Chapter 664: Sinner

Grey kicked the farmhouse door open hard enough that it smacked against the wall and bounced halfway closed again.

"I’m home."

The reaction was immediate, chairs scraping, feet pounding against the floor and every person inside rushing toward the entrance with whatever they had managed to grab along the way.

Benn came first with his cane raised like a club, James and Duke followed with a shovel and hoe, while Lilac and Sabrina appeared behind them carrying the same sort of garden tools they’d been using the last time Grey had been here.

Then they saw him.

One by one, the weapons lowered until they eventually slipped out of their hands entirely, the five of them staring at Grey with expressions that almost made him wonder whether he had somehow gotten uglier while he was gone. Grey looked between them, then glanced toward the abandoned tools scattered over the floor.

"What? Did you guys come to kick my ass?"

Sabrina’s rake hit the ground first.

She rushed him before Grey finished the question, tears already building in her eyes as she crossed the room, but Grey recognized the look on her face a little too well. The moment she got close enough, Sabrina’s hips turned and the same leg that had nearly ended his bloodline the first time whipped toward his crotch.

Grey chuckled and stepped aside.

Sabrina’s kick passed harmlessly by him, her momentum carrying her forward before Grey slipped one arm around her waist and spun with her. He completed the turn smoothly, caught beneath her knees with his other arm, then lifted her completely off the floor into a princess carry before she had the chance to stumble through the open doorway.

"Nice to see you too, beautiful."

Sabrina stared at him for a second. Then she started punching him.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?!" she shouted, hammering her fists against his chest hard enough that Grey supposed a normal person might have at least pretended it hurt. "You disappear, you show up on fucking television fighting monsters, then you disappear again, and now you just kick the door open like you’ve been out getting milk?!"

Grey let her hit him.

Whatever energy Sabrina had managed to gather disappeared almost as quickly as it came, her punches growing weaker until she finally gave up and buried her face against his chest instead. The anger broke with it, shoulders shaking as she started crying hard enough that Grey’s smile slowly lost some of its humor.

He rubbed a hand against her back.

Sabrina was crying now simply from seeing him alive, yet Grey might be about to put her, Benn and everyone else on Earth into more danger than they’d experienced in their entire lives. That thought had been sitting somewhere in the back of his head ever since the Genesis System gave him the option, and standing here made it feel a lot heavier than it had on the road.

Grey looked past her toward Benn.

"What’s up, old man? You look like you’ve aged about fifty years. You didn’t have long till the grave anyway, now look at you."

Benn’s eyes were still a little too glassy for the insult to land the way it normally would, but he recovered quickly enough. "Fuck you, brat. I can still kick your ass if I have to."

"Is that what you’re going to do with that walking cane?"

Benn looked down at it as though he’d forgotten it was there, then scoffed. "This? Bah. Purely here for aesthetic purposes."

Grey’s eyes narrowed.

"You sure it’s not because your equipment doesn’t work anymore, so you gotta make do with another third leg?"

Benn looked genuinely offended this time. "There are some things that’ll never stop working."

James barked out a laugh, Duke nearly folded over beside him, and even Lilac finally broke into a grin after spending the last several seconds staring at Grey like she hadn’t quite decided whether he was real. That seemed to be enough for the three of them. Next thing Grey knew they were rushing him too.

"Oh, come on."

They crashed into him at once, nearly swallowing Sabrina beneath the pile as James wrapped an arm around Grey’s neck and Duke threw his weight against his back. Lilac somehow found space on the other side, and under ordinary circumstances the entire mess probably would have ended with all five of them collapsing onto the floor.

Grey didn’t move an inch, not even stumbling once to regain his balance. In fact, he wouldn’t have even swayed at all if not for the fact being too rigid might have harmed them.

He simply stood there holding Sabrina with one arm while carrying the other three hanging off him, then started laughing when they finally realized they weren’t accomplishing anything.

"Look at you puny little weaklings. You should probably worship me as a god at this point." Grey shifted Sabrina slightly higher in his arms, then raised his chin, a look of derision and pride on his face. "Come on, let me hear it. I might bestow great gifts upon you if you please me enough."

"Fuck you," James said immediately.

"Fight us," Duke added.

Grey looked between them, a sneer peeling across his features.

"Us?"

He started laughing again. "I didn’t think I’d come back to a batch of pussies. Four of you need to jump me now?"

"Five," Sabrina muttered against his chest.

Grey looked down.

"You already gave it your best shot. What? You want round two? I’m down for as many rounds as you’re down for." Grey grinned wildly and Sabrina immediately hit him again.

Eventually the pile broke apart and everyone moved toward the dining room, the same battered table Grey remembered sitting in the center beneath a light that flickered every few seconds.

Benn complained that nobody had been fixing anything properly since all the useful adults disappeared, while James insisted that he had fixed several things and the fact that none of them worked afterward was irrelevant.

For a little while, Grey let himself enjoy it.

He listened to Duke exaggerate stories about patrol machines, watched Lilac quietly correct half of them, then nearly got into another argument with Sabrina over whether she had actually intended to cripple him when she kicked. It almost felt normal, which somehow made what he needed to say next even worse.

Grey finally stood and placed both hands against the dinner table.

"I need to tell you guys something."

Sabrina’s smile faded first.

Grey looked around the table, taking his time before continuing. "I’m about to make a decision that affects every person left on Earth, and I don’t know exactly what happens after I make it."

Benn’s expression hardened.

Grey continued. "The people who disappeared are in something called the Genesis Games, which you already know parts of from everything you’ve seen. Earth itself isn’t fully inside the Genesis System yet, though, and I have an option to change that."

James frowned. "Isn’t that good?"

"Maybe... The upside is protection. Right now Earth is sitting outside the direct jurisdiction of the Genesis System, which means people who know what they’re doing can fuck with us without nearly as many restrictions." Grey leaned slightly harder against the table. "If I integrate Earth, that changes."

Duke caught the problem first. "And the downside?"

Grey looked toward him.

"I don’t know."

The room went quiet again.

Grey glanced toward Benn, then Sabrina, Lilac, James and Duke in turn. "The people left here are old, young, injured, or otherwise the exact people who’d normally be the most vulnerable if something goes wrong. We’re not talking about soldiers, we’re talking about kids and grandparents and everyone who couldn’t even enter the Games in the first place."

Sabrina slowly lowered her eyes.

Grey exhaled through his nose. "And if integration means Earth starts dealing with even a fraction of the shit I’ve seen, people are going to die."

No one spoke.

Grey had faced Gods without hesitating, stepped through a crack the Genesis System explicitly warned him to avoid, and willingly thrown himself into situations where dying was the most likely result. None of that had ever felt quite like standing here, knowing that one choice from him could decide whether billions of people remained outside the system or were dragged into whatever nightmare came next.

He straightened slowly.

"I might save Earth by doing this." Grey looked around the table again. "Or I might become the greatest sinner in Earth’s history."