Cassian lends Lucas a hand. “After we claim our territory, I promise you there will be no more war. We won’t hunt the remaining omega. This time, we will do what we set out to do in the first place. We’ll lead the planet into a new era of prosperity,” he says. “And then we will explore the multiverse.”
“The what?”
“Come with me, and you’ll see everything,” Cassian says.
He hasn’t taken Cassian’s hand yet. So many things run through his mind, but it’s his emotions that he can’t seem to understand. “Promise me you’ll get my children back,” he says.
Cassian nods. “That’s first on the agenda.”
Lucas takes his hand and lifts to his feet. A fire burns inside his heart. None of this feels okay, but Cassian is right about one thing.
With his knot, he gave Rae a promise to be a good father. He could feel her soul resting on the impossibility of their relationship. Three alphas. One omega. It was a recipe for disaster.
It was like she knew the worst would come, eventually. The only connection to her that Lucas has left is through their children.
The night he left the pack, Vash looked at him with the scorn of pride. It was at that moment he knew Vash didn’t care whether he lived or died. He just wanted control.
Lucas listens to Aden’s pleas, but his heart has hardened from so much melancholy and strife, he cannot bear it much longer. Now he knows what Vash felt on that fateful night.
They never gave a fuck about him, anyway.
In the frozen desert hills, Lucas turns his back on what he thought to be his destiny. He will never experience love again.
This is the only step forward. The final nail on his coffin.
“Spare Aden. He is no threat to you. I need you to take me to my children,” he says. “If you do that, I promise to fight by your side until the bitter end.”
Rae
Rae’s toes rest against the foothold of the rusted ladder. Taking a moment, she pauses and gazes at the young omega below her. “You okay?” she asks.
The young omega tightens her grip around the rung above her. She hesitates, but with strong resolve, she steps up. “I’m not a little girl. I’ve seen worse.”
Rae climbs back into the network of caves above the city. A chill runs across Rae’s shoulders as they circle past the rotting corpse of the fragile devil.
The young omega pauses next to his pool of blood. “There’s nothing here. I’m telling you. I looked for days,” she says.
They’re both exhausted beyond belief. There is the rain water to drink from the barrels below, but she’s not sure how safe it is, and they’ve gone through the last of the young omega’s food rations. Maybe the omega is right, but turning off the cryo units terrifies the crap out of her.
Little by little, the tank baby loses its glow. She remembers the quick reaction from the fragile devil, right before she smashed his head. As time progresses, his words gnaw at her. She wonders how long the tank baby will survive without synthesis.
Searching for another power source is most likely futile. Rae can only hope to buy extra time before she has to decide: extinction or synthesis.
That’s the game, right?
Rae maneuvers through the tunnels she has grown accustomed to walking. Through the old sleeping chambers, past the long network of caves is a path she hasn’t taken.
When she sees it, she knows she’s there. Through a dark tunnel, she walks until she hits a solid door, complete with a fingerprint scanner lock.
Rae turns to eye the young omega. The girl backs away. “I thought you said you checked everywhere,” Rae says. “You must have seen this door.”
The omega stutters. “It wasn’t worth mentioning. There’s no way past that lock.”
Rae places her thumb against the mechanism next to the door. It turns red and issues an unpleasant noise.
The fragile devil knew every turn to take. He knew about this place.
She realizes what she has to do. Lowering the tank baby to the floor, she faces away from the door. “I need you to help me with the body,” she says
Rae jogs back through the caves so fast that the omega can barely keep.
“The what?” she asks.
Stopping near the fragile devil’s body, Rae holds her breath and slides underneath his shoulder blades.
The stench is unbearable. “We really have to move a dead body?”
Rae takes a breath. The stench is unbearable. “You got a better plan?”
The omega sighs, but there’s an urgency inside Rae that won’t let her back down from this. The answer to Rae’s existence lies behind that door. She can sense it.
They lay his body near the lock, and Rae grabs the stiff hand. His thumbprint activates the pad, and the door unlocks, inching open.
Bending to grab the tank baby, she nudges the door open with her shoulder. She looks upon the unexpected ease of entry, and a glare of light envelops her body.
She nearly drops the tank baby. The young omega balances against the doorframe.
Inside, many machines light up and purr with quiet energy. In the center of the mysterious room is a large control panel, and a screen with a map of what appears to be several universes.
Centered at the bottom of the screen is one word: Omegaverse.
Rae walks inside, winding through the massive super computers. As she glides her palms softly across the control panel, the hairs on her arms rise.
“Rae… what did we just find?” the young omega asks.
Rae grabs a handle on the control panel. A green button glows: Terraform.
“The particle accelerator isn’t what everyone thought. Everyone was lied to,” she says, mystified by their discovery.
Rae sees another button that reads: Cryo Units. She hits it and watches as the screen pulls up the statistical analysis of the life form inside of it.
The omega stammers. “What is this place?”
Rae can feel her blood pump. “It’s alpha made. It was designed for a reason,” Rae says. “It’s a multiverse machine.”
“A what?” she asks.
