"The best way to understand humanity is to understand one simple thing: A human's body, brain, and mind is made up of a semi-random assortment of things that all hate one another to the point of being able to destroy or damage any of the others. The thing is, they all hate you more." - Former Grand Most High Sma'akamo'o, from I Have Ridden the Hasslehoff

General NoDra'ak watched with interest as the video playing, with Exquisite standing off the side on a hoverlift, showed the Terran Staff Sergeant being led into a room. He noted that the TDH had a white steri-plas hospital gown on him, heavy grav manacles, a collar, and a harness. His eyes were still wide, glowing a soft amber, and his mouth was twisted into a wide grin.

The two Tukna'rn infantrymen guided him into the chair as two others in full power armor stayed far enough back that they'd have time to pull the triggers on their SMG's if the Terran moved too quickly. The two Tukna'rn attached the grav-spike to the table, keeping the Terran's hands on the table, and moved away.

The Terran turned and looked at everyone, grinning.

"Y'all seem a mite bit nervous now," the Terran said, his voice full of mirth.

The Tukna'rn didn't rise to the bait, just stared.

"Y'all boring," Nimbly said, looking forward. He looked up at the camera, his grin getting wider.

Exquisite paused the video.

"Here, you can plainly see the evidence of phasic energy as well as Enragement," she said, using a laser pointer to draw attention to the eyes, then down to the collar, which had small wire thin tendrils of bluish electricity moving across it. "This interrogation room is psychically shielded as well as having phasic dampeners online."

She clicked the handset and the video kept moving.

A russet mantid with a gold streak down her back came in and sat down, with a black mantid beside her. Nimbly's attention was pulled from the camera to the door a slight second before it opened and he watched as the two Mantids moved to the chairs.

"Hello," Nimbly said, smiling.

"Good evening, Staff Sergeant Nimbly," the Mantid, whose ER ID said "Major Peeks Beyond Surfaces", said gently.

"My, so formal," Nimbly said. "Good evening to you too, ma'am," he looked at the black Mantid. "Military intelligence enhanced reality blockout. I'm in the presence of planners and plotters."

The black mantid nodded. "Lieutenant Colonel Ever Vigilant Watcher," he said.

Nimbly just nodded. "Colonel."

"How are you feeling, Sergeant?" Peeks asked.

"Better. I can tell this isn't another simulation," Nimbly said. He smiled again. "Wasn't sure at first. Sure now."

Watcher cocked his head, his antenna flicking. "How?"

Nimbly smiled. "No Mantids in the simulation. At least, not in the parts I was in. Lots of Pubvians, Vulkerkin, Treana'ad, and Terrans. Even Rigellians and Kobolds. Saw most of the races that everyone had met by the Glassing, but nothing Post-Glassing," Nimbly said. Somehow his grin got wider, his eyes widening. "Even met a Treana'ad Digital Sentience, despite there never being a record of such a thing."

He tapped his fingers on the table and NoDra'ak noticed a few sparks jump out.

Watcher nodded slowly. "Have you ever been SUDS washed before?"

Nimbly's smile vanished. "You tell me, snake."

Watcher lifted up a bladearm and summoned a holoterminal.

Exquisite paused the video. "We'll watch this in regular time, then in slow motion. I want all of you to see this, then understand exactly what you are seeing." She unpaused it.

Alarms howled as Nimbly suddenly lunged forward. Something exploded under the table, the grav-manacles on his wrist showered sparks. The grav-cord between his wrists thinned and streaked.

Nimbly grabbed at the holodisplay that had just been summoned up in midair. It collapsed in his hand, wadding up, and sparks shot out, pixels showering away from where his hand had hit. Nimbly yanked his hand back as he sat down, the hologram tight in his fist.

It was over so fast that Tukna'rn had barely gotten their weapons lined up.

"I don't like holograms," the Terran snarled.

Exquisite paused the video.

"You are seeing that right. He literally snatched the hologram. Somehow, he launched and attack reminiscent and with the digital fingerprint of a Post-Glassing warboi onto the hologram emitter and the buffer where the data was contained, damaging both irreparably," Exquisite said softly. "The data is completely held in his fist, and in his datalink."

