Ketevan drove Anna and Susan through the city. Back when Anna had lived there, the domain had only just beeablished. The vampires were st through Europe and no one knew how reliable the prote of Jason’s power would be, especially in the absence of the man himself. The humans ged by the transformation zones were still o their ditions and p into territory as refugees.

  Years ter, they had clearly ied. As the car passed an outdoor café, more eyes were orangers in the car than the man with green scales and cream on his nose from an iced chocote. Susan pointed out a beautiful winged man flying over the rooftops.

  “It’s like the bar in Star Wars, but French,” Susan observed. “I love it. I wonder what the art se is like, here.”

  “Small, but has some unique aspects you might find fasating,” Ketevan told her.

  “It all looks so normal,” Anna observed. “Not long ago, you were all hidden in an astral space while vampires ruled here.”

  “A lot of people are still in there,” Ketevan told her. “Out here, it’s closer to how the rest of Earth is. The astral space is more overtly magical, and a lot of the grew up there. It’s the world they know.”

  “But the -up aoration after the vampire occupatioo have gone quickly,” Anna said.

  “Nigel will expin that. He’s been talking about owing you a debriefing for a long time. He just couldn’t do it while you were in the US. He’d have been snatched up at the airport, and even if he snu, you were always being watched. Suffice it to say, by the time we emerged, there were no signs of vampires in territory. We’ve been expanding out since, clearing out blood farms and purging vampires.”

  “You mean killing them,” Susan said.

  “Yes,” Ketevan agreed. “I mean killing them.”

  “Are we sure they’re not redeemable? Susan asked. “Craig Vermilion was always so nice.”

  “And still is,” Ketevan said. “I had lunch with him st week. We have a rge vampire popution in the Slovakiaory. Jason’s power shields them from the effects that turhers bad. But the ones out there… the weak ones are feral, now. Little more than animals with an insatiable thirst for blood. The more powerful ones are worse. They kept their minds but lost anything approag a sce. They know what they’re doing to the people in those blood farms, and they just don’t care.”

  “If their numbers were smaller, perhaps something could be done,” Anna said. “There are more vampires and more victims than were ever made public. The official numbers are nowhere close to accurate. The evacuation of Europe is the rgest mass-migratiohe world has ever seen. So many were lost along the way, turned into ghouls, blood sves or more vampires. Most ended up in the farms, though. The food supply. The unreleased casualty estimates put the numbers close to World War Two.”

  “But a lot of those people have been rescued, right?” Susan asked. “From the blood farms?”

  “Yes,” Ketevan said, “but many more remain, still feeding the vampire popution. Now that the global militaries aren’t operating in Europe, we’re holding the people we rescue iral space here in France. We didn’t put them with the vampires, for obvious reasons. We have medical professionals helping as best they , but the physical aal trauma they’ve suffered is indescribable. I don’t even know how someone would e back from that. Oions are re-established with the wider world, we’ll have them join other refugees from their respective tries.”

  Ketevan sighed.

  “I wahis to be a fun catch-up,” she said. “At least for a little bit. I suppose I’ve gotteo the being isoted and surrounded by a ti of vampires. I see how that would be arming to visitors.”

  “What happened when you had to hide away?” Susan asked. “Were you safe?”

  “Very,” Ketevan said. “I’ll leave that for Rufus and Jason to expin, but the short version is that Jason o seem weak.”

  “To deceive the vampires?” Anna asked.

  “The vampires don’t worry him. He arently fighting something like gods at the time, and he o trick them.”

  “Something like gods?”

  “The actual grim reaper, amongst others. Or so I’m told. It all souremely far-fetched, but far-fetched is what we do here, so who knows? Not my department, fortunately. As I said, Rufus and Jason will expin.”

  “That would be a first,” Anna muttered.

  ***

  Ketevan was driving them to the home of Erika Asano and her husband, Ian, located close to the administration tower. The tower was a looming edifice of renaissance architecture, the most overt divergence from the inal design of the city.

  As promised, Anna and Susan’s first e in the Asano was social. Now that Erika and Ian’s daughter had moved out, they lived in a modest townhouse in the shadow of the tower. The front faced one of the city’s major thhfares, leading to the admire. Behind the townhouse row was a shared parknd.

