Author's Note

Hello, new and returning readers. Returning readers can skip down to the next paragraph, but to the new readers, this is a direct sequel my previous fan fic, The Skaianet Experiment. You don't really need the read it to follow this one, but you may want to give it a glance over. You can find it from my profile.

Due to a change in certain ideas I had with the direction of the plot, I need to make a few adjustments to things established in The Skaianet Experiment.

- The 16 "Subjects" were originally Age 13 when the experiment began. From here out, consider all of them being in the 16 – 18 range so their physical/mental ages line up.

- Originally, the experiment took place in 2015. Uh... make that 2030. Which will also be the year this one takes place.

And lastly, I'm planning to shoot for shorter, more frequent updates. So with that, let's pick up where we left off...

A young man sits in a virtual reality apparatus. Though it was 16 years ago he was given life, it was only 20 days ago he was given a name. A history. And four years worth of memories. Of a game to end and create the universe.

Lord English was vanquished. Humans and trolls alike stepped forward to claim the ultimate reward. To create and enter their new world. Or so the believed. The ultimate reward was not a new universe. It was the answer. To the ultimate riddle. One truth.

Pose as a team. The world is real.

And the truth had set them free. In mere moments, the curious "Andrew" had implanted knowledge into their minds. Of the nature of their world and their lives. And with that truth, also a mission, should they choose to accept it. But that would come later. First, he had to get out.

He reached up and pushed the twin release buttons inside the capsule, causing it to open on hydraulics with a hiss. He pulled the mask from his mouth, the unpleasant taste of liquified nutrients lingering in his mouth. The air that entered his lungs was stale and dry, but also cold. And he felt no link with it, as he typically did as the Heir of Breath. As feeling began to return to the rest of his body, a thought occurred to him. If he was attached to an intake for nutrients... AGH. John hastily freed himself from the waste system also attached to him. He sat up, finding himself in a thin blue hospital gown, his bare feet touching a cold linoleum floor. As his eyes and ears took in "real" input for the first time in weeks, he witnessed the other pods in the room around him, opened or opening in a similar manner to his own awakening. Figures were emerging. Some faces were familiar. Others, he'd been informed, would look rather different.

In "creating" them, Andrew had not made drastic changes to their appearances, merely painted personalities onto the bodies he'd been given to work with. This was at least the case with the eight human kids. The twelve trolls had obviously had their skin tinted, with the addition of horns and possibly unknowable alien appendages, but their face and body structures had been retained. The remaining six were completely unrecognizable to him... they were clearly full-grown adults: a pair of slim men with short red hair who looked like twins. An older man with wild eyes and wilder grey hair. Three women with a variety of hair colors.

"JOHN?" He heard a mildly frightened voice from behind him. He turned to observe a boy his own age in the capsule immediately behind him. Though his skin was pale, his hair snow white and his hairline missing it's distinct nubby horns, John recognized him.

"karkat?" John blinked in surprise. Karkat hels his hands out in front of him, staring at his skin tone with disbelief.

"WHAT DID THEY DO TO ME?" He cried out as his hands wandered up to his skull, grasping air where his horns would be. "THE FUCK DID THEY DO TO ME?!"

"It is your mind they've meddle with, not your body." Both John and Karkat looked at the source of the voice. Standing off to the side, a woman with perfectly straight, waist length black hair. Unlike everyone else in the room, she was dressed properly, with dark jeans and a black turtleneck sweater.

"WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?!" Karkat demanded of the woman loudly, drawing the attention of the rest of the room, breaking the stupor of their transformations.

"You once knew me as the Black Queen." The woman told him. "And while you were the orchestrator of my exile, that is of no concern now." She opened up one of several boxes on the table next to her. Inside were beige jumpsuits. "I was sent ahead. To make ready. I can answer your questions... but only after we escape this place." She told the room. "Everyone get dressed." She ordered.

That night, Snowman led the 26 newly freed subjects from the lab. Arson and sabotage, meticulously orchestrated and timed, concealed their exodus. Skaianet would learn in the coming days of these events. Of the criminals and spies paid off to carry out these distractions. How AH-4 had orchestrated their escape, before deleting himself and taking half the facility with him. Though they would seek them, caution and planning had since spread the Children of Sburb to the winds. Waiting.

It has been three months since that day.

John: Deliver.