The apprehension in the room was palpable, rising like a fog from the thicket of black tendrils that rolled up from the shadows. The sirens continued to echo their long, haunting call throughout the corridors of the ship, and as Adam stood there, he felt the hair rise on the back of his neck, a deep pit forming in the place where his stomach used to be.

He recognized this feeling.

An image flashed in his head, a ghostly glowing hand reaching out through eternity against the vast blackness of space, accompanied by the distant memory of a chattering radio signal, the last Hail Mary of a group who never lived to see daylight.

Adam was almost surprised to find that, on instinct, the group of them had moved to form a small group, pressed shoulder to shoulder, so at least one set of eyes had any part of the room in view at all times. On his right, his shoulder pressed hard against Sunny's carapace, on his left Ramirez, beyond him Katie, Krill and Narobi had taken up their places nervously glazing around the room.

But even with his friends at his back, Adam couldn't shake the feeling of being watched, of something lurking just beyond the edges of his vision waiting for the perfect moment to strike. He could only imagine what he might have felt if his friends were not there with him chasing away the impression of a shadow rising behind him in the dark, its long spindly arms held out in preparation to strike before plunging down towards him.

"He's here, like right now?" Someone whispered.

Adham shook his head, and the unease was clear to see, even on the Maker's face, "No absolutely not, if he was here you would know about it. Besides Apollyon cannot enter the light of revelation, this is our one true safe haven from his gaze. I simply mean that he is here, in this reality and he is.... Awake"

Adam didn't like the sound of any of that on.

Celex hissed, "Well lets find him and kick his ass then." His voice was stronger, despite the atmosphere, who knew it would be a sense of false bravado that would pull the ex warlord out of his funk. The man was still clearly unsteady on his feet, off, more than a little, but at least he was coherent. Even so, it was only because he knew Celex so well that he could sense the very subtle tightening of his voice.

For anyone else the equivalent would be peeing themselves and running away.

But Celex was clearly made of something different.

Adam didn't want to agree with him, but he latched onto his friends courage, however manufactured to bolster himself, "Celex is right, we have to deal with this problem, once and for all." He gave a pointed look at Adham, "I am going to protect my family with or without your sanctioned permission. I suggest you deal us in, and we can coordinate, or you don't deal us in, and we end up getting in the way because we aren't working as a cohesive group."

Adam and Adham exchanged looks for a long moment, the battle of wills lasting for only a few precious seconds before he sighed deeply, blowing out a gust of wind through his cheeks, "Okay, okay. I don't have time to argue this with you, but you understand that you take orders from me now. If you want to be involved you have to cooperate, failure to do so will result in you being thrown in the brig. Is that understood?"

The group of them grumbled, but Adam made no overt protest so neither did anyone else.

None of them were happy about it, Nairobi was practically seething, Sunny was playing with her spear as if she was thinking bout sending it through Adham's chest cavity, and even Krill looked miffed, arms crossed over his thin chest, while the lifepod that held his true body rested hard against his leg.

"You understand this means we get to help. None of this pretending to let us help. Krill gets to go oversee the medical wing, and Narobi returns to her engines."

Adham didn't look pleased, but the fact he simply had no time to argue with them was working in their favor.

"What do you want next your highness, little drinks with umbrellas in them."

"If you can spare the time." Adam shot back, "I like mine with a crazy straw.

The aker took a long, deep breath but chose not to fire back, likely thinking he was choosing to be an adult by doing so.

"I do have one more request."

"Here we go."

"I fly the ship."

Adham's eyes opened with mild incredulity, "No, I draw the line before that."

Adam shook his head, "No, you don't get it. I have had experience with this ship even before being a construct. You know this and so does everyone else. We don't have time for modesty right now but let me cut to the chase. I have been flying the Empyrean for the past few years, I am an experienced pilot in engaging in spaceborn warfare, and I know the void tactics from their recent use in the Jovanian system. You gain nothing and lose quite a bit by not taking my expertise."

It was clearly another augment Adham couldn't be bothered to engage in, and eventually he just threw up his arms in defeat, "Fine, Fine, take the helm of the ship, and before you start making an more demands, you can have your bridge crew pair up on stations with my men, but it must be understood that if you can't be useful than you will be removed. I will be watching."

