Sadly, I must admit to myself that I am the pinnacle of my bloodline. All my descendants are disappointments, despite the advantage of their breeding.

—GENERAL AGAMEMNON, New Memoirs

The twins had remained imprisoned in their preservation vault, immobile and fully aware, for more than a century. In all that time, Andros and Hyla had nothing to do but think and stew and plan. Having never left the laboratory, they had little grasp of the Jihad or of the League humans who fought against the Synchronized Worlds.

The silence inside the sealed facility now seemed heavy and unnatural, as if the walls still reverberated with screams.

“We killed them all too soon.” Andros stood in the laboratory module, studying the interesting red patterns splashed on the walls, the strewn body parts of the Swordmasters and Butlerians who had inadvertently released them. “They might have provided more information.”

Swordmaster Ellus had been quite reluctant to divulge any secrets, but he did eventually, though Hyla had been forced to use her fingers to extract several of his teeth.

“We can be forgiven our impatience.” She tapped her fingertips together and felt the tackiness of drying blood. “I’ve been restless, and Juno never allowed us much time to practice the skills she gave us.”

Thanks to what Ellus had revealed between his screams, Andros and Hyla knew the basic story of humanity’s great purge against Omnius and the final victory at Corrin and how the cymek rebellion had ultimately failed. The battle that had wiped out so many neo-cymeks and robotic battleships at this laboratory outpost had been little more than an unmarked skirmish in the much-larger war. Even so, it had left the twins stranded, preserved inside the vault for year after year after year.

Such a thing might have driven a lesser person mad, Hyla thought.

“We should leave here,” Andros said. “We’ll take their ship, study their records, and find everything else we need to know.”

“Juno created us to be superior specimens.” Hyla looked around at the slaughter. “We just proved that, but there is so much more we need to know and see and do.”

“Juno never returned after Omnius attacked this outpost, and our preparation was incomplete,” Andros said. “We’ll have to do the rest ourselves.”

The Titan Juno—General Agamemnon’s chosen mate for more than a thousand years—had been one of the oldest cymeks. Juno, Agamemnon, and the rest of the Twenty Titans had taken over complacent humanity, ruling as tyrants before surgically shedding their organic bodies and placing their brains in preservation canisters, so they could live for centuries inside machine bodies. First, however, Agamemnon had preserved his own sperm in order to create offspring when he deemed it appropriate, but his other sons had failed him, causing Agamemnon to erase them all.

Juno, however, established this secret test program, where she created Hyla and Andros from Agamemnon’s sperm and a slave female’s eggs. General Agamemnon knew nothing of the plan. Juno had enhanced the children—impregnated their skin with flowmetal, intensified their reflexes, and saturated their minds with sophisticated combat skills and tactical knowledge—imprinting their pliable brains with all the information they would need to become invincible weapons. Worthy children of Agamemnon.

Juno had hoped to launch a larger-scale breeding program once the twins proved the concept. Stalking back and forth in her bulky combat body in front of their indoctrination chambers, Juno had talked with great anticipation about when she would introduce the twins to their legendary father. The words from Juno’s speakerpatch carried genuine sadness and anger when she talked about how Vorian Atreides, Agamemnon’s thirteenth son and greatest hope, had betrayed him after all.

The twins had listened to every word, absorbing all of that vengeful spite.

The robot attack on this outpost had destroyed the neo-cymek tenders, the laboratory assistants. Hyla was bitter that the cymek queen had so quickly discarded them. According to Swordmaster Ellus in his last gurgling revelations, Juno was dead, as was Agamemnon—both betrayed by Vorian Atreides.

“Will we take anything with us from the laboratory?” Andros asked.

“There’s nothing we need here. I’m sick of this place. You and I are sufficient. We’ll let the vacuum of space reclaim the outpost.”

The two made their way to the docked Butlerian ship and rapidly familiarized themselves with the controls inside the cockpit. The pilot had mounted three prominent religious icons on a makeshift altar: a beautiful woman, an infant child, and an androgynous, hairless woman raising her hands and preaching. Hyla discarded the items.

The vessel’s navigation system held charts of prominent worlds in the newly formed Imperium. Hyla also found historical accounts of the Jihad against Omnius, celebrations of the great hero Vorian Atreides … their brother.

“We have work to do,” Andros said, “and a long journey ahead of us.”

“We have time. We’ve already waited a century. Now let’s go find our brother.”

Andros activated the ship’s engines, and the craft rose from the cratered ground, leaving the haunted outpost behind.