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Prologue
The world hadchanged in the year 3013.
Earth rebuilt their civilization after the Alien Wars ravaged the planet and an unknown virus nearly wiped out the entire population, but nothing could ever bring back what once was. A new age of mankind was born, but some of the edicts set forth for humans to survive have become obsolete in the ever-changing universe.
What fate has in store is uncertain, though, one constant is clear. In a cosmos filled with endless possibilities, love is the ultimate prize. Warriors from every species search the stars for love, and they will risk all to fight for those who hold their hearts. But danger is always present when worlds collide. As new challenges arise, all the known races must adapt and learn from their allies. However, not all desire peace, or to live in harmony.
And as a new year dawns, the battle for the future has only begun…
Chapter One
Zenix Li hatedcrowds, but as the new Chief of Security on the planetoid Evo, he was constantly surrounded by them. He still had to ask himself daily if he’d lost his damn mind by agreeing to officially leave the Alliance for the private sector, but then he remembered all the perks that came with his new position.
The best of which was not being under the perpetual threat of torture and death.
Well, at least most of the time.
Ever since Zenix had graduated from the Academy, he had been living a life of constant danger. Part of that was because he’d been stupid enough to admit to developing a unique gift a few years after he’d gone through testing and had been given the enhancements.
All enhanced Elites were bigger and stronger than the average citizen, but only a select number of people ended up getting an extra gift or two. Those individuals went through advanced training to develop those abilities, and for Zenix, figuring his out had been akin to torture.
At first, he hadn’t noticed anything was different. He’d assumed he had gotten the same enhancements as most of his peers, but after a few years at the Academy, he’d started having terrible nightmares. It wasn’t every night, but they’d happened often enough that it began bothering his sleep. The dreams were a nuisance, but they hadn’t really started concerning him until a few months later. That was when he’d finally realized that the events in his nightmares were actually starting to happen in real life.
After he’d understood they were more than simple dreams, he’d reported it to his instructors. In order to test what kinds of premonitions he could have, those sadistic bastards had put him through a series of tests. Once it was determined that he could only predict incidents where his own life was in danger, he had been subjected to a barrage of sneak attacks, beatings, non-lethal poisons, and several other crazy situations.
Suffering through months of that torture had been utter hell, but the Alliance had finally classified him as a Class-B Precog. Since his premonitions were specific to events in his life only, he wasn’t powerful enough to be a Class-A Precog, who were considered better because their premonitions or views of future events helped more people and dealt with a wider range of circumstances.
Zenix’s premonitions were also pretty short-term, only spanning between a few hours to a few days into the future. That wasn’t much of a warning, but he couldn’t really complain since it was more than other people had. His precog abilities allowed him to effectively change his own fate by avoiding certain situations or formulating plans to counter whatever was going to happen.
As time went on, he’d also developed another ability he liked to call his sixth sense. If he was anywhere near a dangerous situation, his skin would prickle with electricity like tiny shocks. It was similar to how people described their hair standing on end or getting goosebumps when their intuition kicked in, but for him, it was more intense.
And the bigger the threat, the more discomfort he felt.
Although he’d been a strike force commander, he hadn’t worked with a full team. Because of that, he had been considered more of a spy than a soldier. That had given him more autonomy in his work, but it had also left him at the mercy of commanding officers who had no issue with putting him at risk for their own gain.
Over the years, he’d had missions all across the known universe. He’d been in rebel camps, on cargo freighters, in several space stations, and on a few different planets. Some assignments only took a day or two to complete, while other undercover work lasted for months. He had cultivated his own network of informants and associates along the way and had compiled one of the most extensive mission files of any Alliance operative.
That was why he’d felt burnt the fuck out.
While he had enjoyed the work, it had been draining. He had taken pride in kicking ass and taking down the bad guys, but he’d barely had time to decompress from one mission before he’d been sent on the next. He knew he should have insisted on taking longer breaks in between, but he had believed in the work they had been doing.
Until he’d simply had enough.
Deciding to leave the Alliance had been a much easier decision than he’d thought it would be. Normally, a soldier in good standing with as many commendations as Zenix had shouldn’t have had an issue leaving for the private sector, but the Alliance hadn’t been as ready to let him go. While there were other precogs who had similar abilities, there weren’t many who had the same experience. On top of that, there weren’t a lot of people who were willing to take the risks he had over the years.
When he’d gotten some pushback, he had asked his friend Roman Newgate to clear the path for him. Not only was Roman a former regent, he was also a current advisor to the council. He’d hated to bother his friend, but as an orphan with no family, Zenix had no one to officially back him up. He shouldn’t have worried, though. Roman had been more than happy to help.
Intimidating the officers into doing the right thing had been easy for the former regent. He said it had alleviated his boredom, but Zenix knew that Roman was plenty busy now that he was mated to a powerful Dragon Warrior and a father to newborn twins. Zenix had babysat for the couple one evening, and he’d learned firsthand just how utterly terrifying and exhausting it was to be around magical babies. He'd nearly had a fucking heart attack when the twins had literally floated themselves across the room to greet him.
Thankfully, he no longer lived on Earth, so he could be taken off the babysitter roster. The twins’ intelligence developed a lot faster than human babies, so they had been able to understand him well enough for all three of them to survive the night. He’d enjoyed spending time with them and thought they were cute as hell, but he freely admitted he’d still been more scared of them than he was a hostage negotiation.
Before he had retired, he had gotten a new job offer from the Artane brothers that had initially sparked his decision to leave his undercover work. When he had first heard that Magnus, Nicolo, and Razar Artane had quietly purchased a planetoid they were planning to make into the site for their new interactive video game, he’d thought they were crazy. He had been friends with the Artanes long enough to know it was never safe to bet against the brothers, though.
Especially when it came to innovative technology.
Evolution, the new game the Artane brothers had created, was not only an advanced multi-layered survival game, it also combined several different types of games into one complex universe. Once a player entered the system, there was pretty much no limit to what they could do. Players could live out their wildest dreams. They could create a whole new fantasy life or construct an exciting extension of their own reality.
Gaming was already a huge industry, but playing Evolution by the normal means hadn’t been innovative enough for the Artane brothers. Of course, the game could be played by the standard formats, such as on wrist units, screens, virtual reality, and holo-tech. However, Artane Electronics had taken things to the next level by creating Evo, the planetoid that had been magically terraformed to be the live-action version of the Evolution game.
