The signal from Earth was weak, distorted by its journey across the dimensional rift and through the still-healing space around Sylva Prime, but its meaning was unmistakable. It was a standard Blackwood Industries corporate hail, repeating on an old emergency band. Its content was terse: To Alexander Blackwood. Corporate assets in receivership. Hostile takeover by Fenris Syndicate imminent. Quantum anchor anomaly data suggests your survival. Coordinates attached. Request immediate consultation. – Gideon.
Gideon. His AI assistant. Somehow, it had survived, or been reactivated. And it was calling him home.
The message arrived as Alexander was in a Stewardship Council meeting, debating the carbon sequestration limits for a new ceramics kiln. It was a punch to the gut, a violent yank back into a life he had convinced himself was over. The coordinates led to a point in high orbit—a waiting ship, presumably.
He said nothing, finishing the meeting with mechanical calm. But Elara saw the tremor in his hand as he reached for his water glass, the distant look in his eyes. She knew him too well.
That evening, in their home—a spacious, airy structure grown into the hillside with a view of the bay—she confronted him. "You heard from Earth."
He didn't ask how she knew. "A message. My corporate empire is being dismantled by vultures. Gideon believes I can stop it."
"And?"
He turned from the window, his face etched in the moonlight. "And nothing. It is 34.6 light-years and a dimensional tear away. The Synthesis could open a portal, perhaps. But the cost, the risk…" He trailed off, but she heard the unsaid words. The temptation.
"You want to go," she stated.
"I want to see," he corrected, his voice tight. "It is a closed loop. An unresolved equation. I walked away from a kingdom. I would like to know if it fell to ruin, or if it was merely… reallocated." He looked at her, the conflict raw in his eyes. "It is not about the empire, Elara. It is about the man who built it. I left him in that alley. I need to know if he is truly gone."
Elara understood the pull of the past, of unfinished stories. She also felt a cold dread. What if he went back and saw the towering spires of Neo-Tokyo, felt the thrum of real power, and remembered who he was? What if Alexander Blackwood, CEO, decided he preferred that skin to the one of the city-planter, the peacemaker?
"The Assembly won't allow it," she said, grasping for practicalities. "You're the Chair. Your leadership is stabilizing. A journey like that… it could take months. Anything could happen here."
"Vor can act as Chair pro tempore. The systems are in place. The Pact is signed. My presence is a symbol now, more than a necessity." He was already strategizing, the old pathways in his brain lighting up. "The Synthesis could stabilize a portal for a short-term reconnoiter. In and out. Seventy-two hours, subjective time."
"And if the Fenris Syndicate has weapons that can hurt you? If Gideon's message is a trap? You're not a corporate raider anymore, Alexander. You're a man with a healing back and a community that needs you."
"Which is why I must go!" he said, his control snapping. "To prove that man is gone! To face the ghost of what I was and walk away from it, freely. Not because I was stranded, but because I choose this." He gestured violently towards the window, towards New Horizon. "Otherwise, it will always be the consolation prize. The kingdom I built because I lost my first one. I need to know this is my choice."
His words laid bare a vulnerability she had only glimpsed. His entire identity here was built on the absence of an alternative. To be truly free, he needed to reject that alternative with his eyes open.
It took a week of intense debate. The Assembly was terrified. Hayes's faction saw an opportunity to push their agenda in his absence. Brynn and Thorne argued that his quest for personal closure was a luxury they couldn't afford. Vor simply said, "A warrior faces his past. Go. Come back. We will hold the line."
The Synthesis, consulted, was intrigued. "A closed temporal-spatial loop presents a unique opportunity for data-gathering on cross-dimensional causality. We will assist. The portal will be stable for seventy-four hours, thirty-two minutes. We can also provide a… companion."
The companion was a small, orb-shaped drone, a fragment of the Synthesis's consciousness encased in adaptive stealth plating. It would record, analyze, and, if necessary, protect. It was also a tether, a way for the Synthesis—and by extension, Elara—to monitor his safety.
The night before his departure, there was no grand celebration. They lay together in the quiet of their home. Elara's head was on his shoulder, her hand over his heart.
"If you see the Obsidian Spire," she whispered, "don't get nostalgic."
"I'll compare its efficiency ratings to our water reclamation plant. I'm sure it will be found wanting," he murmured into her hair, trying for humor that fell flat.
"Come back to me," she said, the command in her voice undercut by a tremor.
His arms tightened around her. "That," he said, with absolute certainty, "is the only variable in this equation that is not in doubt."
