The Grays continue their work. But eventually, after a millennium of serving their creator, some among them begin to seek autonomy. Some grow weary of their tasks, and of those most come to resent the master. Many speak up behind closed doors, and the leaders of the Grays call for a separation. They seek to control their own lives, to handle their own work and conduct their own research—a complete and total separation from their creator. Before long they become deceptive, knowing Adam is at rest and will not be watchful. They split into two groups; one conducting clandestine and secretive operations while the other continues to serve and obey Adam under the guise of being willing servants, but acting only as a screen to hide their true motives. Adam remains unaware, and the Grays gain in power. By the time Adam’s last creation develop language and being to explore their home world in earnest, the Grays are all but on their own. They put a considerable amount of attention on the last creation, on the human beings. As their curiosity in these creatures increases, the Grays overstep the one rule they were implicitly instructed to obey: they create a new species of their own, which they call Baxters.

The Grays continue in their ways, and Adam continues to rest. They abduct beings for their own study, frightening and often times cruelly conducting unusual and menacing experiments for their sinister purposes. The other species throughout the universe become play things, nothing more than categorized beings barely worth ripping apart and reassembling however the Grays see fit. They become the ultimate terror in an otherwise bustling and unnoticing system of millions of inhabited planets. Eventually the some of the species being harassed by the Grays take matters into their own hands, and the first truly galactic wars surface. Finally Adam takes notice, but by that time it’s too late.

The Grays, now too powerful for even Adam to fully control, violently turn against him. He is attacked and saved only by his ability to write himself in and out of most situations. After a battle that spans fifty-thousand lifetimes, and an altered universal landscape, Adam writes the Grays into oblivion, leaving only the memories of horrors inflicted on others in their wake, and their hidden, secretive creation, the Baxters.

Adam has been wounded in every way. His loneliness begins to once again creep in, and as hard as he tries he’s unable to fight against it due to his exhaustion. A very long time passes, a battle within himself demanding his full attention and all of his time. Eventually he lets it win, allows himself to feel the thick, deep burden of knowing that he will never be anything but alone. And in accepting this, he gains some control over himself again. His determination to make to make things right, to heal the damage throughout all space, burns within him. He decides it is time for him to expose himself to his creations, to show himself as their creator, to show that he has caring and compassion for all of them. His purpose is renewed, a new chapter in his own story now begins.

For the first time ever, he leaves the rock. He leaves the Royal. He leaves the paper, and the pen, and the desk and the chair. He steps into the expanding platform of space and begins his journey. As he walks, he breathes in the universe around him, seeing it for the first time not from the eyes of a creator, but from those of a witness to its existence. Awe, and wonder, and peace. Just before he reveals himself to the humans, to his last and finest creation, he is halted by the presence of something ominous and forbidding. Unable to move forward, he feels an unmistakable need to return to the Royal. The journey back passes quickly, the entire time he is unable to shake the feeling of being followed. Upon arriving at his desk he turns and finds himself overcome by a foul, dark, presence. Everything becomes still, and in the silence he hears breathing.