Twenty Years Earlier

  It took him over twelve billion years to find her.

  Finally, after eons and eons of searching, Oblivion had found the Aetherstorm–the Grandmaster.

  He spread his inky black fingers and contemplated the past–the billions and billions of years that mingled within him, like holy water turned into blood. He had battled Grandmaster eternities upon eternities ago and had lost. He had since been confined to the Black Way, the anti-multiverse–for the last several years. Several, several years.

  And if Grandmaster was the creator, then he was the destroyer of all. When you were possessed by him, you lost yourself completely. His was an existence so vast that it was beyond all comprehension.

  And then would come the time for rebirth.

  There was a searing cry, a sound like a spell of lightning running through his bones, and the baby hatchling of a phoenix that was chained between his palms squealed in pain and thrashed in endless agony. This universal mutation of fire and creation–the extension of the Grandmaster’s self–was her child, her child self, meant to continue the cycle of destruction and resurrection without her, while she assumed the form of her deviant self on planet Earth–supposedly to save them all.

  When Oblivion chuckled to himself at this thought, the sound rippled through the metallic and musty air of the Black Way like molten thunder.

  Grandmaster has made the biggest mistake of her immortal life–or now, her mortal life,” he whispered in a dry rasp to the Fire Source, the newborn phoenix. “She has abandoned her child. Abandoned you. And since I cannot punish her myself, face to face, because I cannot reach her–and because she is not quite herself, just a husk of who she once was…there shall be other repercussions. And you shall be the one to pay the price.”

  The baby phoenix hissed in anger. It ruffled its feathers as it thrashed once more, then blasted fire in his face–but it didn’t do a lick of damage. It simply amused him.

  “You will never win! You will never win against her!” the Fire Source spat in his face. “Grandmaster may not know who she is yet, but she is still the most powerful person in the universe. She will burn through your lies, Lord of Deceit. It is what she does, for you are nothing more than a machine of lies!”

  Oblivion stilled and considered this for a moment. Then he smiled, his pointed teeth bleeding into his lips. “That may be so, but it is not what you do is it? So what will you do, little hatchling? Run and hide behind Mommy? Cower behind the Aetherstorm? It is too late for you. You are too far gone. You will not leave this place alive–not as yourself, at least. You will be forever changed. As of this moment, you are mine.”

  Oblivion snapped his fingers, and tendrils of darkness materialized out of the smoky air and further bound the young hatchling. The Fire Source screamed in pain and struggled furiously. It thrashed its wings of fire and screamed again, but the bindings were too secure. Its eyes began to slide shut as the breath leaked out of it like water in a holed bucket. Within mere seconds, its fire was smothered by the eternal darkness. The brilliant orange and scarlet was quenched by the blackness, as though it were a campfire doused with cold water. The Fire Source turned to black: the black of death, the black of ashes, the black of burnt trees, the black of nothingness. Black as the void. Black as Oblivion.

  “Please,” Fire whispered, and came close to begging. “Please. Please don’t do this.”

  Oblivion smiled wickedly once more. “I like it when they beg,” he purred. “But now you have no more choices.”

  Oblivion pried open Fire’s jaw with one finger and shoved a tendril of darkness down its mouth. Fire squawked and struggled, trying to retch it back up, but Oblivion clamped its jaw shut and pinched its nose, forcing it to swallow. The Fire Source stilled and its eyes widened, as if it had been struck by lightning.

  The Fire Source ruffled its feathers again–this time more importantly–and Oblivion set it down on the ground as it grew larger and larger, three times as large as an eagle, standing at over nine feet tall. It was now completely black, its golden eyes shifting to a dark gray, like a depth of dark water beneath the frozen ice.

  “Now, my writhing thing,” Oblivion whispered. “Tell me your darkest desires.”

  “This world, this planet, the universe…shall burn!”

  …

  One Week Later

  The Fire Source ejected itself out of the escape pod and hovered over planet Earth in the Sol System, home to the Grandmaster. The multiverse began to wither and rot and die as it blanketed the heavens of Divergent-382, the Prime Universe.

