Dennis's POV
I pushed through the dining room doors and let them swing shut behind me, the golden tethers of every soul in the mansion humming faintly against my awareness like distant radio stations. The hallway stretched ahead of me, polished hardwood and cream-colored walls lined with oil paintings that had probably cost more than most people's houses. My mind was already three steps ahead of my feet.
Curtis first. Then the lab. then the war room for Jason, Then school.
I reached out through the bond network, feeling for Curtis Holt's particular frequency. It was easy to find, a bright, nervous thread of energy vibrating somewhere above me probably the ballroom dining area. I pinged Legion through the comm embedded in my holo watch to double check the results.
"Legion, where's Curtis Holt?"
"Second-floor east wing informal dining area, sir. Currently seated with the Arrow contingent. They appear to be engaged in extended conversation."
The informal dining room. That was the smaller one we'd set aside for the Rank Ones, a cozy space with round tables and bay windows overlooking the garden the bigger dining room used for the feast was also still in use if they wanted more room. It made sense. Team Arrow had people to catch up with, specifically the ones who'd been dead until yesterday.
I took the main staircase two steps at a time, leather jacket creaking softly with the movement, and turned left down the east corridor. The sounds hit me before I reached the doorway. Laughter, overlapping voices, the clink of silverware. Through the open archway I could see about fifteen people spread across three tables pushed together into one long surface. Plates of scrambled eggs, toast, fruit, and pitchers of juice cluttered every available inch.
Tommy Merlyn was leaning back in his chair with both hands wrapped around a coffee mug, grinning at something Sara Lance had just said. Laurel sat beside him, her fingers resting on his forearm with the quiet possessiveness of someone who'd lost him once and refused to do it again. Shado was across from Slade, listening intently as Thea described something with animated hand gestures. Quentin Lance had his reading glasses he didn't actually need anymore on and was squinting at a tablet, probably trying to make sense of a world twenty years ahead of the one he remembered.
Oliver sat at the head of the improvised table with Felicity tucked under his arm. Mia was on his other side, picking at a bowl of fruit, and William had apparently awakened to join them and had pulled up a chair at the far end near Roy. Curtis was sandwiched between Diggle and Rene, talking rapidly with his hands while Diggle nodded along with the patient expression of a man who'd learned years ago that Curtis communicated best at full speed.
Nobody noticed me walk in. People were moving in and out of the room constantly, servants refreshing coffee, a few of the staff members clearing plates, and my entrance blended into the flow of traffic. I let it. There was something genuinely good about watching them like this, unguarded, reconnecting. The tethers between them weren't just mine. They had their own histories, their own gravity.
I drifted closer, catching the tail end of Felicity's voice as she leaned into Oliver's side.
"Are you sure it's okay if you three skip breakfast downstairs? I don't want to step on any toes on literally our second day."
Oliver squeezed her shoulder. "Dennis told us himself that mealtimes are encouraged, not mandatory. I already talked about it with William and Slade we'll do dinner with the group, but you guys get breakfast and lunch for now. Down the line we'll mix it up more."
He said it to Felicity, but his voice carried just enough to reach the rest of the table. I could feel the collective tension through the tethers, that low-grade anxiety of new recruits trying to figure out where the invisible lines were. Oliver knew it too. He was addressing all of them.
"That's right," I said, stepping into the gap between Curtis and Diggle. A few heads snapped toward me. Tommy almost spilled his coffee. "Good morning, everyone. No need to worry about any of that. Like Ollie said, it's encouraged, not required. I understand that some of the Rank Twos are going to want time with their families and friends. That's the whole point of keeping you together."
Smiles broke out around the table. Laurel's was warm and genuine. Slade gave me a measured nod of respect. Quentin peered at me over his glasses with the evaluating look of a career cop who still wasn't entirely sure what to make of a seventeen-year-old god but had decided to roll with it if it meant he got his daughter back.
"As much as I'd love to sit down and get to know you all, I'm afraid I'm on a schedule." I turned my gaze to Curtis. "Curtis. I need you to come with me. It's important."
Curtis was on his feet before the sentence finished, napkin dropping onto his half-eaten plate of eggs. Diggle clapped him on the back. Rene muttered something about teacher's pet that earned a middle finger thrown over Curtis's shoulder as he fell into step behind me.
We cleared the archway and started down the corridor. Curtis's tether was vibrating like a plucked guitar string, nervousness and excitement braided together so tightly I couldn't tell where one ended and the other began.
"So, how can I help you, sir?" A beat. "Boss?" Another beat, longer this time. "God?"
I glanced over my shoulder and caught the slightly panicked expression of a man cycling through honorifics like a multiple-choice test he hadn't studied for.
"Calm down. Just call me Dennis. Or Alpha if we're in the field. That's my codename." I winked at him. "I'm not going to eat you. Unless you want me to, of course."
The blush that crawled up his neck was immediate and spectacular, spreading from his collar to the tips of his ears. His tether spiked with a cocktail of embarrassment, attraction, and the very specific flavor of a man who'd just realized his new boss flirted like breathing. I let the moment land and then kept walking, giving him the mercy of not having to formulate a response.
We didn't take the main staircase down to the ground floor but crossed through the closer library made our way to the library's stone hearth. The fireplace elevator was hidden behind a recessed panel in the library's stone hearth like the main elevator in the living room, one of only two access points to the sublevels from inside the mansion proper. The garage elevator could reach the sublevels too, but only if you originated from the mansion itself. Try it from the garage itself and you'd get a stuck elevator and a confused expression. Redundant security layers. Frank's influence on the evolving architecture.
