> When I was little, I thought I was destined for adventure, like in the cartoons I used to watch. However, as the years ticked by and I progressed into adulthood, I realized that I wasn’t even the main character in my own story. I was just a henchwoman. A nameless mook meant to take orders and hope for the best. That is a disappointing thing, that recognition that you’re not special, and it can drive a woman down a dark road.

Nora Lancaster

I left the fallen church behind, eager to wreak havoc on the Enforcers who were still in the area. However, I didn’t let my eagerness override my caution, and I employed all the wilderness survival skills I had learned from Jorge. I was like a ghost, leaving no tracks or trail behind. Jorge would have been proud.

I gave a mental shake of my head, realizing that that wasn’t terribly accurate. The leader of the Amigos was a harsh taskmaster, and regardless of how well I learned his lessons, he almost never offered a word of praise. In that respect, he was much like my uncle. When I accomplished a task or mastered a skill, they would be right there behind me, pointing to the next hill I was supposed to climb. It had instilled in me a propensity to never be satisfied, because there was always another obstacle to overcome. Another skill to learn. Another enemy to defeat.

With that in mind, I redoubled my focus, paying attention to my surroundings like I never had before. As I did, focused on Stealth and Camouflage, pulling up their descriptions:

Stealth (D) – Manipulate Mist to fade into the background.

I knew from experience that the ability was activated, meaning that I had to think about using it. Camouflage, by comparison, was the opposite. I could turn it off if I wanted to, but otherwise, it always gave a passive modifier to my hiding ability. That hadn’t always been the case, but I’d progressed the ability far enough to fundamentally change its nature.

Either way, I used both abilities as I traversed the wilderness, skirting alongside a poorly maintained road as I made my way toward what was left of Mobile. Soon, I started seeing abandoned buildings; most were barely standing, and more than a few had succumbed to the passage of time, crumbling altogether. Still others had been reduced to their foundations. In any case, they provided plenty of cover as I slowly approached the point where I expected to find the ring of sniper’s nests that surrounded the destroyed city.

I still had a few of them marked on my map, but when I checked those positions, I found nothing but more apparently empty and abandoned buildings. However, I wasn’t going to let that dissuade me, so I quickly swung around in a wide circle so I could approach one of the buildings from the rear. Once I reached the back wall, I wasted no time before leaping to an open window. Once upon a time, it had probably held glass, but it was long since gone, making for a perfect entrance.

Grunting silently as I pulled myself up with one arm, I cursed my useless hand. It had only gotten worse throughout the night, as evidenced by the glaring red indicator on the health silhouette on my HUD, and I knew that if I didn’t receive medical attention soon, I was going to lose it entirely. It wouldn’t be the end of the world or anything; after all, many people willingly removed limbs in order to replace them with cybernetics. But I was still very much attached to my flesh and blood, and I would do everything in my power to keep my original parts.

Of course, there was still room for enhancements like subdermal armor, but without my uncle’s deep pockets, that could very well be out of my price range. I had the Rift Shards still in my possession, but I had no idea what they were really worth. For all I knew, I couldn’t even sell them. That was a concern for another day, though. For now, I had a sniper’s nest to investigate.

Slowly, I crept through the building, checking each of the rooms until I was satisfied the entire floor was unoccupied. Then, I moved up to the third and top level, finding much the same thing. There was evidence that people had been there, but everything I found suggested that they’d been gone for a while.

My anger roiled beneath the surface of my calm exterior. I wanted – no, I needed – to kill someone. To make the Enforcers pay. I had already taken out quite a few of them before I hit the base the day before, but those kills felt hollow. Even killing the beautiful, blonde leader left me completely unsatisfied.

Finding nothing of note in the building, I moved to the next sniper’s nest. Then the next after that. Still, I found nothing of note. The Enforcers, it seemed, had decided to pull out of the area. So, after steadily searching the outer bands of the ruined city, I cautiously approached the walled town. It remained much the same as when I’d left it, all crumbling buildings, burnt-out husks of vehicles, and rubble. But my approach did net me a sighting of a squad of enforcers.