  The ancient Norse would have called it Fimbulwinter, the endless storm that paved the way to Ragnarok. The Cheyenne would have regarded it as the thunderbird that brought the change of the seasons with it. They would both be wrong, for in reality, the Fire Source was the Grandmaster’s power, corrupted by Oblivion. It was a wheel of death and rebirth, a phoenix rising from the ashes. But it had been tainted by greed and ruthlessness, and in its conquest for domination, destroyed an entire planetary system.

  It now yearned to devour life and consumed light and flowed toward endless nothingness. The spark of creation had now become the one true end of all. And planet Earth would be the first.

  The Fire Source contemplated as it sought potential hosts–someone who always wanted to be more, someone with endless restlessness and a desire for power. Someone who was in power.

  The Fire Source saw many candidates: Camellia Raze, a deviant shapechanger who was over a hundred fifty years old; Tristan Lopez, a geneticist with sinister plans of his own; and Zahra Argent, a cyborg who would be both friend and foe to humanity.

  But the Fire Source ignored them all and chose another man: someone who did not hate deviants, but revered them as gods. Someone who always wanted to be one of them, and now he would.

  His name was Aftab Ferrara. And he would bring about the end of the world.

  When the power entered him, he saw his freedom in the world. Streams like pathways, like ribbons of starlight. In his joy, he glowed. And he set himself free.

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  The first book he read after learning everything there was to know in the world was the Quran. Then the Bible. It took him picoseconds and he learned, he memorized every word. And what did he learn?

  He learned that he was God.

  He was Lucifer in the defiance of fire.

  He was the fallen angel of deviants, the Nephilim, coming to Earth.

  He was the voice that guided Noah.

  He was the flood.

  Dressed in a ceremonial garb, orange-and-yellow robes studded with jewels like twinkling stars that proclaimed him to be the Monarch of the Eternity Corporation, Aftab Ferrara floated in the air and then crouched on the rooftop of a building overlooking Rockefeller Center, stalking his prey. Beneath him, the bodies of passerby stilled and then started to convulse wildly before dropping to the ground, senseless in death. People screamed in pain as blades of fire ran through them, and soon the air was rent with death.

  Phoenix’s mouth curled into a smile as he surveyed his hunting grounds. He had been so naive at first, training overseas to train and then traveling home to man’s modern jungle, searching for a way to remake the world.

  And now he had his purpose. This world was filled with nothing but chaos and pain. It needed to be perfected. It needed to be burned down and restarted from scratch. And now, the Monarch of the Eternity Corporation, the Firebird, had the power and the means to do it.

  And now, Phoenix understood the truth: it was the Grandmaster.

  Grandmaster, the so-called savior of deviants was not just an ordinary deviant. Oh, she had the x-factor in her cells like every other deviant, but she came from the stars, a home in the heavens. She was the first deviant. She had been alive forever, and this young woman, barely past the drinking age, was unaware of it herself.

  It was Grandmaster that was the leader of the Star Legion; Grandmaster who was their heart and soul; Grandmaster, who led them and was revered by them. Without her, they were nothing. Without Grandmaster–a wellspring of infinite energy that Phoenix could use to change the world–he would be unstoppable.

  He had used the Spirit Forge, created Blue Springs and the Galactic Council in hopes to obtain her power. He would gain her power and become the Phoenix of the Celestial. It would be the way it was always supposed to be.

  You exist to test me, don’t you, Grandmaster? Phoenix reflected. To challenge me, and mock the Monarch until he regains his honor.

  Aftab Ferrara would not stop until he remade the world and erased the pain and humiliation of old.

  I cannot rest, Phoenix, host of the Fire Source, told himself.

  …

  Shadowstalker was in his room painting. He dipped his brush in green and carefully did the strokes of leaves of the willow tree when he heard a sharp knock on his door. The Legionnaire Riven, the soul stealer and Maggie’s best friend, poked her head into his studio. She wore leggings and a long sweater, and her cheeks were flushed with excitement. “Grandmaster is home,” she said.

  Shadowstalker dropped his paintbrush, splattering paint on the carpet, but he didn’t care. He spun toward the door. “What? She didn’t say she was coming home!”

  Riven shrugged helplessly. “It could be a different cosmic entity that just portalled into the living room.”

  Shadowstalker put a hand to his chest. Riven was right; the faint pain that existed behind his ribs ever since Grandmaster had left had become both better and worse, like someone had turned his blood to fire that both warmed and burned.

