"Umi. Seal the holodeck's entrance."

"Affirmative, Admiral Rodriguez."

José Rodriguez, the last living Terran, stands in the middle of the vast, empty expanse of the holodeck. Its silver walls and floor, immaculately smooth and polished, gleam under the bright ceiling lights. The huge double-doors close behind him and vanish, hidden by the holographic interface.

"Admiral," The synthmind, Umi, say. "I have already predicted the actions you're about to take. However, at a time like this, indulging in a fantasy will not-"

"Shut up," José says, his face blank. "I'm the leader of humanity now, right? That means the old laws don't matter anymore. So... don't lecture me. I'm not interested, and I won't listen. You just do as you're told."

"...Very well, Admiral. I advise that you do not go too far."

...

Several seconds pass. Admiral Rodriguez stares at the far wall, his thoughts contemplative.

Then, he lowers his head. A series of mental commands transmits into the holodeck's interface via his cerebral implants. Shortly after, a human figure appears in front of him. A man, more than a foot taller than José, with black skin, a neatly trimmed black beard, and the gaze of an eagle, stands at attention. His navy blue uniform, oaken muscles, and domineering statue make him a lion among men. Just standing in his presence might cause any feeble-minded man to surrender without a fight.

The moment the soldier's hologram appears, José averts his eyes. He turns his head to the side and grabs his chest, trying to suppress a wave of emotion.

"Nick... Nicky-boy... shit. I didn't... I didn't think it would... it would hit me this quick."

Nicholai Azaram, once a top-ranked soldier among Ramma's Chosen, now nothing more than a puddle of blue cryogenic fluid. His hologram stands before José, a stark reminder of the great man he once was.

José presses his fingers against his eyelids. He struggles to catch his breath while the holographic Nicholai gazes into the void, its unseeing eyes comprehending nothing. The Admiral's chest heaves, and his eyes tear up.

Umi speaks. "Admiral. I am detecting elevated levels of NA-14 in your neurochemical receptors. This indicates that you are experiencing profound anguish. I advise that you cease any further actions on the holodeck without a trained-"

"I told you to shut up!" José shouts, squeezing his eyes shut. "Not another word, Umi! Just follow my orders! No back-talk! I need to do this! It's my right, god dammit!"

Umi hesitates before replying.

"As you command, Admiral."

The synthmind gives up without a fight, but José barely even notices. After more than a minute, he finally raises his gaze to look at the man in front of him.

"Brother... brother..."

José takes a step forward. He wraps his arms around the hologram's waist and buries his face in its chest.

"Uuu... hic... I can't... I can't take it... not without you, Nicky-boy."

The hologram's ice-cold skin, formed via photonic particles and held together with magnetic energy, doesn't deter the Admiral. José barely even notices as he struggles to hold himself together. In his mind's eye, he imagines this fake, illusory figure is none other than his dearly departed best friend and long-time partner, the man he fought alongside for thousands of years.

"I'm so sorry, Nick. You didn't deserve to go out like that. If only I'd run a maintenance check before we went into stasis... if only I'd asked the Admiral to sweep the local space for plasma storms... it's all... all my god-damned fault you died."

...

With no one there to judge him, José utterly breaks down. He weeps for half an hour, sobbing against the hologram's chest, even as it stands at attention, unmoving.

At some point, José pulls away. He sinks to the floor at the hologram's feet and slumps forward, a look of exhaustion on his face.

Time passes.

An hour comes and goes before José stirs again. The Terran raises his head. He waves his hand, making Nick disappear.

"Switch to memory replay mode."

José summons a holographic chair and sinks into it. He waits while Umi's neural readers engage with his thoughts and pick out the desired memories from his brain.

Eventually, the entire holographic chamber shifts. It transforms into a militaristic logistics room, one with dozens of senior officers milling about. They walk around José's chair as if he isn't even present, engaging in various duties as they go about their day.

Not far from José's seat, a holographic rendition of himself and Nicholai Azaram stand at attention, their postures stiff, and their arms behind their backs. Before them, a blond-haired, dark-skinned logistics commander stares at a datapad in her hands. Her dark grey uniform contrasts with José and Nick's navy blue colors, making her appear much more high-level and authoritative than either of them.

"-as for those 'minor errors' you mentioned in your reports, I'll have the Special Investigation Team look into them. All things considered, this was another great showing from team 'Twin-Headed Hydra.' I'll have your next mission ready in a month or two. Anything else?"

The woman looks up, her sparkling blue eyes meeting José's first, then Nicholai's. Both men shake their heads while maintaining neutral expressions.

"No, Adjunct Belfos," Nick says, replying for himself and José. "We've included all of the pertinent information in our reports."

"Excellent. Dismissed, then," The Adjunct replies. Without another word, she turns on her heel and strides away, leaving José and Nicholai alone.

