Gianni, Diana, Michael—all gone, and now Hephaestion was gone too. The grave reality was settling in again and all Xander wanted was to shut the world out. “It was his choice to age naturally, yes, but the plane, all those people, no one chose that.”

“We may be able to cheat age but no one can escape a disaster.” Catharine swung her naked feet onto the cold marble and stepped back into her perilous shoes. “Xander, at some point… at some point soon you’re going to have to make a statement. People want to see you, to know you are okay. It’s important that clients see that you are still young and vital even through this tragedy. We sell life, and the public needs to see our leader embracing it. The brand depends on it.” She walked purposefully to the bed and laid a hand on his shoulder. “I’m going to have some food sent up. Please eat something, for me. And tomorrow we’re going to begin your cycles again, alright?”

Xander just blinked in response and pulled the sheet up closer under his chin.

“Xander, you know I love you, but we seriously have to get out of Miami. The heat is killing me.”

Before he knew it she had slipped out of the room, and he heard the latch click. He had no intention of getting up, certainly not for the cycles. He rolled over and fell again into a depressed and fitful sleep.

The cycles. The cycles were precisely the reason he could feel himself dying. More precisely, it was his refusal to take his cycles that had led to his body taking on a natural degeneration process, one that felt rapid after freezing the process of natural cell death over the past thirty-five years.

Xanegenics was quite possibly the most important medical discovery in recent history, one that Xander had made shortly before his thirtieth birthday. A combined program of nutrition, exercise, hormone optimization, and drug therapy that eradicated free radicals had made the proverbial fountain of youth both an attainable and, more importantly, a marketable enterprise. Though it took ten calendar years to document and prove his discovery, he was now one of the wealthiest people in the world, and being on the cycles of Xanegenics was the most coveted status symbol of all.

Millions around the world were now on the Xanegenics program, although a moral outcry had gone up from many more—those who couldn’t afford his program. Of course there were unanswered questions. Would they eventually die? Could they actually live forever, barring a fatal accident? Would this lead to population overcrowding? Was he responsible for finally engineering life and wrangling the scythe out of the hands of the Grim Reaper?