"Eleven ships, Admiral. All confirmed."

Marcus's voice echoed off the polished walls of the war room, his words falling into a silence so complete the soft hum of the air recyclers three floors below reached him. The holographic display at the center of the table cast blue light across the faces of the men and women who controlled humanity's military forces—faces draining of color as his briefing continued.

The war room itself had been built for one purpose: keeping secrets. Nestled in the heart of the newly christened DDI Headquarters, it sat two hundred meters beneath the surface of New Geneva, shielded by layer upon layer of reinforced alloy and the kind of surveillance countermeasures that made even thinking about espionage exhausting. The air tasted sterile, recycled through so many filters it had lost any trace of the world above. Fluorescent panels threw hard white light across every surface—no shadows, nowhere to hide, nothing to soften the edges of whatever truth was about to be spoken. The faint chemical bite of environmental scrubbers burned the back of Marcus's throat.

Three months since Sanctuary. Three months since Marcus had watched good people die in corridors that twisted in directions geometry shouldn't allow. Three months since he'd helped carry a seven-year-old girl out of hell, her eyes holding something ancient and terrible, her small hand gripping his with the strength of absolute trust.

He pushed those memories aside. There would be time for nightmares later. There was always time for nightmares.

Admiral Yoshida leaned forward, her silver hair catching the holographic light. Deep lines bracketed her mouth—lines Marcus was certain hadn't been there at the start of his briefing. "Walk us through the trajectory analysis again, Mr. Reeves."

"Of course, Admiral." Marcus manipulated the holographic controls, and the display shifted. Eleven red markers hung in the darkness of simulated space, each one representing a corrupted vessel. Each one representing thousands of deaths waiting to happen. "Based on deep-space sensor data and the predictive models developed by Dr. Chen's team, all eleven vessels are on approach vectors toward populated systems. The closest—" he highlighted a marker pulsing an angry crimson, "—will reach the Kepler shipping lanes in approximately fourteen months. That's a sector with eighty-three inhabited worlds and a combined population of over two billion people—one cluster among more than two hundred settled systems spanning roughly thirty light-years of human space."

"Fourteen months." Admiral Chen's voice was quiet, but it carried the weight of command. He sat at the head of the table, his uniform immaculate, his expression giving nothing away. Lucas's father. The thought twisted in Marcus's gut every time he saw the man. Three floors above this war room, Lucas Chen lay in a rehabilitation ward, relearning how to hold a cup with his left hand. The marines had dragged him out of Sanctuary's twisted corridors more dead than alive—nerve damage running down his entire left side, partial paralysis the doctors said might never fully heal. His sacrifice had bought them the minutes they needed to escape. The corruption had taken its payment in full. "And the others?"

"Staggered arrivals over the following eighteen months. The last vessel won't reach human-occupied space for approximately three years." Marcus pulled up another display—casualty projections, ship capabilities, defensive scenarios. Numbers that made his throat tight. "But Admiral, I need to stress—these projections assume the vessels maintain their current velocities. The data from Sanctuary suggests they can accelerate when pursuing targets. If they detect populated systems..."

He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't need to.

The silence stretched. Outside the war room, Marcus knew, the new DDI headquarters buzzed with activity. Scientists analyzing the fragments they'd recovered from Sanctuary. Engineers working on weapons that might—might—pierce corrupted hulls. Intelligence officers piecing together a picture of an enemy that defied conventional analysis. All of it happening because three months ago, Rylee Voss and her team had limped back from a rescue mission that should have been routine and delivered proof that humanity was no longer alone in the universe.