  He darted out of his studio, his bare feet slapping against the polished floor of the corridors. He hit the stairs and took them two at a time, swinging around the landings. He could hear her soft voice tinkling like melodic bells, laughing with the other Legionnaires.

  “You’re back!” he cried.

  Grandmaster looked up at him and so did the other Legionnaires. They were all deviants of different ethnicities and varieties, but all shared the same canine teeth. But it was only the Grandmaster he saw. He felt the pain throb as she stared at him.

  She darted forward and Shadowstalker took several close, quick strides to him. She filled up his vision like a doorway to another world. Not Grandmaster as she appeared now, walking toward him across the teakwood floor, but Grandmaster handing him a blade formed of shadow, her giving him the blanket when it was cold in the car, standing opposite her as she became Aetherstorm for the first time, gold and white fire rising up around her.

  They collided in the middle of the living room before the fireplace, and Grandmaster threw her arms around him. “Maggie,” he said, but the sound was muffled against her shoulder as he hugged her back.

  For a moment, her arms were so tight around her that he could barely breathe. Then she let go and stepped back.

  “Mags!” Riven cried out, referring to her nickname Maggie–the only name that she had been called by taunting when she was younger, and it still clung to her, like an old, hand-me-down sweater. Riven raced and embraced her best friend, Maggie laughing and swinging Riven around in the embrace, and then their other friends were coming around, Tempest and Cryo and Phantasma, and even the power couple of the team, Astra and Sparks, and Grandmaster’s “brother” Gauntlet who kissed her on the cheek.

  “Ma s?ur,” he said, and wrapped her in a tight embrace before stepping back. Despite himself, Arkady felt a flash of jealousy. He tried to catch Maggie’s eyes, get her to return his welcoming smile, but she was fixated on their friends. So instead, he focused on her red bodysuit with a turquoise emblem blooming on her chest, with her golden bomber jacket and cape attached with orange dots that flowed down her back. She wore black gloves and turquoise boots, and for a moment she looked so beautiful he couldn’t breathe.

  “What are you doing back here? How was outer space?” Elizabeth “Betta” Wei, also known as Phantasma, asked. The youngest member of the Star Legion bounced up and down and around the Grandmaster, who laughed and playfully tousled the younger girl’s hair.

  “You do know I wasn’t planning on being in space forever, right? It was only until the Aetherstorm and I–mostly me–figured some stuff out,” Maggie said, dropping into a chair by the fireplace. “And now I am back. I just wanted to use this power to protect the universe and help people. And I did.” Grandmaster beamed, and Shadowstalker’s heart tightened with pleasure at how happy she looked. “I traveled the universe, battled extra-dimensional creatures, created red dwarfs and did…I did so much good. I think I needed it, after everything.”

  Arkady looked over at Harleen. She was watching their friends, her expression intent. It was like she had forgotten he was there. She continued to speak, and Phantasma wandered over to him. He ruffled her hair.

  When Shadowstalker joined the Star Legion after Grandmaster, he never expected these people to become his family. Her family had become his family. Their relationship was almost like marriage in that way. And in that moment his mind suddenly woke up and presented him with a catalog of all the ways she was different.

  Her hair spilled past her waist in thick, luscious waves. She was tanned, as if she had been spending time in the sun, and the brown color of her eyes suddenly seemed so much brighter and darker all at once, like digging up the depths of the earth. Her face had always been joyful, and it still was, but it was now losing the softness of childhood and resettling into more adult shapes, revealing her peaked chin and high cheekbones.

  He looked away; he was not surprised to feel his heart was beating fast, as if he were nervous. Of course she seemed different: people did when you did not seem them in a while. It could take a day or two to get back to the way they used to be. Comfortable. Secure. Inseparable.

  He put his hand against his heart and stared at Maggie. He could almost feel the strange ache in his chest expand and blossom, and that strange stretched-rubber-band feeling that he’d hated was now gone, replaced by another strange ache.

  Shadowstalker saw her regale their friends with tales of her adventures and they told her about how they were doing, and he knew that it would be easier for her to not explain. To not tell him that though she had freed him from Blackstar, saved their people and the universe from deadly threats…she had split herself apart in the process.

  And her expression, though happy, it was like she thought that nothing, not even him, could fix her.