A few seconds pass before both men allow their shoulders to slump.

"Haha..." Nick laughs. "Damn. The Adjunct is looking mighty fine today, don't you think, Jojo?"

"You always say that," The holographic José chuckles. "If you could keep your eyes off her 'assets' for five seconds, you might be as scared of her as all the other guys. She's out of your league, Nicky-boy."

"A man can't help looking when he sees something he likes," Nick says, nudging José's ribs. "It's not my fault those creased pants give her the ass of a goddess. Just you watch, Jojo. The Adjunct's gonna fall for me, one of these days. Just like all the others."

"I'm sure she will," José says, while shaking his head and grinning. "Too bad you'll already have moved on to ten other women by then. You'll never find someone to settle down with."

Nick smirks. "I'm a free bird, Jojo. Can't help my nature. We can't all be like you, finding our soulmate and... well, you know."

José's expression dims noticeably. "That was a long time ago, Nick. I'm over Evelyn."

"That's what you say..." Nick replies, his smile fading away as well. "Different worlds, man. I'm sure she had a good life."

José stares across the room, his hologram's vacant expression perfectly mirroring the flesh and blood José's as well. Both renditions of himself momentarily gain a thousand-mile stare, looking beyond their surroundings at a distant past, one filled with regrets.

"Hey, man," Nick says, interrupting José's thoughts. "Sorry I was such a downer. Let's go get some food. Clam Chowder?"

Both José's snap out of their dazes. The holographic one curls his lip in disgust. "You and your nasty- never mind. You can eat that shit if you want. I'll have a sandwich."

"Haha!" Nick laughs. "That look on your face! I gotcha good."

"Yeah, you do always know what to say..." Holo-José mutters.

Both of them walk away, and the memory file disappears.

Moments later, the holodeck's surroundings shift once again. This time, José appears inside an underground cave, one with light-strips attached to the ceiling, running along a long, narrow corridor. Pipes and electrical conduits run along the walls, leading down to an unknown destination in the distance.

Nicholai, José, and a pair of female officers slink down the hall, past the flesh-and-blood José seated in his holographic chair. Their dream-like bodies phase through him like ghosts as they stealthily approach a heavy, iron door bolted to the wall.

"You think they're here?" One of the women, a redhead, asks. "Third door's the charm, eh?"

Stolen story; please report.

"Fackin' hell," The other woman, a muscular brunette, grumbles. "If this ain't the right one, I'll blow my stinkin' stack."

José and Nick both clutch fifty-pound energy rifles to their chests, the black-steel carbines looking particularly menacing in the low lighting. The women, meanwhile, follow in the rear with energy pistols in their right hands, and sturdy energy shields attached to their left wrists. The see-through barriers grant them unobstructed vision, while also adding onto the protection garnered from their Survival Suits.

"You don't have anything to worry about," Nick says, as his iris modules shift to infrared. His irises turn crimson, making his eyes glow a fiery blood-red. "Lots of bogeys inside."

"You fellas better be as good as the rumors say," The redhead grumbles. "We're paying a heap of credits to get a couple of Ramma's Chosen down here."

"You definitely overpaid," Nick says with a smirk. "Jojo alone would've been enough to take out a Ghül bunker. But since I'm here too, I'll make sure you get your money's worth."

"Roit, just so long as these sick Ghül-fackers get ripped to shreds, I'll be happy," The brunette replies.

The women hang back, allowing José and Nick to approach the giant metal door alone. The redhead whispers some words into a wrist-communicator on her right hand, sending a status update back to HQ, while the brunette watches with narrowed eyes.

José and Nick arrive at the giant metal door. Its circular appearance resembles the entrance to a huge bank vault, with its top reaching some fifteen feet in the air and nearly touching the ceiling. A circular handle in its center proves the only option for entering, so José takes point, leaves his gun to hang by its strap, and starts spinning the handle.

Nick's casual grin fades away. A look of deadly focus consumes his face, changing him from a man one might share a beer with on a Friday night to a vicious killer capable of ripping a tiger in half with his bare hands.

Inside the vault, several people cry out in alarm. Nick watches with his infrared vision as multiple blobs of heat hunker down behind cover and take aim at the door, waiting to see who will step through.

José spins the handle the fifth and final time, causing the door's internal mechanisms to audibly click into place. At that moment, both he and Nick activate their Dermal Armor, enveloping their skin in diamond-like hardened nanites.

"Three, two, one... go!" José shouts. He yanks on the door and pulls it open, allowing Nick to jump into the room a split-second later while deactivating his infrared vision.

What comes next is like a scene out of a horror movie. The heavily armored commando unloads a hail of blaster fire with pinpoint precision, shredding the heads and chests of dozens of men and women, all of them armed to the teeth. Their inferior weaponry, far less advanced than his, bounce off Nicholai's hardened skin like bits of chalk striking a stone wall.