I pressed my palm to the scanner concealed in the mantle's carved acanthus leaves. The stone slid aside with a hydraulic whisper, revealing the brushed titanium doors of the elevator car.
"Sublevel Two," I said.
As we descended, I pulled up Curtis's biometric profile on the elevator's embedded console and keyed in lab authorization, letting Legion sync it to his palm print and retinal pattern.
"There. Next time you won't need an escort. Your handprint and eyes will get you through."
Curtis watched the process with the focused attention of an engineer cataloging a new system. "This is military-grade access control running on what looks like a custom encryption layer. Who built this?"
"Legion. Our AI. You'll meet him properly once you're settled in."
"Him," Curtis repeated softly, and I could practically hear the gears turning, questions multiplying behind his eyes. Good. That hunger was exactly what I needed.
The doors opened onto Sublevel Two.
The lab sprawled before us, a cathedral of science that still made my chest tighten with satisfaction every time I saw it. Gleaming white floors stretched under banks of overhead LEDs that simulated natural daylight. Holographic workstations lined the walls, each one running different project threads. Robotic arms hung dormant from ceiling-mounted rails, waiting for activation commands. The air tasted clean and faintly metallic, filtered to surgical-theater standards.
And there, hunched over a central workstation surrounded by floating blueprints of what appeared to be a hundred-story skyscraper rendered in translucent blue light, were Ray Palmer and Ronnie Raymond. They hadn't moved. Their clothes were the same ones from last night. Ray had grease smudged across his forehead and was muttering calculations while Ronnie manipulated the holographic cross-sections with both hands, pulling apart floors and reassembling them with structural reinforcement layers that glowed amber where they exceeded load tolerances.
They hadn't eaten. They hadn't slept. I could feel it through both tethers: the manic, caffeinated buzz of two engineers who'd found a problem worthy of their full attention and had completely lost track of time, biological needs, and the existence of other human beings.
I sighed through my nose.
"Okay, break it up," I said, letting just enough Aura bleed into my voice to make it a command rather than a suggestion. Both of them flinched upright like startled cats. Ray blinked, and I watched the moment where his brain reconnected to the concept of linear time. Ronnie at least had the decency to look guilty.
"Let me introduce you to Curtis Holt. New member of the science team." I gestured Curtis forward. He stepped into the lab with wide eyes, head swiveling to take in the holographics, the equipment, the sheer scale of it. His tether sang with pure, undiluted wonder.
"Curtis, this is Ray Palmer and Ronnie Raymond. Ray leads the science division. Ronnie's our structural engineer and resident atomic manipulator. Gentlemen, Curtis is a world-class engineer specializing in technology, cybernetics, and applied systems. He built a functional implant that let a paralyzed woman walk and invented a device that could track quantum signatures across dimensional barriers."
Curtis opened his mouth, probably to deflect the praise, but Ray was already crossing the lab with his hand extended and the expression of a man who'd just been told Christmas was coming early.
"Quantum signature tracking? Across dimensional barriers? What was your base frequency calibration? Did you account for eigenstate collapse during transit?"
Curtis shook his hand and immediately matched the energy. "Modified Fourier transform with a compensating algorithm for decoherence. It wasn't perfect, the signal degraded past point-seven AU equivalents, but the proof of concept held."
"Point-seven is remarkable for a first iteration. We need to talk about the Arc Reactor harmonics I'm integrating into the HQ's EM shielding because the frequency bleed might actually synergize with your tracking methodology if we adjust the..."
They were already gone, spiraling into a technical conversation that left Ronnie and me standing there like spectators at a tennis match played in a language neither of us fully spoke.
I caught Ronnie's eye. He shrugged with a half-grin.
"While Curtis reviews your work and catches up on the HQ project," I said firmly, cutting through Ray's next sentence, "you two are going to go upstairs and eat breakfast. Real food. At a table. Sitting down. And then shower followed by sleep for at least three hours that is not optional."
Ray looked like I'd just told him I was canceling gravity. "But we're in the middle of recalculating the kinetic mesh density for floors sixty through eighty and if we stop now the simulation will..."
"Legion, pause and save all active simulations on the central workstation."
"Done, sir."
Ray deflated. Ronnie was already heading for the elevator, wisely choosing not to argue with a direct order from his Alpha. I pointed after him, and Ray followed with the trudging reluctance of a child being pulled away from a toy store.
I turned back to Curtis, who was already leaning over the holographic blueprints with both hands braced on the console, eyes darting across structural readouts and material specifications with the speed of someone who processed information the way most people breathed.
"Take your time getting oriented," I told him. "When they get back, Ray will walk you through the full project scope. The HQ tower is a top priority project. I need it built yesterday but not at the cost of your health. After that, there's a list of secondary projects that'll keep you busy for the next decade."
Curtis looked up from the blueprints. The nervousness was gone. In its place was the quiet, steady focus of a man who'd found his purpose.
"Dennis. Thank you for this."
"Thank me by building something extraordinary."
I left him there, surrounded by light and possibility, and headed back to the elevator with the others. The morning was burning fast fifteen minutes left. Then I'd to pick up Peter, survive seven hours of high school, and then come back here and wage a shadow war against half the planet's intelligence agencies while preparing for an alien invasion.
Seventy-two days. Twelve Avengers. A million points.
The elevator doors closed, and I was already running the next calculation.