“What…what are we looking at? He’s a cyborg! Why is he a cyborg?!” Fellissa exclaimed as she stared in disbelief at the figure that had emerged from the weird pod of transmuted flesh. Using telepathy, the feline deity commanded the screen to zoom in on the being that Raul Sanchez had turned into. His right arm had been replaced by a shiny metallic limb with glowing blue lines running down to the tip of each finger, each of which had an extra joint. At the shoulder, where the metal met flesh, she could see the synthetic tissue extend into the human’s chest, pulsing with dim blue beneath the skin. One of the man’s eyes had been replaced with an electromagnetic sensor, able to detect forms of radiation that extended far beyond the spectrum of visible light. Armor plates were fused with the outer layer of skin from the torso down, creating a light and flexible but comprehensive coverage of all vital organs from the pectorals down. Only the head, neck, and left shoulder were vulnerable.

  When Brett failed to answer the feline, she asked again.

  “Brett, what is that?”

  The human deity put away his phone, which he had been using to text Canius, the canine deity. Fellissa was too caught up in what she was watching to notice the guilty look that briefly crossed his face.

  “That,” he answered after a moment’s thought, “is the Anakim template. I thought I mentioned to you that I was going to be using it.”

  The feline rolled her eyes.

  “Yeah, you mentioned the template. That’s not the issue. The issue is that,” she punctuated her statement by pointing a claw harder than a diamond and sharper than monofilament wire at the screen. “What is that even?”

  Brett sighed.

  “I’ll tell you what it was, it was expensive. If I told you how many DKP it cost me to apply it to just one human, you’d cough up a hairball.”

  “Excuse me?” Fellissa whirled around and glared at Brett. The human deity got the hint.

  “I’m sorry. I meant to say, you’d slap your daddy.”

  “That’s better,” Fellissa said with a sniff. “Now, are you going to actually tell me what we’re looking at, or are you going to try to change the subject a third time?”

  Brett stood up abruptly and paced around the room. Although he usually hid it well, Fellissa could always tell when the human deity was nervous. And boy, was he nervous. She gave him a bit of space, choosing instead to reach her front limbs out as far as they could go in front of her as she arched her back in a nice stretch. Seeing a speck of dust on the otherwise immaculate fur of her right front leg, she immediately went after the spot with gusto.

  For a moment, the only sounds in the room were the soft footfalls of Brett’s pacing and the rasp of a cat tongue against damp fur.

  “The Anakim may have been my greatest failure as a deity. That’s why I had the template sealed away. At least, until you came and begged me for help with that rooster. Even though I spent almost as much divinity on brainwashing the subject as I did on the template, I fear that I may yet come to regret the decision. But don’t worry, it’s not like I blame you or anything. I made this choice on my own.”

  “Wait, if it’s a failure, why did you bother dusting it off and bringing it out of storage?” Fellissa asked.

  Brett stopped pacing and looked at the feline deity.

  “You don’t recall the Anakim, do you? It’s not surprising, since I erased all records of their existence except for a few references I wasn’t able to stamp out.”

  Fellissa shook her head.

  “Nope, not ringing a bell. I would definitely remember if I saw something like that thing before, but I got nothing.”

  “Well, the Anakim were a high technology race that flourished about 3500 years ago. They were an isolated tribe that I led to a remote fertile valley in the middle of a desert and uplifted as best I could. They developed electricity and computers within two generations and then bent all their formidable intellect toward enhancing their own bodies through a combination of DNA editing, chemical enhancement, and artificial tissues. Unfortunately, their vision of a perfect future did not involve caring for pets.”

  “But it looks like the experiment was a failure, right? What happened? Did they blow themselves up in a nuclear experiment gone awry? Argue over the best way to splice a genome? Accidentally transport themselves into the space between dimensions, never to return?”

  Brett grimaced and looked around the room, as if confirming that no one else was listening to him. He then took his phone out of his pocket, sighed, and then used a miniscule fraction of his power to erase the thing entirely from existence. He then used his divine senses to ensure that there was nothing else in the room that could possibly be used to record what he was about to say.

  “I killed them all. I’m not proud of it, but it had to be done. And then I wiped out every tribe that had ever interacted with them, just to be safe.”

  “Wow, so they must have been pretty big failures after all, huh?” Fellissa said, not bothering to think the matter through as she idly returned to watching the screen.

