That won’t happen anytime soon, but time is something I have plenty of.

“I worked for you once,” Kline says. “I never will again.”

Before the sight of Serenity can break me, I close the lid. I turn to Kline, a man who was once my enemy, then my ally, then my enemy again, in hopes that he will be my ally once more.

Serenity trusted this man. I will too.

“I’m not asking you to work for me. I’m asking you, and the Resistance, to work with me.”

7 years later

MY TRAITOROUS FORMER advisors have stolen my technology. For the first time ever I feel the anger that comes with trying to kill something that just won’t die. That’s how I find out they’re utilizing the Sleeper.

I’ve never received direct evidence that they’re taking my pills, but while under my rule, I watched their hair thin and their skin wrinkle. Now their thick heads of hair and their youthful faces are all the evidence I need that they’re taking the pills.

I am now fighting monsters of my own making.

10 years later

NANOTECHNOLOGY.

That’s how we save her.

24 years later

ANOTHER FAILURE. AND just when things were looking up. We’d begun human trials on the latest drug, too.

When I find out, I cradle my head in my hands and I sob.

It wasn’t all a loss, I suppose. The drug is able to cure certain types of cancer—just not Serenity’s. And, selfish bastard that I am, hers is all I really care about.

I have to accept the fact that even after all this time, I’ll have to wait longer.

That doesn’t sit well with me, and I take out my aggression on the WUN. I imagine that Serenity would hate me for it. But then, I wouldn’t be giving her enough credit. She always had a way of parsing down issues fairly. Maybe she’d understand that the WUN I fight today is not the same one she left.

29 years later

I SIT IN front of the Sleeper, my hands in my pockets.

“My queen, I think we’ve found the key to curing your cancer.”

It’s not the only news I have, but it’s the one that consumes my thoughts. My hands practically shake from excitement.

Three decades, three long, excruciatingly lonely decades. Three more decades of war. My depravity has gotten worse. And now, finally, I’ll be able to hold her in my arms again.

Will we be the same once she wakes? All this work I’ve done for her, and sometimes I fear that I’ve changed too much. She will still be the Serenity I left thirty years ago, but will she see me as the same man she gave her life and heart to?

“You’re getting moved. I’m rebuilding my Mediterranean palace,” I say to her. It’s the place where we were first married. Far below the palace there’s to be a secret room—more of a temple really. And right at the heart of it my queen will rest until the last of her illness is obliterated.

53 years later

THE PLAGUE HITS again, and the death toll this time around is just as merciless as it was the last time it swept through the Eastern Empire.

The WUN and my old advisors who rule it are responsible. We traced the origins back to a series of contaminated food supplies smuggled in.

I’ve now lived through two epidemics. The first one fashioned me into a wealthy ruler when I sold the cure for profit. I thought I was evil then, but compared to current events, I’ve actually had to reassess my own suppositions.

Unfortunately for the WUN, a mutated strain of the virus made its way back West. The numbers of our dead are nothing compared to that of the WUN.

It’s times like these that I’m glad my queen still sleeps.

Her cancer’s been cured, but there are other mutations to her genome caused by radiation that the Sleeper is fixing. It’s a slow process, providing gene therapy, and just when it appears all is well, some new issue pops up that the Sleeper must deal with.

I rub my face. Most of the time my thirst for life vanquishes all those things that haunt me. But late at night when I’m alone, like I am now, they come pouring in and I feel the weight of all my regrets and sorrow.

It’s moments like these when my skin feels most alien. I’m far too weary for the young body I live in.

I leave my study and head down flight after flight of stairs. The mausoleum is finally complete.

Once my architects finished the project, I delivered a refined version of the memory loss serum to them. No one can know about this place. And for the unfortunates that I hired, that was the price I exacted.

My footsteps echo against the marble stairs as I enter the cavernous, subterranean chamber. The room is covered completely in marble and embellished with gold, lapis lazuli, and indigo tiles. I head down the walkway that leads to Serenity’s burnished sarcophagus. At least, that’s what it looks like by all outer appearances. But beneath the golden designs that cover it is state-of-the-art machinery. This Sleeper is not only the most beautiful one in existence, it is also the most advanced.

It sits on an island of marble, surrounded by a pool of water. Columns ring the edges of the circular room, and the ceiling arcs high above us.

My shoes click as I head down the marble walkway that bisects the pool. The water is still and smooth. It reflects the dim lighting and, beyond that, the artificial night sky set into the ceiling. So she’d always have the stars to gaze up at.

I sit at the bench that overlooks her sarcophagus.

I still miss her, but already I’ve forgotten the sharp ache of our love. Now, like the rest of the world, she’s more myth than woman. I wouldn’t even know what to do with the real Serenity if I were to meet her again.

64 years later

I’VE DONE SOMETHING unforgiveable—two things, actually. Two twisted deeds I already regret. It’s times like this when I need Serenity’s ferocity. I need her to aim her father’s gun at me and demand I change my ways on pain of death.

As fucked up as we were, she tempered the conscienceless part of me.

No one else bothers to stand in my way.

My loneliness is to blame. It eats away at me. Some days I’m not sure I’ll survive it. But I’m too afraid to die and too afraid to resurrect my queen.

“I’m sorry, Serenity.”

I miss her.

73 years later

SERENITY IS HEALED. Completely.

Every single strand of DNA mutated by radiation has been repaired. Externally she retains her scars, but on a cellular level, she’s flawless. It took the better part of the century, but I did indeed cure her.