialised around them was unlike anything in Tanya's experience. The Builder City under attack, its impossible structures collapsing under assault from something that defied description. Not an army, not a fleet, but a horde of solid energy that consumed everything it touched without regard for complexity or beauty or the civilisations that had built what was being destroyed.
No heroics in the vision, no successful counterattacks, no last-minute saves. Just consumption, spreading across the space with the inevitability of entropy itself.
"The builders tried to stop it," The Lady said, her tone heavy as one would expect from one who witnessed an apocalypse. "The most advanced civilisation in the galaxy's history chose to run."
She looked directly at Tanya, and for a moment the impossible age behind those white ball was visible. "We tried to stop it. Failed. Tried again. Failed again. Each cycle, we learn. Each cycle, we adapt. But learning and adaptation are not enough."
The vision expanded, showing wave after wave of consumption sweeping across star systems, devouring everything that lived or thought or dreamed, leaving only emptiness in its wake. Then it just disappears.
"The Scourge cannot be fought," The Lady said with absolute certainty. "But it can be... redirected. Channelled. Given sufficient alternative targets to delay its approach to the Garden's core. This requires technology, coordination, and sacrifice on a scale that individual civilisations cannot achieve. That is why we raised humans to be the only civilisation"
Tanya understood with growing horror what she was being told. The peacekeeping fleet, the rescue ships, the careful diplomacy between factions—none of it mattered. They were all just buying time against something that would eventually consume everything anyway.
"Unless," The Lady continued, "the bonded prove capable of what the Gardeners could not achieve. Unless you succeed where we have repeatedly failed."
The vision faded, leaving them once again in the impossible city that served as The Lady's domain. But the images of what they had seen lingered, making even the advanced technology around them seem fragile and temporary.
"The test begins soon," The Lady announced. "Whether you are ready or not, whether you understand your purpose or not, whether you accept your responsibility or not. The Scourge comes, as it always comes."
She paused, looking at each of them in turn. "The only question is whether this cycle will end differently than all the others."