First Intergalactic Emperor: Starting With The Ancient Goddess

The space beyond the door was smaller than the chamber they’d left behind.

It wasn’t a vault as Klatos expected, nor was it impressive as Arlen assumed. It was a control room built for people who expected to work alone, narrow and utilitarian, with old mining consoles embedded directly into the walls. Most of the surfaces were scratched and worn smooth from use. This place had been active once, busy in a way that didn’t leave room for decoration.

The moment all three of them stepped inside, the door slid shut behind them.

There was no impact or alarm. It shut the way a system shut itself down after finishing its job.

The room powered up.

Panels along the walls flickered to life one after another, casting a dull, industrial glow across the space. Text scrolled across one of the central displays in a system language older than the prison’s infrastructure. Xavier recognized the structure immediately.

”This isn’t security,” he said. ”It’s a verification sequence.”

Arlen already had her interface up, fingers moving across it. ”Still not touching prison systems,” she said. ”Same as the rest of this section. So I guess I am not in charge anymore.”

Klatos tilted his head toward a console that had just finished booting. ”Then what’s it doing?”

Xavier stepped closer.

A timer appeared on the main display.

Arlen frowned. ”That’s not a detonation clock.”

”No,” Xavier said. ”It’s a window.”

As if responding to him, another panel activated. Static cleared, replaced by a degraded audio log. The voice that came through was distorted, clipped by time and compression, but unmistakable.

Bull.

”...if you’re hearing this,” the voice said, cutting in and out, ”then you made the right choice. Or you got lucky. Either way, you don’t get long.”

The timer continued its countdown in the corner of the display.

Klatos stiffened. ”That’s him.”

Bull’s voice continued. ”This place was never meant to hold anything valuable. It was meant to see who shows up. Who waits. Who doesn’t grab the first door that opens.”

Arlen crossed her arms. ”So this is a filter.”

”Yes,” Xavier said. ”And we passed it.”

The audio glitched, then resumed. Coordinates flashed across the display, layered over outdated mining maps and transit data that had nothing to do with the prison’s current layout.

Bull spoke again. ”You get this once. The system won’t repeat it. If you miss it, you don’t get another look.”

The timer entered its final segment.

Arlen glanced at Xavier. ”You’re seeing all of this.”

”Yes.”

”Good,” she said. ”Because I can’t store any of it.”

”That’s intentional,” Xavier replied. ”He didn’t want copies.”

Xavier memorized everything. The moment the timer hit zero, the displays shut down in sequence, the room powering off without delay.

The lights dimmed and stabilized at a minimal level.

Klatos let out a breath. ”So this wasn’t the treasure.”

”No,” Xavier said. ”This was confirmation.”

The room remained inactive. The system had delivered what it was designed to deliver and nothing more. There were no logs left open, no prompts waiting for input.

Arlen straightened. ”Then we leave.”

Xavier nodded. ”We’re done here.”

Xavier had just turned toward the door when the room reacted again.

Not the way it had before. There was no countdown, no visual prompt, no systems lighting up in sequence. One of the wall panels flickered unevenly, like a bad connection trying to hold itself together, and then an audio channel opened on its own.

Arlen stopped. ”That’s not part of the sequence.”

Klatos turned back toward the consoles. ”It didn’t activate any displays.”

The voice came through raw and unfiltered, lower quality than the earlier log, like it hadn’t been meant to play for anyone at all.

”Yeah... yeah, I know,” Bull muttered, not addressing anyone. ”I know what this looks like. Another place, another system, another dead-end job pretending it matters.”

The audio crackled briefly, then steadied again.

”I did everything right,” Bull continued. ”I followed the routes. Took the risks. Burned bridges that needed burning. And every time I thought I was close, it turned into another setup, another favor for someone higher up who didn’t even bother learning my name.”

Arlen exchanged a glance with Klatos. But neither of them spoke.

Bull’s voice dropped slightly. ”Sometimes I think that’s all I am. A tool. Someone who clears the path so the next bastard doesn’t have to bleed as much.”

The panel hissed, then kept going.

”I don’t even know who it’s for,” Bull said. ”I just know it’s not me. Never was. I move things. Hide things. Set things up. And someone else is supposed to walk in later and make it mean something.”

There was a pause long enough to feel deliberate.

”One day,” Bull muttered, ”I’ll stand in front of whoever that is. I’ll look him in the eye and see if he was worth it. If he was worth all this.”

The sound of a breath, rough and tired.

”If he is,” Bull said quietly, ”then I’ll tell him everything. Every location. Every step. Every mistake. And if that’s what it takes, I’ll die knowing I did my part.”

The audio cut without warning.

The room went still again.

Arlen frowned. ”That wasn’t a message.”

”No,” Klatos said. ”That sounded like someone talking to himself.”

Xavier hadn’t moved.

He stood where he was, eyes fixed on the darkened panel, listening to the echo fade out of the chamber. He didn’t say anything, and for once, neither of them pressed him.

Bull had talked to him before. Not like this, but enough. Enough to leave clues. Enough to point him toward the hunt. Enough to trust him with the first steps.

This wasn’t a coincidence.

Bull hadn’t been guessing. He hadn’t been paving a path for someone unknown. He had already made his choice.

Xavier turned away from the panel and faced the door again. ”We’re done here.”

Arlen hesitated, then nodded. Klatos followed without asking questions.

The control room stayed behind, its second message spent, leaving Xavier with one more thing Bull had never said out loud when it mattered.

That this was never about treasure alone. It was about Xavier all along. The treasure was just the side dish Bull had planned to make Xavier suffer, at least some of what Bull had gone through.