Zell watched on the large viewscreen at the front of the control room as doors along the belly of the Worldbreaker opened and teardrop-shaped drop-pods rained free. Each drop-pod fired mana jets to orient them toward the blue-green ball far below, then rocketed away to deliver their Nytherion worm payloads.

  It made him sick.

  His face was a stoic mask, but his soul churned with the knowledge of the pain and death those pods carried for the humans on Earth. He consoled himself with a reminder that he’d done what he could to mitigate the effect of the worms. His virus reduced the number of worms by thirty percent. He’d warned five of the seven people to whom he’d sent Dreamstones. His agents hadn’t reached the other two in time, but he’d tried.

  It all felt so futile. All of his planning, all of the careful maneuvering to get the right people in the right jobs, all of the cautious pruning of potential problems, and still all those strands together felt like a flimsy thread to pin his hopes to.

  The humans hadn’t disappointed him, though. He’d felt kindred spirits in the ones he’d spoken with. Tibor, Char, and Adele most of all. He’d planted seeds to lead them to resources, and he’d educated them as much as he could. So much was up to them now. All he could do was continue to pave the way.

  A tablet was offered to him, and he turned to accept it, surprised for a moment that it wasn’t Nichala handing it to him. For an instant, he’d forgotten. He’d had high hopes for her, but when he’d approached her, her conditioning had proven too complete. She’d become a mistake that had to be pruned. Her absence would be noticed, but the recycling tanks covered all manner of sins.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  He swallowed back the pang of guilt and turned his attention to the figures on the tablet. From the numbers he was seeing, his slight tweak to the atmospheric entry vectors for a quarter of the pods hadn’t been detected. If this gambit worked, the number of pods lost to entry would be higher than planned, but still low enough to be written off as poor luck.

  His sabotage had to walk that fine line. If he slipped up, he would die, and the fragile rebellion would die with him. The dream of it might live on, but the cells would be isolated without him to tie them together. He hated being the single point of failure that could doom the whole enterprise, but there was no one else he could trust to know the scope of his plans.

  The timer on the main screen reached zero, and the pods began to pierce the atmosphere. They became bright streaks as they heated, blooming across the blue haze like a meteor storm. He had to focus to keep his expression even and his cranial crest from lifting as one of the pods broke apart like a bolide, followed soon after by another fireball of failure. So far, so good.

  Over the next half-hour, he watched and kept track of the numbers. 60% of the Human race had already perished. 5 forerunners had been forewarned. 63% of the originally planned Nytherion worms reached the surface. One Sanctuary had been claimed. One tyrant and his seven offspring waited to be brought low.

  The math was bleak, but Zell held on to hope.

  Hope was a fragile thing, but so was a spark. He was sure his sparks had landed in ready tinder, and he would do all he could to see that Char and the other forerunners grew into bonfires.