Never mind that she shared it with two others. Nicholas. Mikhail. Nicholas and Mikhail. But she felt the ownership, felt the power, as if it were all her own. And someday, perhaps, it would be. Until that day, she’d refine her enhancements of the Evolution, perhaps sabotage the others bit by bit, while still letting the weight of their terrible purpose rest on them from time to time. Fight terror with terror. End tragedy with tragedy.

Didn’t they say that all tragic things occurred in groups of three? Deaths, earthquakes, tornadoes. She’d only known one set of triplets in her life, but those kids had been hell on tiny feet, their piercing cries during the night of the Evolution still a memory that rattled her. She had not been the one to put an abrupt end to those cries, but it would be the greatest of untruths to say she hadn’t been minutes away from finishing them off, herself. And, oh, what immense relief she breathed in at the sweet silence that followed.

Bad things come in threes. That was a philosophy as old as time. And they were three, the Godhead—Evolved; thoughts faster than a lifetime of words spoken at once; machine-like control of the senses, the physiology, the chemicals, the endorphins, all of it; the mental capacity of a universe to suck in all light and knowledge. They had Evolved, of that there could be no doubt. But she—yes, she—was beyond them, beyond the both of them combined. This, Alexandra knew. But for now, they were three.

Her mind flashed, memories upon memories, all in an instant. The Flare and its many variants, building minds to fix the unfixable. Maybe it had all served a purpose, millennia of terrifying trinities, preparing the human race for what had arisen, what had come into being to eradicate terror itself, by any means necessary.

The Godhead.

Hell, it worked for her.

“Goddess Romanov?”

Dammit. She’d hoped for more time, more time-wasting. She turned away from the beauties of her city and faced the man who’d spoken her name. A tall, gangly fellow, he always reminded her of a walking tree branch, the fact that his joints didn’t crack and pop and splinter with every step a small shock to her subconscious.

“What’s going on, Flint?” The man’s name wasn’t Flint, but she called him that for the sole reason that she wanted to. He seemed . . . lessened by it, and that was okay. Ideal, even.

“There’s a kink in the rotation of pilgrims.” His voice was like the spill of raw ore from a wheelbarrow. “I have the exact numbers here, but by morning we’ll be off by at least eight percent in every part of the city. Everything will be thrown off.”