Artisan's POV
"He threatened me?" I asked, my eyes flicking from my last remaining Special Grade to the new First Grade sorcerer I had just elevated.
I had expected failure, at least in part. They had been a probing force, dispatched to overwhelm Constantine after tying off a few loose ends in Britain.
Without my most important First and Special Grades to uphold sections of my global empire, it was rapidly devolving and consuming itself.
People were jockeying for power. Others were fleeing. Local police forces now knew my name.
Gina and Nathan had been in the country helping me contain the damage. Board executives were threatened into silence and compliance with carefully curated blackmail. Gang leaders were toppled and replaced. Hackers were located and sufficiently intimidated into retaking their vows.
Thousands of covert spies fell somewhere between those operations, and those who had proven disloyal were removed.
It had been a clusterfuck beyond measure—one I had not anticipated, but attended to all the same, deploying my various contingencies.
I had been forced to decant several meta-clones, fit them with halfway competent sorcerers, enhance them in haste, and deploy them across the world.
Dozens had died. A few had attempted to flee, with predictably disastrous results.
The Light, as expected, had expressed displeasure at the amount of attention I was drawing. However, they had done nothing yet. I was far too entrenched within their organization to be rooted out with brute force.
"I'm sorry, Artisan," Gina said with a bow, her contrition careful but incomplete. It distracted me from my spiraling calculations.
"Hmm. I do not blame you," I said. "Constantine is a peerless sorcerer. I also imagine controlling Kyle was half the battle."
Nathan gnashed his teeth but remained silent. Gina's expression said more than she dared to say. She was disillusioned by the chaos, the betrayals, and the absence of her brother. Given the opportunity, she would flee to him at once, and I knew killing him would only weaken her.
"Prepare yourself," I told her. "I have a new mission for you. Your brother has been sighted in Japan, near his old stomping grounds. I want you to go there and speak with him."
Gina blinked. "And when you say speak, you mean…"
"Just speak," I replied evenly. "If you decide to fight, that will be your choice. Just ensure you use your meta ability." I allowed myself a small smile. "I imagine he will be furious."
She forced a smile in return.
"But what about America?" she pressed. "Villains are moving into our territory. We have heard rumors that Shelim has partnered with Julius, and the Justice League—"
"Leave that to me," I said with a dismissive wave. "Our family is the priority now. We have already lost too many."
Gina studied me with an expression that bordered on distrust. I did not blame her. Emboldened by the power of my vows, I had treated them as disposable—fuel for my experimentation and vision.
And they were disposable, in many respects.
However, they were also competent, rare, and at times… entertaining.
Spending them as recklessly as I had was inefficient.
So I did something I rarely did.
"I understand my past behavior has appeared… mercenary," I said carefully. "However, you and the others are now a priority. What use is forging a new world if we are not alive to enjoy it?"
Gina cycled through a dozen emotions before settling on cautious acceptance. She bowed again, more sincerely this time.
"I will make my way to Osaka as quickly as possible."
I nodded and turned my attention to Nathan.
He was visibly nervous, a thin sheen of sweat coating his forehead. He was desperate for reassurance.
"Listen to her," I said calmly. "She is number one until the others return. What she says is law. Disobey again, and you will answer to me."
"Yes… ma'am." He was trembling.
They withdrew with hurried steps, leaving me alone in my laboratory.
The room overlooked a vast balcony lined with pod containers filled with hundreds of clones. A few were mine.
In the far corner, one pod stood apart from the rest. Frost coated its glass, preserving the man inside as if time itself had stalled.
Alexander John Hendricks.
The current President of the United States of America.
—
Julius's POV
I sat in the air-conditioned backroom of a nightclub clad in segmented bone armor, its interior lined with leather fashioned from my own dead skin. My helmet rested beside me. I manipulated the blood stored within my dagger's handle, making it dance and coil through the air while keeping a portion of my focus on the compressed blood orbs hovering above my shoulders.
My Cursed Energy signature was muted thanks to the talismans I had strung around the room beforehand, and I waited for Artisan's enforcers. They had been moving up the coast just as we had, deploying a mixture of physically enhanced metas and sorcerers to reestablish contact and dominance.
We had missed this particular team twice already, losing a police commissioner and a local senator in the process. Shelim possessed blackmail material that would expose both of them, and we had already struck deals with their replacements. They were just as corrupt, but Shelim allowed them to keep a larger cut and armed them with enough leverage to strong-arm those beneath them, when necessary.
To sweeten the arrangement, we promised protection from Artisan. That was the second reason I was here, aside from safeguarding their original target.
The real estate magnate Edwin Fuller owned ten nightclubs in Miami and held stakes in most of the other successful ones across the city. He trafficked drugs and willing girls through a portion of them, satisfying darker appetites while compiling blackmail material on wealthy businessmen and politicians throughout the state.
It was half the reason he had become so powerful. Artisan had absorbed his dossier when she recruited him eight years ago, using its contents to strong-arm individuals into agreements that benefited her. Now that she had a multinational organization to manage, Edwin was no longer a priority, but he remained valuable enough to warrant one of her better teams.
I had no idea what to expect from them, but Shelim had revealed one useful detail.
They were fast.
The knife froze midair as my senses sharpened. I turned my gaze toward the door.
Three presences stood beyond it. Two were built like professional bodybuilders. The third was a slender young woman with flowing hair and a waspish frame. The two men carried the telltale weight of sorcerers.
The woman did not.
Interesting.
I had not sensed them entering the building at all.
A teleporter, then. Artisan had stuck one of them with Alex Whitmer in New York.
This might prove entertaining.
"Something feels off," the woman said through the door.
"This is where intel said he'd be," the first bulky man replied.
"What if it's a trap?" she pressed.
The second man snorted. "Like it would matter."
He reached for the handle.
I tugged on three of the compressed spheres of blood hovering beside me.
Three razor-thin streams erupted forward, fast and violent enough to detonate the office with a concussive boom. They shredded through furniture, split walls, and carved through the reinforced steel door like it was wet paper.
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