I sat in the back seat of the supercar, watching the lights streaming through its transparent glass.
Technology in this world is different... quieter in its movement, more noisy in its silence.
But all that meant nothing.
My mind was preoccupied with what was beyond: the fate of Mark and Sarah.
They are now papers in my hand. Tools, no more.
The question wasn't, " am I going to use them?" It's " how?""
Sarah... her illness made it easier.
The mannoid bone.
That's the damn disease that's spreading in the lower fourth-class neighborhoods. A common disease, yes, but as cruel as death.
If it is not treated immediately, it becomes impossible to cure it after a short time, like someone who closes a door behind him forever.
Sarah was supposed to die today.
All the calculations, all the signs, were saying that she would not survive.
But I saved her.
Yes, I saved her... not out of pity, but out of calculation.
When the day comes when her illness resurfaces, I will be there again, the only savior.
Then I won't just be someone who saved her life once... but twice.
And with it Mark's life too.
Who can refuse his savior Who can doubt who will give him a new life after the death sentence
That's how I'll gain their full trust. This is how they will become submissive to me, obedient to my command, without doubt and without resistance.
But it doesn't stop here.
It will take time... at least two years for them to fully wake up.
Two years will be spent under sidrin's watch.
Sedrin…
The mere mention of his name made me smile sarcastically.
Could he be cheating on me No way.
Not only because of the bondage contract by which his soul was bound, but because he knew that his choice was between slavery or death.
I remember very well the day of the auction.
When we exchanged letters, when he dared to sit in front of me and talk about "liberation" as if it were a meaningful word.
He was one of the last survivors of the Liberation Organization... that funny group that dreamed of overthrowing the domination of elite families.
Their goal was simple: to abolish the hereditary seats in the council, and to replace them with votes of the people.
A beautiful dream, but in the eyes of big families it is an unforgivable crime.
And that's why they fell one by one, until there were only a few scattered left... and Sedrin was one of them.
When I confronted him with his choice, he had no choice but to smile a defiant smile:
"If you can subject me to the Bron of slavery... then I am your slave.
And if I fail, no one will know that we even met."
He was confident in himself.
An A-level awakener, a man trained in survival and deception, thinks that a child at the very beginning of his awakening will not be able to break his will.
But... he didn't know me.
He accepted the challenge, and lost.
Now, his soul is bound to me, and if he tries to rebel, the shackles will eat him from the inside to death.
I am no longer looking for followers who believe in me... but for tools that cannot be loosened from my grip.
And Darren, Mark, Sarah... they're all tools now.
Amid the calculations and mental maps, the shocking truth came back to me: the death of Khan Gurfan.
Everyone knows the official version.
"Ilyas, the younger brother, killed Khan and stabbed his heart to pounce on the throne."
A perfect story to spread... but it was an open lie.
The truth is different.
The truth is that the hand that slaughtered Khan was not his brother's hand.
It's his father's hand... the Grand Sheikh himself.
I remember that day clearly, even as a child.
I had a mind that didn't forget the details, a mind that deconstructs faces as a hunter deconstructs the movement of his prey.
I saw with my own eyes how like a cold father, how he pretended to grieve for his son in front of others…
But in his eyes there was something else.
It was not sadness, it was not shock. It was a cheap representation.
A failed performance of a man who thinks that tears are enough to hide the blood that stained his hands.
And then there's the law…
The law of elite families.
An old, untouchable law:
"No family member is killed by the hand of another. And if it happens... his name is erased, and he is hunted to death."
A clear, strict, merciless law.
However, when Khan was killed, Ilyas's name was not erased from the records.
No court was opened, no one claimed his brother's blood.
On the contrary... he sat on the throne, and the family blessed him.
That didn't make sense.
If Elias had really been the killer, the other branches would have rebelled.
The family is full of talented people:
Mom herself was one of the most prominent of them, the youngest unit commander in their history.
And there were others, geniuses and influential personalities, stronger and more worthy than Elias.
But they... shut up.
Why?
Because they knew the truth.
The killer was not Elias.
It was his father, the great Elder, the head of the family, who instilled the dagger into the heart of his son.
And it was not in vain…
There was a great reason, deeper than anyone could imagine, why a father killed his son with his own hand.
As for me... I didn't feel anything.
Death is death.
Whether it comes at the hands of a brother or a father, the result is the same: Khan is finished.
It's not who killed him that matters to me... it's what he left behind.
But what really stopped me... it wasn't Khan, not even Elias.
It's the other guy... Mark's maternal grandfather.
At first, no more than a faded name was passing between the records. A military leader, perhaps with limited influence in the Top Rank, a person who can be placed with dozens of others of those who rise and fall in the ladder of power.
I didn't give him real importance... he didn't deserve.
But the curiosity of the first timeline ate me up from the inside.
I was trying to find out everything about this guy. Every word, every rumor, every old document. But the result was zero... absolute emptiness.
It was like trying to pick up a needle melting in a sea of darkness.
There was not a single clear thread... I even got to a point where I swore to completely ignore it. To leave him in the shadows and move forward.
But fate... did not allow me.
Years of fruitless research have given me only crumbs.
A sign here, a word there... until I have a certainty: this man is not an ordinary member of elite families.
He is from the Federation.
This alone was enough to ignite the fires of doubt in me.
But I didn't know "who exactly" until the moment came that turned everything around…
When I saw Sarah.
At first, I laughed at myself.
I said that the resemblance is just a coincidence. Thousands of faces are similar in these crowded worlds.
But something in that face did not leave me. Those features, the refraction in the eyes, even the way the eyebrow is raised when you are surprised…
All of them were not fleeting details.
I started going over... going over every picture and piece of information I had collected in my previous life.
I compare, ride, rebuild.
And when the scene in front of me was completed... I almost collapsed from shock.
He was in front of me the whole time.
He was neither a ghost nor just a mysterious legend…
It's a man of flesh and blood, peering at me through his granddaughter's face.
I would never have imagined, even in my wildest dreams, that it would be him.
I wonder... what will he feel when he learns that I am now using his grandchildren as tools in my plan
Will he see it as a betrayal
It doesn't matter.
Now, what really matters is that I finish the task of the system. Just the beginning.