Adam agreed, he didn't like it but it was better than nothing, jogging up to the command platform where a very Miffed maker was forced to give up her spot.

The Empyrean flared as soon ashe stepped onto the platform, and he got the distinct impression like she was almost pleased to see him, but maybe that was just wishful thinking.

Golden light spilled out from the command platform chasing away the worst of the shadows and lifting Adam up and off the ground. Sunny bullied her way into a fifty fifty partnership with the Maker running the weapons, and the others didn't take long in following her example.

Krill and nairobi vanished back into the ship.

Celex stayed slumped against the wall while Ktie tended quietly to him.

Adam turned to look at his counterpart, golden light spilling in warm rivulets from his skin, "Where to, chief."

"The space between andromeda and the Milky way."

Adam might have asked questions if he thought it would help, but at this moment he was simply willing to follow orders, setting in the coordinates as rapidly as possible, and initiating warp only a few seconds later. It's not that he wanted to prove himself to the maker, as much as he wanted to disprove the maker and his misconceptions.

The warp brought them out in a dark space, suspended somewhere between the two galaxies.

Andromeda is the closest neighbor to the milky way, but from here they were both just specks.

"Initiating detection sequence." Someone said, sitting at a station Adam and the others had never found a purpose for. Curious, Adam turned his head to watch. The woman that sat at the station, shaped like a Finnari, was looking at a series of inputs that Adam didn't understand.

Adham had taken a free seat in the Pilot's auxiliary chair, "What do you see."

"Readings lean Milky Way." She said, "Based on the readout, he isn't here totally, but a part of him is."

"At least that's some good news, comparatively." Adham muttered under his breath.

"Everyone prepare for a full assault, I want grids up around all the major construct settlements, Milky way and Andromeda, it shouldn't be hard so don't make me beg. I want cloaking systems online right now with a fully array of dampeners, Everyone is ordered to their battle stations until further notice

The room was filled with a sudden chatter.

It was almost a good thing in the next two seconds that there were two people at the comms station, as they began rapidly sending messages and orders to the rest of the Armada that had warped in with them.

"Adham rattled off another set of coordinates." one by one the ships around them began to blink out of existence.

First Adam toggled the beginning of the cloaking sequence, feeling the Empyrean hum beneath him. Even her interior lights dimmed marginally. Outside the ship would have simply passed into blackness as far as any observer was concerned

Full stealth now achieved, Adam initiated the warp sequence.

Not for the first time in so many minutes, they vanished, appearing milliseconds later thousands of lightyears away.

What he found was something he had neither expected nor ever wanted to see again. Looking out the viewscreen he did not see the vast field of stars he had come to expect, not the quiet cold blackness of an empty space, or the vast array of nebulae in the sky.

Instead his vision was filled with a burning redness, a vast cloud of russet haze like a nebula run through with twisting tendrils of black. Trying to look outside was like trying to read a moving inkblot test in the most violent colors imaginable.

His eyes burned as the kaleidoscope of.... Light? Passed by him.

Looking out on this endless.... Pattern, Adam felt an abiding sense of unease, even fear.

There was no sense of space or time in that pattern of light, no space to go to and no time to do it in.

"Here he is." Adham whispered.

Adam looked out the viewscreen with no words for the feelings that rose inside his head.

This was.

Wrong.

Against the very fabric of reality, and he couldn't have said why he knew that.

"Tracking." Someone said, almost immediately Adm's implant buzzed with an update which gave him a starmap by which to chart their course. At least the ship seemed to know where they were in relative space because Adam sure didn't.

Somehow it was all rather comforting, though the hair on the back of his neck had not stopped prickling, but had gone into overdrive since the warp, and where had Adham taken them exactly?

The very center of the Milky way Galaxy coordinates that Adam recognized.

These coordinates had been the ones originally in their system when leaving Arcadia.

These were the coordinates given to them by Naktan as his final way of helping them, the truth that he had died for.

Somewhere close by Naktan's soul was being ripped apart and fed into the churning jaws of the necritorium, harvested for his energy.

And now to make matters worse, Apollyon had joined the party.