But he turned away from those imaginings. He was sick of the killing. Of the death.

“If you will not ask, I shall tell,” the Gray said.

The creature folded its spindly legs, sitting in a meditative pose on the ground. Its eyes, seen so close, stirred within their sockets.

“You may call me Song. That is the meaning of my name in your language. I have been here for almost a hundred of your Earth years. And I have been watching you since you arrived on this planet.”

Cade fell back, sitting opposite the creature. A sense of unreality moved through him. He felt detached. As if it were all happening to someone else.

“When I first came here, we did not fight as you have seen us. We fought with guns. Airships. Technology more advanced than you humans have dreamed of.”

“Why am I here?” Cade blurted.

In the background, Cade heard his words parroted back in the fluting language of the Grays.

Song’s lips pursed closed, his nostrils flaring.

“You will understand soon enough,” Song replied, this time so forcefully that Cade could hear its fluting voice beneath the dull intonation of the dissected Codex beyond.

“It was in a battle against a race not dissimilar to our own that it happened. A weapon of immense power was used by our enemy. An electromagnetic pulse so powerful that it disabled every piece of technology on the planet. And in its use, the powers of the pantheon were disabled. Abaddon included.”

Cade could only stare, incredulous. To hurt the pantheon had seemed an impossibility.

“They let them use it?” Cade asked.

Song seemed to smile at the question, though it was hard to tell. His facial expressions were very different from a human’s.

“Call it hubris. We believe the pantheon have long forgotten how their technology works. It was built by their predecessors. They have no respect for the weapons of mere mortals such as us. An opinion they held at their peril.”

“What happened?” Cade asked, perhaps stupidly. But what else could he ask? Abaddon was still here, after all.

“We ended our battle in the face of the pantheon’s silence. Made peace with the enemy—for after all, we fought only to preserve ourselves. But while they focused on building a means of returning home, we knew the pantheon were not finished yet. We planned for their resurgence.”

Cade could not believe what he was hearing.

“For seven blessed days, we were free from their influence. It was during that time that this place was built. A place invisible to them and protected from any future electromagnetic pulses. This place is currently surrounded by what you humans would call a Faraday cage, one I deployed just before I fired our EMP.”

“Why?” Cade asked. “Why not destroy the pantheon?”

The Gray sighed, though there was no equivalent sound from the deconstructed Codex.

“Because in disabling their technology, our own was destroyed too. We had no time to build something powerful enough to destroy them, nor did we have the resources. But we could build this.”