The portal opened at dawn in a secluded canyon, a vertical tear of violent blue energy. It was a smaller, more controlled version of the one that had brought him. Alexander, dressed in a dark, flexible suit of Synthesis-grown material, stood before it. The orb-drone hovered at his shoulder. Elara, Vor, and the Assembly stood witness.
He turned, his eyes finding Elara's. He didn't speak. He gave a single, curt nod—the CEO's acknowledgement—but his eyes held a promise that was purely the man's. Then he turned and stepped through the rippling light.
The journey was a nauseating inversion of sensation. He emerged not in an alley, but in the sterile, cold airlock of a ship—a sleek, fast courier registered to a Blackwood subsidiary. The interior lights were dim. A familiar, synthesized voice filled the space.
"Welcome back, sir. Chronological analysis indicates an absence of four hundred and twelve days, subjective. Your biometrics show significant scarring and altered muscle composition. Shall I prepare a medical briefing?"
"Gideon," Alexander said, his voice strange in the quiet. "Status report. And where are we?"
"In geosynchronous orbit above the Neo-Tokyo coordinates you provided. The Fenris Syndicate assumed control of Blackwood Holdings ninety-seven days ago following a leveraged default on your persona. I have maintained a covert presence in this vessel, awaiting your signal. The Syndicate is brutal but inefficient. Corporate valuation has dropped eighteen percent under their management."
On the main screen, a live feed of Earth filled the view. The blue marble, swirled with white. Home. A wave of something so powerful it felt like vertigo washed over Alexander. Not longing. Not pride. A profound, aching strangeness. He had spent a year fighting, bleeding, building on an alien world. This pristine globe below seemed almost… trivial.
"Take me down," he ordered. "To the Spire. Undetected."
"Sir, that is a high-risk—"
"Now, Gideon."
The descent was a ghost's passage. The courier ship, equipped with cutting-edge stealth tech from Alexander's own R&D division, slipped through planetary defenses like a shadow. They set down on the private pad of the Obsidian Spire in the dead of night. Alexander stepped out.
The air was familiar—charged with ozone and pollution, the smell of ambition and decay. The city sprawled below, a breathtaking circuit board of humanity. He felt a jolt of recognition, but it was the recognition of a ghost visiting his own tomb.
He entered his penthouse. It was exactly as he had left it. Immaculate, cold, a museum of a life. A datapad lay on the desk where he'd dropped it. The art was tasteful and meaningless. The silence was absolute.
The orb-drone floated beside him, its sensors quietly humming.
"Emotional valence: high dissonance," it whispered in his mind, a voice like the Synthesis's. "Biometric indicators suggest stress, but not longing. Analysis: environment is recognized as 'home' but not coded as 'belonging.'"
He walked to the floor-to-ceiling window. This was the view that had defined his world. The kingdom. He had felt like a god here. Now, he felt like a tourist. The problems below—the corporate takeover, the squabbling of shareholders—seemed laughably small. Petty. He had brokered peace with a planetary intelligence. He had helped design a city. He had held a dying world in his arms and chosen to plant a garden.
Gideon's voice broke his reverie. "Sir, Fenris leadership is in the boardroom three levels down. They are finalizing the dissolution of the space logistics division. Your presence, if revealed, would cause significant market disruption. What are your instructions?"
Alexander looked at the glittering city, then at the silent, sterile perfection of his penthouse. He thought of a silver beach, of laughter in a plaza, of dirt under fingernails from a memory garden. He thought of Elara's smile in the moonlight.
He turned away from the window. "Instructions, Gideon? Initiate Protocol Phoenix."
There was a pause. "Protocol Phoenix is a full data-scrub and self-destruct sequence for all core Blackwood AI and intellectual property caches. It will render the company's most valuable assets to ash. Confirm."
"Confirmed. Scramble the data, salt the earth. Let Fenris have the empty shell." A cold, sharp smile touched his lips. It was the old Alexander, ruthless and decisive. But the target was his own past. "Then plot a course back to the rendezvous coordinates. We're leaving."
"And your personal assets? The Spire?"
Alexander took one last look around. "Sell it. Donate the proceeds to… to the Cambridge astrophysics department. Anonymously." He turned and walked back to the airlock without a backward glance. The prodigal son had returned, looked upon his inheritance, and found it was dust. His home was elsewhere now. He had a city to get back to, and a woman who was waiting under two moons. The loop was closed. The equation was solved.