She rewound it and everyone watched in slow motion as the appearance of the hologram galvanized the Terran into action. General NoDra'ak paid particular attention to between the outstretched fingers, the eyes, and around the datalink on the side of the Terran's head.

Tiny, hair thin, almost invisible arcs of electricity were between the fingers, the eyes flashed to cold crimson in the depths that still did not blot out the cornflower blue of the eyes, and tiny threads of blue electricity spread out from the datalink across the skin.

NoDra'ak noticed that the words will still legible on the crumpled hologram, that it was bunched up exactly like if it had been paper.

The video went back to full speed.

Neither Tukna'rn moved as Peeks held up her left bladearm to stop them. "Why not, Staff Sergeant?"

"Because holograms lie, they hide the truth, but most of all," Nimbly said. He grabbed the hologram with both hands and twisted, shredding it into pixels that showered out of his hands and onto the table, where they bounced, glittered, and faded away. "You don't know if they're watching you."

Peeks and Watcher looked at one another a moment.

Peeks adjusted her ID tags around her neck, then nodded. "According to your records you were killed during the Crevega Assault at the end of the Clownface Nebula Conflict," she said.

Nimbly nodded. "Someone put three shots into my back from an alley. Nobody ever found out who did it."

Peeks just nodded.

Nimbly looked at Watcher. "It was 12.5mm Low-V APERS, from a standard issue Confed Magac pistol. One in the back of my head, one into my spine between the shoulder blades, one into my heart from behind. Subsonic rounds, holographic camouflage, standard infantry boots," he slowly started to smile. "Wanna know what I think, spook?"

Peeks cleared her throat. "We're more interested in what happened when your life functions terminated."

Nimbly stared at the black Mantid for a long moment, silent, just smiling. Then he shook his head. "I remember staring at the gutter. It was raining and there was water in the gutter. Everything went black, I woke up in the hospital after having been rebooted. Only time anyone managed to whack me."

Peeks nodded. "This time was different?"

Nimbly stared at her. "As different as you and me, sister."

"Major," Peeks corrected.

"Major," Nimbly smiled.

Exquisite paused the video and rewound it, showing the byplay again. "Here we see a major change in Staff Sergeant Nimbly's personality. Prior to his death during Second Hesstla, he was extremely self-disciplined, noted for professionalism. Even after his 'death by misadventure', he was still professional and showed no hostility to covert action operatives, Mantids, or anyone else, chalking up his death as a case of mistaken identity."

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

She looked at everyone gathered. "This version is highly aggressive, agitated, and provocative."

She started the video again.

"Will you describe the last time?" Peeks asked.

Nimbly smiled wider. "I spent three weeks camping on a storm swept beach, just me, staring at the gray cloud covered sky, the gray water with white edging on the waves, the wind, the blackish gray sand, the grey rocks. I made a fire with driftwood, found some flotsam and jetsam and made a shelter, and ate fish."

"Before the Second Battle of Hesstla?" Peeks asked.

"No. After I was killed. After I was released from what the nurses called 'Traumatic Death Recovery' and allowed to wander around the waiting zone," Nimbly said. "My nurse was a Pubvian woman. I'd never seen one before."

Peeks nodded. "Can we back up. To the moment you died."

Nimbly nodded. "It didn't hurt. I was beyond pain. Jacked up on stims, anti-rad meds, coagulants, and the good ol' Alley Bama Trucker's Friend, or, at least its equivalent about ten thousand years later," Nimbly said. He started laughing and NoDra'ak noticed he sounded half crazed.

But NoDra'ak had been an officer for centuries. He'd heard laughter like that.

Usually when a Terran was pushed until his back was against the wall and there was no hope.

His brain made an odd connection, and he suddenly heard the sound of a choir of young Terran female children singing Ave Imperator.

Across the battlefront, the sounds of conflict grew quite still, and were silenced as one the soldiers once again cling to their prayers, when the amount of hope left is none

His medical harness hissed as it gave him a shot to restore his focus.

I will show no fear this night

NoDra'ak felt the medication kick in and his thoughts stabilized.

Our skulls were designed by evolution to crunch in the jaws of the matrons, not heal up after being cracked against the bulkhead, he thought to himself, blinking.

"...thing had gone dark. I could still hear the striker, the port side engine was howling. I kept telling myself I couldn't be killed," Nimbly was saying. "Then there was this... sensation."