  “Let me ask you a question,” Brett said, walking in front of the screen so that he was directly in the feline deity’s line of sight. “Have you ever heard of a deity being overthrown by one of their followers?”

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  Fellissa raised her head up, her ears standing at full attention as her lazy demeanor disappeared.

  “Wait, what? Is that even possible? You’re joking, right?”

  Brett shook his head.

  “I wish I were, but there have been a few instances. Oh, none of them would admit it, but I can give you four examples of where GOD’s archives suddenly start referring to a deity by a completely differently name.”

  “That could be for a number of reasons. Maybe the deity decided to embrace true death after choosing a successor, or simply changed their name. That happens sometimes. I mean, look at Sal. He just changed his name to Axel a few years ago.”

  “I thought about that, back at the time I was looking through the records. So I dug deeper and found that although we document name changes and records of true death, we don’t actually have records on four occasions that a name was changed. And these weren’t all super old records, where you could argue that we might have had different policies. No, these records are separated by millions of years. The last one was from about fifty million years ago.”

  Fellissa frowned.

  “So, if I’m understanding what you’re suggesting here, is that the Anakim weren’t a failure because they didn’t thrive. They were a failure because you were worried they would grow so powerful that one of them would eventually overthrow you. And then you stamped out the knowledge they possessed so that no one else would be able to do something similar. That was smart, Brett. Honestly, I can see that you feel bad about it, but you’re the President of God. If you fell, the deities would fall into chaos. It could even have led to…civil war among us.”

  Brett sighed and ran his hand over his face.

  “That’s part of why I did what I did, yes. But there’s another piece that I haven’t gotten to yet. The Anakim dreamed of a merged intelligence, a unity of their collective consciousness that would both fill the earth and subdue it. And on this new Earth...”

  “There would be no place for other life,” Fellissa finished for him.

  “Exactly. So, I need two things from you, please,” Brett said, crossing over and sitting on the couch next to Fellissa. “I need you to promise me that you’ll keep what I just told you between the two of us. Others will see what Raul has become, but they won’t be able to tell exactly what he is. There will be some speculation about his abilities, but once the next exciting fight comes on, everyone will move on to the next thing.”

  Fellissa nodded her agreement.

  “Of course, I’ll keep this confidential. We are, after all, the top two species on Earth, right? We have to watch out for each other.”

  The feline deity stopped and laughed.

  “Also, I wouldn’t be where I am today if your humans didn’t adore us felines the way they do, so I guess I owe you one. But you said two things, didn’t you? What’s the second?”

  Brett frowned and scratched at his neck. It took him a few moments to answer, and, when he finally did, his voice was filled with regret.

  “I need your Champion to kill Raul Sanchez as soon as the rooster situation has been dealt with.”

  Raul Sanchez emerged from his rebirthing pod with a mission. His body, his mind, and even his very soul had been transformed, giving him the tools that he needed to successfully complete said mission. The lion who had previously provided him guidance was standing in its den, looking at him in awe. As it should: Raul was now a being whose genetic purity, technological skill, and magical abilities all greatly outstripped the great cat’s. The feeling of new power flowing through his body reminded Raul to check his status, and he was pleased to see that the System had recognized his ascension to a higher class of being.

  After reading his notifications, Raul’s reservations about the forced transformation melted away. His attributes had skyrocketed, and his new class held great promise. He activated his optical sensor’s built-in heads up display, or HUD, and smiled as it homed in on a nearby building that contained equipment that he could use to upgrade his cyborg body.

  “Raul, are you okay?” Chip asked.

  The query led Raul to run a quick diagnostic. Everything came back green

  “I am operating as expected. Are you ready to move out?”

  “Just let me grab a quick bite before we hit the road. I haven’t had fresh meat in forever because I had to stand guard over that weird pod-thingy,” the lion complained.

  “Understood,” the newly-minted Anakim said with a nod. “Fueling up is a good idea. We have much ground to cover before we reach our main objective.”

  “Wait, aren’t you going to level up some more first?” Chip questioned. “I can tell you’re a lot stronger than you were, but let’s at least get you to level 20…”

  Raul frowned and shook his head.

  “There is no need for that, we will level up en route. I have two stops to make, and then we head to the city of Parakou, in Benin. We are going to kill the rooster, his flock, and any progeny he may have created. And then we’re going to remake the whole world, Brett willing.”