The medical bay aboard the Executive Measure was silent except for the quiet rhythm of machines.

  Soft white light reflected off polished alloy walls. Medical displays drifted in translucent layers above the treatment beds, projecting streams of diagnostics, neural activity graphs, and cellular repair sequences.

  In the center of the chamber, Benjamin Bernard Barnaby lay motionless.

  A thin band of metal circled his head.

  A neural inhibitor.

  Every few seconds it pulsed with a faint blue light as it suppressed the chaotic energy signatures attempting to stir within his mind.

  Even unconscious, the readings were… unusual.

  Helena Voss studied them with careful interest.

  She stood at the foot of the bed with her hands clasped behind her back, watching the hovering displays.

  “Fascinating.”

  Behind her, a containment tank hummed quietly.

  Suspended within the column of pale medical fluid, Nymara Hale floated in slow, weightless stillness. A swarm of surgical nanites moved through the liquid like drifting silver dust, knitting damaged tissue back together while stabilization fields held her vital signs steady.

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  A web of cables and bio-monitors fed data into the surrounding consoles.

  Severe trauma.

  Massive blood loss.

  But alive.

  For now.

  Voss watched the tank for a moment longer.

  Her expression shifted ever so slightly.

  Concern.

  It passed quickly.

  She turned back toward the unconscious man on the table.

  Ben looked deceptively ordinary.

  Average height.

  Average build.

  Short brown hair matted slightly from dried blood. A faint layer of stubble across his face.

  A man who, at first glance, might pass unnoticed in any crowd in the galaxy.

  The instruments around him disagreed violently.

  The monitors displayed fractured energy patterns that refused to stabilize.

  Power signatures that appeared…

  …then vanished.

  Then returned again somewhere else.

  The data made no sense.

  The neural inhibitor pulsed again.

  Ben’s brain activity dropped instantly.

  Order restored.

  “For someone who destroyed a planet and wreaked havoc everywhere you went,” she murmured quietly, “you are remarkably unassuming.”

  Across the room, the medical tank emitted a soft chime.

  Hale’s vitals stabilized.

  Voss glanced toward the display. Good. She would need her old mentor alive.

  She stepped closer to Ben’s bed and studied his face for a long moment.

  There was something strange about the stillness of him.

  Not weakness really. Inexperience. But also…

  Potential.

  Buried beneath layers of ignorance and suppression.

  The reports from Ashfall had confirmed it.

  The anomaly was real.

  And now he belonged to her.

  Voss reached out and gently adjusted the neural inhibitor band around his head.

  The device hummed softly as it tightened.

  Ben did not wake.

  “Welcome aboard,” Helena Voss said quietly.

  Then she turned and walked from the medical bay.

  Behind her, the Executive Measure slid silently through the void.

  And the man who might one day reshape the Omniverse slept in chains.