CHAPTER ONE
Era of the Gods

  THE WORLD ONCE LIVED IN COMPLETE CHAOS, alive with murders and illnesses that claimed the lives of many, until Mother Gaia herself was choking on smog and withering away under the weight of the Mortals' sins. What a miracle that the Pantheon Inc. and their Gods somehow found a cure to mortality, to death.

I myself am not considered to be alive, and yet I felt the steady pulse of ICHOR solution, of life, thrumming through my veins, the faint beating in my chest. The synthetic skin grafts over metal and wire limbs felt soft to the touch, my fingertips burning as I reached up to feel along the constructed jawline -- a confirmation that all biocomponents and sensors were fully operational.

  That I was here, in this moment, in this crowd.

  Voices overlapped in quiet excitement, in an array of accents, from the dulcet tones of Over Seas to the crisp vowels of Capitol Ithaca. They were overwhelming, surrounding me, as I was pushed aside so that they could brush their hands along the golden silk of Hera's dress, of the dark skin of Zeus's hand.

  Anything to touch the Gods.

My forsaken creators. How I wished to reach up and dig my fingers into their eyes and see if they, too, were android, as they had made me, as they had made the two faceless S-127 androids flanking them from either side. Cowards hidden behind technology -- their slaves clanking beside them, ever obedient.

"You gave me life," I whispered, watching as Hephaestus limped past me, blind to the threat just feet away from him, unaware of the anarchy building in the center of their empire, "and so I must give you death."