“This will sound hard to believe, but the map is clear. He designed a network of universes.”
Rae bites her lip. “Wait a minute,” she whispers.
“What is it?”
Rae points to the stats on the screen. “It says here that the cryo unit captives are alpha.”
“If that’s true, then they can’t be your clones,” the omega says.
Rae nods. “Exactly.”
She hits the button back to the elaborate map of the universes, and she remembers the facility Cassian locked her inside. It looked like this room, lit with complex machinery. There were many clones. Thousands in cryo units, and similar to the bunker below them.
Then she remembers his mother. She was a dying omega, tortured by his father. Left to be rebuilt by Cassian. The machines that he hooked her to kept her alive. The cables were her veins. She became a synthetic oracle.
She controlled him. She controlled everything.
Rae gasps. “The cryostasis units aren’t providing power to the accelerator. They’re providing power to her.”
Not every monster comes from outer space. Some are built.
The omega swallows and runs her hands through her hair. “Her…?”
Slowly, Rae looks up at the ceiling. The hum grows louder.
“Hello, Subject EC23,” a computerized woman’s voice says. “I am the motherboard.”
It’s a voice that Rae recognizes.
“Cassian’s mother,” Rae says with clarity.
The computer keeps speaking. “I have been waiting for you for years,” the motherboard says.
Rae circles around the control panel. The voice comes from the walls and ceiling. Everywhere.
“It’s not you,” Rae says. “You died. There was no time to revive you.”
The computer giggles. “You’re right. I am just a copy of the first mother. Cassian created a replica of my c
onsciousness. A snapshot, if you will. We are similar, whether you want to admit it or not.”
“You’re nothing like me,” Rae hisses.
“Again, you are correct. I lack a body,” she says. “My mind is old. I lack the same energy, but I contain a wisdom no alpha or omega can possess.”
The omega looks frantic. “This is too weird. I say we smash her to pieces.”
The screen flashes. The map of the multiverse reconstructs into a female face. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” she teases.
“Oh, God,” Rae mutters. “Cassian isn’t dead. But I saw him die. There’s no way he could have lived through his wounds.”
Him being alive isn’t the only thing that worries her. Knowing that he designed this place scares her the most. He designed universes, alternate worlds. Copies upon copies. A never ending existence, the opposite of extinction.
It is so much worse than she thought.
“Correct. The New Republic kept him alive. They wished to use him for his resources. When he recovered, he continued his work in exile,” the motherboard says.
The thought chills her to the bone. “I need to know who is inside the cryo units,” she says.
A soft, electronic chuckle. “You mean, you don’t know?”
Rae looks over at the young omega in despair. “They’re copies of him,” Rae guesses. “But why? Why would Cassian design other versions? Was it simply because he wanted to live forever?”
The face on the screen frowns. “The particle accelerator was salvageable. Only slightly destroyed, but he worked to repair what the detonation affected. He found something here. They were well aware of a vast network of electromagnetic activity. But he didn’t realize he could use it to bend space and time.”
This was happening right under their noses the entire time. “What did he do?” Rae asks, horrified.
“He harvested the planet’s energy, creating universes. The worlds he built were experiments. Child’s play. He wanted to see how life progresses when put in various circumstances, but it was too risky to use his own body and mind to explore,” the motherboard says. “And then he found out he could transfer consciousness. That changed everything. The bodies rest here in stasis, but their minds exist in other universes.”
The clones… his clones are hooked up to the machine. Why didn’t she disconnect them when she had the chance?
“Why?” Rae asks, defiant. “Tell me why.”
“He called it the omegaverse,” she says. “A web of universes that could be used by an individual to conquer death. Synthesis led to the discovery of consciousness-transfer. He could live a thousand lives in one second. With no need for procreation, he could end the problem of alpha sterility.”
“And you could have him forever,” Rae sneers.
“My dear, I already have him forever. I exist in all of the worlds, too,” the motherboard says.
“But if the bodies stay here, they’ll all die. The extinction gene will wipe out his machine and everything else with it,” Rae says.
More shrill laughter from the motherboard. “The only extinction gene that exists lies within Cassian. Genetic alteration—he had his code rewritten in case certain unfortunate events led to his untimely death.”
Rae doesn’t know what to think. She looks at the tank baby, the replica of herself, and she hangs her head in despair.
The motherboard seems to read her every thought. “The baby was my idea,” she says, her digital smile spreading across the screen. “I thought it best that he moved on from this version of you. You have caused too much trouble for one alpha.”
“Move on?”
“Cassian built me and entrusted a beta slave to carry out the synthesis,” she says. “He failed. But there was always a backup plan.”
Rae turned their oppressive world on its head. She woke people up from their ways. Time and time again, she proved she was stronger than any alpha.
When will they learn? They cannot stop her.
She emboldens Rae to act. “Where is Cassian? The real version,” she asks.
The screen morphs and displays Killian, Vash, and Lucas’ mugshots.
The face fades back onto the screen, eyes creased with disdain. “Oh, honey. He’ll be here soon. My boy is just finishing what he started. And once your alphas are dead, he’s going to take you to another universe.”