"Die, heretics!" Nick roars. "You failures of humanity! You disgusting monsters! All of you, just die!"

The inner room, an advanced storage facility with nutrient tubes running alone the walls, rapidly becomes covered in blood. Screams of horror and fear rise among the Children of Ghül's ranks as the heretics perish by the dozens. José joins in only seconds after Nick, but by the time he starts unloading bullets into the enemies, half of them have already perished.

Within three minutes, both soldiers clear out over three hundred enemies, leaving countless bodies to spasm on the ground. Some people hold on to weak threads of life, but José quickly and systematically walks around, gunning down anyone who didn't immediately perish in the first attack wave.

"Tch," Nick grunts, as he kicks over one of the female combatants to look at her blood-covered face. "Too bad. All that beauty... wasted on a heretical piece of shit like you."

"We're in the right place," José says, as he grabs a datapad out of a dead man's hands. "Experimental Subjects 241B, 242F, and 247A. How many commendations do you think we'll get for destroying this place?"

"Like I give a shit," Nick scoffs. "Central Command can shove their commendations up their asses. I'm just here to fuck bitches and kill heretics. None of that pencil-pushing bullshit matters to me."

José laughs. "Haha. Yeah, I just like riling you up."

"You're a real piece of work, Jojo."

Both men stomp through the puddles of blood, laughing as they banter idly about various things.

The two women from outside slip inside the room. Despite their momentary shock at the horrific scene of carnage, both of them quickly assume more professional expressions before nodding at the 'Twin-Headed Hydra,' two of Ramma's Chosen, their top elites.

"Bloody good work," The brunette says. "You cleaned these bastards up real quick."

"One less group of scumbags to deal with," The redhead says. "Alright, let's enter the experimental facility."

Nick's eyes flicker with rage. "No matter what we find in there, it dies. Understand? Don't feel any compassion for Ghül's creations. They'll thank you for ending their misery."

"Noted," The redhead tersely replies.

Minutes later, after passing through a few hallways and killing some straggler enemies, the group of four arrives inside a facility filled with nutrient vats, each one possessing transparent observation-glass for viewing the subjects inside. The redhead and brunette both scowl as they spot multiple horrific human-animal hybrid creatures, many of them with grotesque, mutilated bodies. One of them, a man-wolf hybrid, stares into the distance blankly, his pure-white eyes forever blind to the beauties of the world.

José and Nick blast the experiment vats with their rifles, ruthlessly killing every chimera in sight. Hundreds upon hundreds of horrific experiments line the walls and sit scattered in vats around the room, their nutrient liquids spilling out and soaking the floor in disgusting, nauseating secretions.

After slaughtering several hundred of the chimeras, José suddenly pauses before one of the vats. Inside, a little girl, perhaps six years old, stands with hunched shoulders. A huge bubble on her back, the size of a beach ball, is the only abnormality on her body. Otherwise, she appears normal in every other way.

Nick, hearing José pause his gunfire, turns and trots over to his brother's side.

"Yo! What's up, Jojo? You find someth- ...oh."

The two women, also hearing the gunfire stop, wander over to the pair of Ramma's Chosen. They watch from a distance, confused, as they see José hesitating to kill the little girl.

"Hey man, I've got this one. Don't force yourself," Nick says, resting his hand on José's shoulder. "Why don't you go and do the other wing?"

José doesn't move. He continues to stare at the mutated child, a look of longing on his face.

"...She's just a little girl," José mutters. "A kid."

Nick sighs. He lowers his gun and nods. "Yeah, man. I know you've got a soft spot for kids. We can't save her, though. She'll go berserk once she leaves that tube. They always do."

José lowers his gaze to his rifle. "Always?"

"Mhm."

Nick clicks his tongue and sighs.

"You still thinking about Evelyn?"

José nods. "Always. It never goes away. The longing, I mean. She's probably long dead. Probably died thousands of years ago."

"She ain't like us," Nick says. "We've got nanites. We don't need to worry about old age. She's a primitive."

"If we'd brought her back..." José murmurs. "We could have changed that."

Nick shakes his head. "And doomed her world. It was a cruel choice. You can't keep beating yourself up."

"Sure I can," José says, laughing hollowly. "That's the one thing I'm good at."

Both men fall silent.

Nick stares at the little girl floating in the vat. Her closed eyes give the impression she's experiencing a pleasant dream, a wonderful fantasy she might never awaken from.

"It's not always your fault, Jojo," Nick mutters. "Life. Things in general. You need to learn to stop blaming yourself for everything."

José continues staring at the floor. "Easy for you to say. Not everyone can be as good at life as you."

"You sound jealous," Nick says. "Don't be. If anyone should be jealous, it's me."