  Also present at the gathering was hornton, who ologetic about never delivering the report she sent him out for. His deference marked a sharp differeo the old-rankers she’d met for her work, of which there had been quite a few. The nations that boasted them were not shy about reminding people.

  Their hosts had set up a pii the patio, with a rustic wooden table and behey watched families py in the park, and a bunch of kids pying cricket. The food was astoundingly good, courtesy of their chef hostess, but Anna reised very little of the food.

  “We farm the ingredients iral spaces,” Erika expined. “The magic is rich, and the agricultural nd is varied. Too much to be naturally , but ideal for produg all kinds of food.”

  “You didn’t have trouble providing for people during your exile, then?” Susan asked.

  “I think exile is a harsh term,” Ian said. “From our perspective, it was a safe haven while the world outside was struggling. Hundreds of millions ees, p into Asia, Afrid the Americas. From what we’ve heard, it caused a new wave of food shes after things had finally recovered from the monster waves.”

  “Magitech rgely solved the supply problem,” Anna said. “The farming stacks produce a lot of food cheaply. The real issues around the food supply are political and eic. It’s the rgest shift in how agriculture operates sihe introdu of electricity and internal bustion. The entire industry is being turned on its head, at least in developed tries. So much of US agriculture was tred on , and that’s colpsed uhe practicalities of how the world works now. A lot of the Ameri Midwest has gohe way of the steel towns forty years ago. Australian agriculture fared just as badly, if not worse.”

  “Then there’s the refugees themselves,” Susan added. “The popution of the Uates grew by half within a year.”

  “A logistical disaster,” Anna said. “And that was moderate, pared to pces with rge tracts of unoccupied nd. ada, Australia, and rge portions of Africa, a and Russia. Any pce that magitech could make liveable quickly.”

  “Australia’s popution is now seventy-five pert European refugees,” Susan said. “The political chaos that resulted is still going on. Australia has always had an unpleasant intolerareak around migrants and refugees, and that really spilled over iime you were all hidden away.”

  “We heard about the turmoil,” Ian said. “It’s hard to believe they took in that many people.”

  “There was a lot of iional pressure,” Anna said. “A lot of resistaoo. There was a double dissolution of gover, for only the sed time ever. Things still haven’t settled.”

  With the versation moving to the heavy topics they had previously avoided, the group moved ihey discussed a mix of global events as within the . The members had missed a lot in their isotion, even before fully withdrawing into the astral spaces. As for Anna, she was currently the eyes of the world on what was happening in Asaory. Some still believed that Jason was dead, while others saw his impendiurn as a Sword of Damocles, poised over their heads.

  Nigel finally got to tell the story of the day the vampires who had cimed the Asaory died. He was the sole witness, and his at of Jason’s wrath sounded like an Old Testament story.

  “…the blood rain turning into this colourful, sparkling light, destroying what was left of the vampires and their minions. Then I was alohe st oanding in a city that stank of death. Until Jason showed up. Or his avatar, however that works. It seemed like he was really there.”

  “They don’t smell the same,” Erika said. “The avatars. Jason smells like flowers and cut grass. Taika, too. Something about being a itity. His avatars don’t smell of anything, and they feel like rubber to touch.”

  “What did Jason say to you?” Anna asked Nigel.

  “We talked about having power, and the people who wao use it. He saw that I was gold rank and deduced the problems I’ve been having. He said it was a lot like what he went through, during his time here. Aalked about the possibility of my team and I joining the .”

  “Which you did,” Anna said.

  “Yeah. The has been quietly smuggling our families in while we participate in rescue aion.”

  “Retaking the areas around Asaory,” Anna said.

  “Yes.”

  “There is some about the ’s ambitions towards Europe.”

  Erika snorted her disgust.

  “Our ambitions are dealing with the vampires and the people they’re still holding in their blood farms. You just told us about the refugees from here clogging up the infrastructure across the p, but the people in charge are already looking to divvy up Europe between them.”