"What kind?" Peeks asked.

"Do you want to tell this fucking story, Stabby?" Nimbly snarled.

"Major Stabby," Peeks corrected.

Nimbly blinked twice. "OK. It was like my brain suddenly got hot, tingling, like it was full of bees, or when your arm goes to sleep from circulation loss and restoration, but through my brain. Then this weird feeling at the base of my skull," Nimbly looked up. "Like my entire brain, my spine, was being drawn into the base of my skull."

He looked dead at Peeks, his eyes glowing amber. "I saw two things. Luckily I now know Old Terran, about a dozen lingos, so I can tell you that it was in Burgerlander."

There was silence for a moment.

"What were they?" Watcher asked.

Nimbly jumped up, slamming his hands on the table, putting deep dents into it. "Say something again, glowie, I fucking dare you. I double dog fucking dare you!" Nimbly snapped, leaning forward, unaware or ignoring the way the Tukna'rn lifted up their weapons again.

Peeks lifted her bladearm as Nimbly stared at Watcher. The Tukna'rn lowered their weapons.

"That's Colonel Glowie, Staff Sergeant," Watcher said softly as he stared Nimbly in the eyes. A tendril of energy crawled between Watcher's antenna, like a Jacob's Ladder.

Nimbly suddenly sat down. "Yeah, yeah, you're real. A real one," he rubbed his eyes. "A real black mantid," he inhaled and exhaled. "Operator or Control or Case Officer?"

"Operator," Watcher said. "Direct Action."

"OK, OK. You'd have shot me in my face," Nimbly nodded, rubbing his eyes again. "It was Burgerlander text, although it did appear as block eights with little lines inside the two stacked boxes. It flickered through a bunch of block letters and settled on Burgerlander."

"Your genesis DNA profile shows you are of Hamburger Descent," Peeks said.

Nimbly nodded. "Only about sixteen percent," he rubbed his eyes again. "The first one was two words: SCAN SUCCESSFUL. The second was more words: BEGINNING NEURON LINKAGE DISRUPTION."

Peeks nodded. "So, it wiped your brain?"

Nimbly shrugged. "I don't know. I left that meat in the striker. But it doesn't end there."

"Please, go on," Peeks said.

"You know, in the vids, when someone uses VR and travels between two major systems or maybe just enters SolNet, they're in a pipe made of data, all streaming by, surrounded by strings?" he rubbed his temples. "Ever been on a stringjump? It's like that, only everything's digital."

Exquisite paused.

"So far, this is more data than we have had on the SUDS system in eight thousand years. To no surprise, it uses Pre-Glassing Terran languages. But the system is able to compensate for linguistic drift as well as determine the most likely language the deceased will use," Exquisite stated. "Additionally, we now know that the neural wipe that occurs is not due to death, or is a byproduct of the SUDS process, but rather a deliberately engineered process."

"The hypothesis as to why this system is in place ranges from preventing copies to preventing the scanning of dead soldier's brains for military information," Exquisite said. She hit the clicker and the video started.

"It felt like I was going to dissolve into strings, but I was pretty wound up. I kept screaming that they couldn't kill me, kept fighting. At one point I literally grabbed the strings that made up my body and shoved them back in. I tied them in knots. I tied them back together," Nimbly said.

NoDra'ak could see the perspiration on the Terran's skin.

"It felt like I was being torn apart for a moment, then I was in a bed," Nimbly said. "It was a hospital. Not a modern one, more like one from an old hist-vid. A Pubvian female came in, tried to reassure me as to why I was tied down," Nimbly clenched his fists and sparks danced across his knuckles. "I kept screaming, fighting, trying to get loose."

He looked up, the red fire in his eyes bright. "I had to get back. The First Sergeant was gone, the Platoon Sergeant was gone. Someone had to lead the men," he lifted his fists and slammed them into the table. Energy crackled around the deep dents. "I had to get back. The clankers, those kid killing fucks were everywhere. I had to get back."

He looked down at his hands.

"Oh," was all he said. He closed his eyes and started to breathe deep and slow.

NoDra'ak nodded. He'd seen that before. Most recently watching Captain Vuxten, Telkan Marine Corps, train with Lady Keena and Lance Corporal Casey. NoDra'ak knew that Nimbly was trying to let the stress, the aggression, bleed away.