The shorter Terran raises his head. "Huh? You? Jealous of me? You always were good at jokes."

"Nah, man," Nick mutters. "You don't get it. You think I've got my shit together, but I don't. Everyone's got some problems on their plate they're dealing with. You see me flitting around from one lady to the next, thinking to yourself that I'm this hotshot playboy. That ain't the truth, though. Truth is, I can't hold down a stable relationship. You only got a few years with Evelyn... but what you and her had was more than I'll ever experience."

Nick closes his eyes.

"I am jealous, Jojo. Ain't you ever heard that saying? 'Better to have loved and lost than never loved at all.' For all the praise I get, all the talk about how I'm a top-tier soldier... I ain't shit. I'll never know what it means to share the ultimate bond of trust with a nice lady. Not like you and Evelyn."

José purses his lips. "C'mon, Nicky-boy. You're supposed to be the upbeat one. I'm sure you'll find a nice girl someday."

"Maybe. It won't be the same as what you had, though," Nick says matter-of-factly. "You two didn't even have to talk. You could just look into each other's eyes and... and know what the other was thinking. That sort of bond ain't one in a million. It's once in a lifetime."

Nick grits his teeth. "I'm so damn jealous of you, Jojo. And yet, you still constantly mope around, beating yourself up. Nobody blames you. Not me, not even Evelyn. Someday, when I die, even if it's right in the middle of a good fuckin', you'll still blame yourself. Even if you had nothing to do with it. That's the kind of person you are."

José's expression falls. "Don't even talk like that. You'll outlive me for sure."

"Nah. You don't know shit, Jojo," Nick laughs. "One of these days, some starry-eyed bitch is gonna stab me to death. Just you watch, I bet it'll be Marcy. She's always hanging around, eye-fucking me. Even after I tried to let her off easy, that broad is always looking to slit my throat for dumping her."

"Haha!" José laughs, despite the solemn atmosphere from moments before. "Yeah, who knows. You might get done in by one of your past flames. That's the price you pay for being such a womanizer."

Nick raises his rifle. He gestures toward the little girl in the vat. "So. Want me to take this one?"

José nods. "Please."

A moment later, Nick pulls the trigger. The child perishes, while José looks away, unable to watch her death.

As the two men turn and leave, José frowns.

"Say, come to think of it, I don't think I ever asked you this, but it just occurred to me..."

Nick raises an eyebrow. "Yeah?"

"Evelyn. You'll chase any tail that comes your way. Why, uh... why didn't you go after her?"

Nick slows to a stop. A thoughtful expression passes over his face.

"Huh. Dunno. It just never occurred to me. Maybe my bro-vision cockblocked me."

"Bro-vision?" José asks, skeptically. "Man, sometimes, you say the damnedest shit."

"It's true!" Nick laughs. "We're so close, I can tell what you're thinking about sometimes. That's bro-vision."

"Yeah? So what am I thinking right now?" José asks, smirking.

Nick puts on a thoughtful expression.

"...If my deductions are correct, you're thinking about how delicious a nice, juicy bowl of clam chowder would taste."

José's smile transforms into a scowl. "Fuck you! Piss off!"

"Hahaha! Gotcha again, Jojo!"

José shakes his head. "God, you are such an asshole sometimes."

Nick playfully smacks José's back. "Better hope Ghül's Children never find out about your hatred of clam chowder. They'll turn it into a conditioning phrase for sure."

"No need. You already did."

...

The flesh and blood José sits in his chair, silently watching the memory file as it replays. Tears stream down his face as he recalls the conversation as clearly as if it were yesterday.

"...You always knew, didn't you, Nick? How am I supposed to go on without you? Without Evelyn? Without anyone. I'm not strong like you. I'm weak. Pathetic."

José watches as the holograms continue exterminating all of the experiments. However, his attention drifts away to an unknown location somewhere in the distant reaches of space and time.

"What would you do if it was you sitting here, Nick?"

"What would you say? What would your goal be?"

José's thoughts drift back to the conversation he had with Nick.

"Evelyn. I never found out what happened to her. Maybe it's too late to find out. Maybe I'll never know."

Despite the tears streaming down his face, he smiles.

"Before I die... before my life eventually comes to an end... shouldn't I at least find out what happened? Even if it's a fruitless search. Even if it's a complete waste of my time."

"What else have I to lose?"

...

Despite the grief plaguing the Admiral's heart, a strange sense of melancholy, of peace, seizes his mind. He faintly smiles while gazing past the illusory scene before him.

"That's right. At the least... if I do nothing else... I don't have to fear Central Command and their reprisals. I can find out what happened to Evelyn."

"Yes. That will make all of this pain... worth it."

After shaking the fog from his head, the Admiral speaks again.

"Umi. Play the next memory module."

From overhead, the synthmind's voice speaks.

"Yes, Admiral."