  “You say that,” Anna told her, “but we’re sitting in what was French territory before your brother cimed it for himself.”

  “It wasn’t French territory,” Jason said.

  Everyouro look at him in the doorway. He was holding a pte with a sandwich that looked to be made from the leftovers of their lunch. He looked at it with a frown.

  “I fot that I ’t taste things with my avatar,” he said sadly, sat the pte on a side table and walked into the room.

  “Don’t just leave things sitting around like that,” Erika scolded.

  Jason groaned and the pte floated off the table and out through the door. He moved to joihers and cloud rose from the floor to form a chair under him as he sat.

  “It wasn’t French territory,” he said again. “It was vampire territory. And I didn’t ask to take it. I didn’t even know it ossible before Slovakia, and I had no choiyway. I had to take them.”

  “You had to?” Anna asked.

  “Yes. Do you know what a transformation zone is, Anna? It’s a scab, over an open wound in the side of the universe. Mostly, the wound heals and the world limps on. But some scabs aren’t enough. Left alohe wound uhem will rip a hole in the side of the universe. The resulting rupture would annihite the Earth, at the very least, and probably the sor system. And that’s assuming it didn’t react from there and start tearing the whole universe apart, although the likelihood of that is small. And it would be stopped if that started happening.”

  “By you?”

  “Not my area, and beyond the scope of even my real power. There’s ay called the World Phoenix who would cauterise the wound from the outside. The side effects of that would have been drastic, but poio all of us, who would have been dead.”

  “You do this, Jason,” Anna said. “Grand procmations. Fate of the universe. But all we have to go on is your word. You ell us enough to check for ourselves.”

  Jason nodded.

  “Back then, I was more ined to kill you all myself. Fortunately, I didn’t have the power to quer the world back then.”

  “Implying that you do now?”

  “Yes.”

  “This isn’t the same world you left, Jason.”

  “And I’m not the same person who left it.”

  He sighed.

  “Anna, we’re falling into old patterns here. I’m falling into old patterns, and that’s not going to be productive. I know that I never expined myself the eople wanted, but I hope you uand why.”

  Anna gave a relut nod.

  “I remember a lot of versations where I had to expin that the work people that came after you this time were another fa that had gue. I ’t bme you for refusing to work with us anymiven how it all ended, it seems that it was all just rogue fas, ag in their own is. I suppose you saw that before I did. The crity of an outside perspective.”

  “Anna, I believe that you were never like that. That you were trying to do the right thing. That’s why I want to work with you now. And to start, I’ll answer any and all of your questions. About back then, about now. I’ll offer you roof I , when I have it. But I’ll warn you now, there are some things that will be hard to believe, and all I have for you is my word. I show you more once I arrive in person, but I ’t wait for that. We o start preparing now.”

  “For what?” she asked. “Rufus Remore said you wao work with me, but he didn’t say why. What is it that you want?”

  Jason nodded ptively, more to himself than to her.

  “My iion today is to help you uand that I will be ing back to Earth with unassaible power. Limitless, for most practical purposes. Anything I want to do, I will be able to. Anything I don’t want to do, no one will be able to make me. quer the world, erase nations. Eliminate every head of state on the p in an afternoon. Whatever threat the people of this world think I pose, I promise you that it is much, much worse.”

  “Alright,” Anna said. “Let’s suppose that I believe you. Why am I here, listening to you tell me that?”

  “Because I don’t want to be the thing that terrorises the world. I don’t want t down govers and make nations colpse. What worries me is that the fear of my doing so will lead the powers of this world to force my hand. My first goal is to avoid having my return to Earth destroy it.”

  Anna looked at Jason, eyes examining him as her mind ticked over.

  “You really think that you’re that important? If Rufus hadn’t e out and told everyohat you’re some great big threat, they wouldn’t have thought it.”

  “No,” Nigel interjected. “They’d have tried to exploit him, just like before. Anna, I don’t think I properly veyed what I saw that day. It wasn’t the power of a man. It was the power of a god.”

  Anna looked at hen back to Jason.

  “Do you think you’re a god, Jason?”

  “That’s plicated. I think we’d better get into those questions; it’s going to be a long few days.”