Ray kept on walking, never speeding up or slowing down. My guess was that he lived by the idea that if you looked like you belonged here, you belonged.

  Of course, you could say that he did belong, having been empowered by Magnus and released to kill us. That didn’t change the fact that he was a man with no superpowers walking through the control center of an ancient, alien weapon.

  Even if he couldn’t see all of it, the control center itself glowed with power. Though dim to my bots’ sight and my human senses, the hundreds of spheres floating in the air appeared different when I let my Artificer senses work.

  That wasn’t hard here. In fact, it almost took effort to avoid double vision.

  Through my second set of senses, I saw the spheres as roiling masses of power as well as the connections between them. My connection to the alien weapon itself, though far from complete gave me the structure of the system that supplied power to this thing. I didn’t have time to go into detail, but what I did see opened up avenues I’d never considered in how to use stars for power.

  Magnus sat on what could best be described as a floating throne. Around seven feet tall, it appeared to be white marble with veins of red and gray running through it. I doubted that it had been carved by any creature’s hand, but if it had been, it would have been a long project.

  It appeared to be all one piece and covered with decorations that might have been vines, electrical cables, or, more likely some long lost life form that no human had a name for. Through my nonhuman senses, I saw lines leading from it to the spheres above.

  All at once, thanks to my connection to the device, I also knew that the chair wasn’t real. While available in the device’s list of options of user interfaces, it had been created in response to Magnus’ request.

  Though it didn’t confer on him all power, it showed that he’d gained control of one more subsystem of the device. Through it though, he’d gained access to a catalog of the device’s systems and statistics on their operation.

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  While far from the end of the world, that meant that instead of stumbling blindly forward, he could now see what his options were. I didn’t know about him, but that would have been a big help to me if I were trying to control it.

  We couldn’t assume we had any time at all.

  Fortunately, we were here now and ready to prevent Magnus from giving his full attention to the project at hand.

  Ray crossed the room with a flowing, confident walk, nodding at the Cabal soldiers and True stationed around Magnus.

  Power Burst stood waiting under the sphere in the middle. Arms crossed over his chest, wearing a blue military uniform, much like the one I remembered from before, but this one had a silver cape.

  While Power Burst was obviously the same person with the same high cheekbones, dark hair, and face that resembled Dixie Superman, he struck me as younger. He hadn’t seemed more than thirty when we’d seen him earlier, but this version of him seemed to be in his early to mid 20s, closer to my age.

  As Ray neared him, Power Burst said, “What happened? Magnus said you might be dead.”

  Ray nodded. “I could have been. It got messy. I need to talk to Magnus now.”

  Starting to step around Power Burst, Ray stopped as Power Burst stepped in front of him. “No. You’re not going anywhere. Magnus felt his connection to you snap. I need to know why. Don’t even try to lie about it either. I can hear your heartbeat and see your blood flow. If you’re nervous, I’ll know about it. If you lie, it will be written in every pulse of your blood.”

  Ray grinned at him. “Why would I lie? I’m Magnus’ faithful servant just like all the rest of us here. If you want to know what happened, that’s easy. It’s the Rocket. I don’t know how he did it, but he disconnected me from Magnus’ power. I’m nothing but a normal guy right now.”

  Power Burst frowned, peering at Ray as if he were looking for lost keys and couldn’t find them.

  “I don’t understand,” Power Burst said, pausing to give Ray another look. “How did you get away from them?”

  “Don’t forget,” Ray said, “I’ve fought supers and killed them my entire adult life with no powers. Without them, you don’t know what to do, but for me, it’s situation normal. I can handle it. As for them? They think they saved me, but I lied to them. I told them I’m on their side. They think I’m scouting the tower, but I’m here to talk to Magnus. If he gives me the okay, I’ll lead you to them and we’ll end this. Got it?”