Nimbly opened his eyes. "The nurse said I had 'ionized radiation exposure induced psychopathy' as well as a traumatic brain injury, and that she was trying to help me," Nimbly shook his head. "I'm tellin' y'all, I just kept fighting."

He looked looked up. "I don't know how long it was. Days, weeks. I kept fighting, she kept trying to get me to relax so they could help me, when it happened."

Nimbly looked at Peeks. "Or rather, she happened."

NoDra'ak noticed that the nanite created ambient lighting in the interrogation room was dimming, casting shadows on Nimbly's face, and he made a note to check the logs on the system.

"Can you explain further?" Peeks asked.

Nimbly nodded. "Are you sure you want to know? This isn't a hallucination. She's real. Just as real as the SUDS."

Peeks and Watcher both nodded.

Nimbly looked at Watcher. "I've seen some shit, you know. Some real horror show shit during Clownface and this whole cluster fuck. I've landed on planets where the PAWM scream had turned millions of people into screaming lunatics that tore each other apart and ate the pieces."

"Yes," was all Watcher said.

Nimbly nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, we both have, haven't we, snake?" he said. Watcher nodded slowly.

Thin wires of bluish and reddish energy were climbing up Nimbly's arms. From his clenched fists to vanish under the hospital gown's shoulders.

NoDra'ak annotated that the phasic inhibitors were substandard and promised he'd have them checked out. The psychic suppression collar was also obviously not up to the task. He noted to check with the Imperium of Wrath and the Sisters of Wrath to see if they had any better models.

Nimbly looked at his fists and slowly opened his hands, pressing his fingers into the dents on the table's surface.

"I was twisting back and forth, trying to pull loose from the restraints, when she stood up next to my bed. Like she'd been crouched down, hiding. The room was almost pitch black, but I could see her plainly," Nimbly said.

"Who?" Peeks asked.

Nimbly closed his eyes and swallowed. "No. Not yet. I'm not willing to say her name yet," he said. He shuddered then opened his eyes. "She looked almost like an older, plumper version of those Confed Intel agents you see. The ones that look all alike? Except her eyes were grey. She had grey irises, and there was nothing else in her eyes. No mercy, no love, no care," Nimbly said. "She looked at me like I'd look at a discarded ration tube."

There was silence a moment.

"I still remember what she said," he said softly. "She touched my forehead and I remember being frightened. More frightened than I had ever been in my life. She just said 'the fires of Hell will burn away the impurities' as she touched me."

Nimbly put his face in his hands and shuddered.

"I fell. I was suddenly falling. It was like reentry. Like unpowered reentry without a suit. I was burning, screaming, as I fell through the sky," Nimbly said. He shuddered again, his face still covered. "I could hear thousands, millions, hundreds of millions of voices screaming with me. I seemed to fall forever, until I hit the ground."

He shuddered again and NoDra'ak noted that the lights had dimmed deeply.

"I've been hit pretty hard before. I was in a hard armor loading frame and took a 6cm maser to the chest. I've literally stood and faced directly into atomic blasts in the megatons, but that impact. That hit. It was like every cell in my body burst and I could feel every one of them. It was agony," Nimbly said. "I don't know how long it took me to stop screaming, to crawl out of the crater I'd made when I landed," he shuddered again.

"The crater was shaped like a human, shaped like me, only larger," he shuddered again. "I remember thinking 'this hole is mine, it was made for me' and having the overwhelming urge to crawl into it."

There was silence for a moment.

"Instead, I stood up and looked around," he moved his hands and NoDra'ak noted that the glow had reduced to a faint amber sheen.

"I can describe it all day. The endless wreckage, the ash, the fire, the ruins of great engines," Nimbly said. He shuddered again. "But that wasn't what made it terrible."

"What made it terrible?" Peeks asked after a long moment of silence.

Nimbly looked at both mantids for a long time. He grabbed his index finger on his right hand with his index finger and thumb of his left hand.

NoDra'ak drew back with a hiss as several others reacted with outcries and displays of distress as Nimbly rippled off his fingernail.

Nimbly stared right at Peeks and Watcher as he wrote two simple words on the table with his own blood.

THE DETAINEE