Hive Queen by Sinclair, Grayson (ereader iphone .TXT) 📗

but quickly closed it, his eyes shifting away. “Maybe. I don’t know. But we had time to find out if she could—we didn’t have to act immediately!”

“If we had waited for her to get finished with her analysis, we’d have lost even more drives to the corruption, and it would have cost hundreds of lives in the slim hopes that we might’ve been able to save everyone. It was a pipe dream, and you know it,” Magnus said.

“You still─”

“James, he’s right. Much as I didn’t agree with how he went about it, he took decisive action, and much as you hate the cost, you can’t deny he saved everyone he could,” Evelyn said.

“You were just as furious as I was. Don’t even deny it,” Adam replied.

Evelyn leaned her hip against the table and crossed her arms. “I hated that he went around us without our consent and used your system access to do it. I hated the method, but I’ve always agreed with his results.”

“Evelyn’s right,” I said, standing up. My fingers brushed against Raven and Eris as I passed, and I gave them both a reassuring smile. “Magnus did what he thought was best, and I can’t say I wouldn’t have made the same decision in his place. Risking the whole system in the off chance you can save everyone is a fool’s gamble, and you know it.”

“I thought after all you’ve lost, you’d agree that we have to save everyone.”

“If we can. But not at the cost of everyone else. I’ve lost just as much as anyone else here, and not twenty minutes ago, I lost someone I would’ve liked to befriend. A girl who did nothing wrong but still died a needless death.” I paced in a small circle, my footsteps clacking against the hardwood floor. “You can’t save everyone. That’s the lesson I’ve learned after all these years. Save who you can, when you can.”

“Well said. Duran is right, especially now,” Magnus said, coming over to clap me on the back. “This doesn’t have to be a repeat of the past. We can work together this time.”

Repeat? Ah, that’s what this has been about since the beginning. “It’s happening again, isn’t it? That’s what the void is doing creeping in from the Azure Depths,” I said, placing my finger on the hyper realistic map. “The system is corrupted again.”

“Yes. Our measures were only temporary, I’m afraid, and I don’t know how bad the situation actually is this time.”

“What happens if the system gets fully corrupted?”

“It’s the end, of everything, of the entire Ouroboros Project.”

“So we would all die, permanently.”

“Exactly. There are no backups,” Magnus said.

I pinched the bridge of my nose and heaved a sigh. I need a drink. I opened my inventory and pulled out my flask.

“Anyone need a drink? Just me. Okay.” After a long pull, I capped the flask and passed it to Raven, because I knew she would want one. “All this time, and I still don’t know what the Ouroboros Project’s end goal was. Digital immortality is great and all, but this couldn’t have been the entire goal, right?”

Adam shook his head. “It wasn’t. This was supposed to be just temporary. Windigo Industries saw the writing on the wall when the first of the ghouls appeared. They started forming contingency plans in case the worst should happen.”

“Windigo? Seriously? Those bastards are who’re behind all this? So what, digital immortality was the best they could come up with?”

“Not at all,” Evelyn interjected. “It was just one of the projects they had in the works.”

“And how well did the others turn out?” Magnus asked her. “They built a damned spaceship in low orbit and ferried almost two thousand people off-world, and what happened to them, Adam, Evelyn?”

Both of them looked away, their faces set in stone.

Magnus slammed his fist on the wood. “Exactly. And how did our own end goal turn out? Twenty years. That was the promise we all received when we started working on the project. Twenty years, and our consciousness would be put inside clones of our bodies. That was our endgame, and what happened?”

He blew out a breath and combed through his hair.

“Raven, would you mind sharing?’ he asked.

She froze mid-sip and pulled the flask from her lips. “No, ma─Magnus,” she said and stood, handing him the metal flask.

Magnus drank deeply, nearly chugging the stiff whiskey I’d filled it with. He stopped and sat it on the table, spilling a few drops in the process. “Nine hundred and fifty-seven years. We’ve been here for nearly a thousand years and have no chance of ever going home again. If Earth even stands any longer. We’re here, on Nexus, until the power runs out and ends it all.

“I don’t know about the rest of you, but I know exactly which of the nine hells I’m headed to, and I’m not looking forward to it.”

The air was heavy, the tension so thick I could have cut it with my knife.

“Look,” I said, standing up from the chair. “This goes beyond any past grievances. We can’t hold onto grudges when the literal end of everything is staring us in the face. I’m an outsider in all this, I’m not a scientist, computer whatever. I’m just a thug, but you three are the smartest, most powerful people in this world. If you can’t come to an agreement, then we all die.”

“Sampson has a point, brother. We have to do something. We can’t repeat past mistakes and have us at odds with each other. We can find common ground.”

Adam laughed, leaning over the table while his golden eyes stared down at the map, unblinking. “You’re right about one thing, Jess. We can’t repeat history, that’s for damn sure.” He looked up at Magnus, a decision made in his eyes. “We tried it your