Rae chokes.
“You will experience eternal life.”
She pictures herself on a distant prison planet, locked away for all of her existence. If Cassian had his way, he’d make her live a thousand nightmares.
There’s not a moment to spare.
Grabbing the omega by her collar, she runs through the door. Sweat beating down her face and neck, she lets out a burst of tears. The motherboard’s laughter follows them through the caves, growing louder by the second.
“What do we do?” the omega asks.
“We shut off the clones. We kill every copy,” Rae commands.
The motherboard laughs even louder.
Rae steps on the ladder. Each rung feels crisp beneath her palms. She drops and runs to the cryo units. A barricade blocks the only path inside.
“Shit!” Rae hisses.
She looks around the streets. Mud, dead bodies, and bugs are the only things she can see. The barrels that were once full are now empty.
This was Cassian’s doing. The whole fucking thing reeks of his artistry.
He was smart enough to know their weaknesses, and like a predator, he stalked in the shadows and waited for the right moments to act. He waited for them to come to him.
How could they have been so stupid?
Suddenly, the accelerator fires up, rotating at a faster speed than she has ever seen. The harsh glow of red and molten orange washes over their bodies, blinding.
The motherboard’s voice echoes across the city. “There’s no use running,” the motherboard says. “Best to give in, dear. It’s almost over.”
Killian
Bullets whizz into the snow near Killian’s head as he dives to take cover behind a small hill. The pack sits by him with Ruby still folded in a towel, thankfully still breathing.
He keeps his children nested against his barrel-like chest. Though the little alphas are in danger, they don’t cry. They hold him, clenching around his body for dear life.
He never thought it would get this far. If Rae was dead, he thought he could block out the sorrow by keeping himself occupied. This wasn’t the distraction he needed.
Exhaling, he reloads his rifle with trembling hands. He drops one bullet into the show and scrambles to grab it, but it sinks lower and lower, until it disappears, out of reach.
He knocks his shoulder against Vash. “I have fifty rounds left,” he says.
“Fuck, we’re going to die out here. I can’t feel my fingers,” Vash replies, eyes wide and frantic.
Holger reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small mirror. With care, he angles it near the edge of the hill to see the alpha enemies.
This time, they’re vastly outnumbered. Killian has counted twenty-three of them. Snipers, rifle-alphas, and heavier artillery. They’re posted up, unmoving and relentless with their gunfire. The’ve got an entire arsenal.
Vash gives a quick laugh. “Just our luck, right? Whenever we get close to winning her back, something stands in the way.”
Ignoring the joke, he puts his palm around the back of one of his kids. He leans and kisses their heads. They smell like Rae.
“We can’t keep doing this,” Killian says.
“You tired, already?” Vash asks.
Vash has his revolver out, but Killian can see the tremble in his hands, too. They’re both scared. It’s a first for them, but these alphas really got the go on them. Time is running out.
“C’mon, brother. It’s time. We made it far enough. We have to give up the ghost. They’ve got us surrounded,” he says.
Vash shuts his mouth. He’s irritated, but he has to know that Killian is righ
t. Lucas used to the be the level-headed one in the group, but fatherhood has allowed Killian to claim the role. He knows what decision to make.
Tossing his rifle over the hill, he stands with his hands over his head. “Stop!” he screams. “We forfeit.”
Vash groans, but he stands and tosses his weapon aside. “Yeah. What he said.”
The alphas stand against the howling wind. At first, Killian wonders if they will kill them, regardless of their surrender. But a few seconds pass. The crowd of gunmen step away from the center. Another alpha pushes through the bodies.
It’s… “Cassian?” Killian asks, bewildered.
Cassian walks with another. Lucas.
Killian can’t believe it. He can only guess what Vash is thinking.
Cassian stands, facing them in front of his small army of feral alphas. “Ruby, you have let me down,” he says. “I thought you would get further than this.”
Weakly, Ruby clenches her fist and raises a thumb into the air.
“As for the rest of you, I understand your drive. Your fight. It’s in me, too,” he says.
Neither Killian nor Vash say a damn thing.
“I know, you must be so surprised,” he says, digging his right heel into the ground in front of him. “It’s not a hallucination. I’m here. I’ll always be here.”
“I’ll kill you, brother,” Vash growls.
Cassian laughs. “Go ahead. The extinction gene is active inside me. After my failure and exile, I had it coded into my genes. If I die, nothing on this godforsaken planet will survive.”
Killian lowers his head. “It can’t be,” he says. “The gene is in Rae.”
Cassian wags a finger. “You shouldn’t believe rumors. Especially ones I made up,” he says.
Killian’s entire perspective shifts. He feels like a damn fool. “We should have known better than to derive intel from overheard rumors. None of it was true. He threw us off the trail.”
Lucas stands behind Cassian. “Vash. Killian. Do the right thing. Come back to the Ouroboros. We’ll raise our children the only way we know how,” he says.
“Don’t get me started on you, cod-fucker,” Vash curses.
Broken Angel: The Complete Collection: A Dark Omegaverse Romance Page 43