There were three of them. Two were plainly guards, but the other was kneeling next to a downed drone. I silently approached, drawing close enough to hear their whispered conversation.

“This place gives me the fucking creeps,” said one of the guards. He turned his head to look at the kneeling drone technician, asking, “You about done back there, Sheila?”

“Workin’ on it, man,” she muttered, not bothering to look up from her task. “This thing’s barely functional.”

“Typical,” said the other guard. “They send us in after all the action, leaving us to fight some fucking assassin. Meanwhile, we’ve got to make do with shitty equipment.”

The first guard responded, “Same old thing. The higher-ranked squads get all the glory of taking out a high-tier threat, and we get stuck with guard duty. Makes me wish I would’ve gone into the private sector instead of joining the Enforcers, you know? My uncle lives out west, and they don’t have to deal with people like that Wraith asshole. Or whoever came in and blew up the fucking base.”

“I heard it was a whole squad,” said the second guard. I crept to the side, staying hidden behind a pile of rubble. As I did so, I exchanged my rifle for one of my daggers. I had no idea if there were other squads in the area, so I needed to do things quietly. “Full-on ninjas and shit. With swords.”

“It’s always ninjas with you, Moore,” was the first guard’s chuckled response. “Too many cartoons, man.”

“Just what I heard, Damien,” the other man mumbled. I knelt only a couple of yards away, but none of them could see through the combination of my active Stealth and passive Camouflage. It would be different if they stared right at me or if I was out in the open, but the two guards were looking the other way. The technician, meanwhile, was wholly focused on her work. “You hear they took out Camilla? God, what a waste, right? She had a body like –”

“Just stop,” said the kneeling technician. “I really don’t want to hear you describe a dead woman’s body.”

“Just sayin’…”

“Not my type,” said Damien, the first guard. He scanned the area as he spoke. “I like ‘em natural. Like Pike back there.”

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“Gross,” said Pike.

“Don’t knock it ‘til you try it, sweet –”

I’d had enough, as evidenced by the fact that I’d buried one of my nano-bladed daggers in his eye. A second later, and I’d buried another dagger in Moore’s neck. I ripped it free, and I was rewarded with a gout of thick, red blood. Both guards were dead in the space of two seconds; neither had had any opportunity to call for help. It would have been faster, but I was hampered by my lack of a hand. Still, it felt good, watching them slump to the ground.

For a moment, Pike stared at the scene, wide-eyed and slack-jawed. However, it only took an instant before terror crashed through her surprise. She scrambled away, fumbling at her belt for a communicator. I had no intention of letting her call for help, so I darted forward, aiming a front kick at her chest that, when it connected, sent her sprawling. I was on top of her in a second, yanking the communicator away from her belt.

With my knee in her chest, I leaned forward and put the crackling blue edge of my knife to her throat. It was so sharp that just resting it there resulted in a thin line of blood. I whispered, “If you scream, I’ll cut your throat down to your spine. If you try to get to that communicator, I’ll do the same. But if you don’t answer my questions, I’m going to really make you regret it. Got me?”

She did her best to nod without slitting her own throat on my knife, so I eased up a little. Not because I cared if she cut herself to pieces, but rather, because I didn’t want her to die before I got my answers.

“First question,” I said. “Where did all the Enforcers go?”

“W-we…we were ordered to pull out after the base was destroyed,” she answered, her voice quivering in absolute terror. “None of us were top-ranked in the first place, but the only thing that’s left are the rookies and a few technicians like me.” She took a deep breath and begged, “P-please don’t kill me. I won’t tell anybody anything. I’m just a tech –”

If I hadn’t just discovered that people like her were responsible for the deaths of everyone I cared about, I might have been swayed. But every time I felt the tiniest bit of sympathy, my uncle’s face flashed through my mind. Then, it was Jo. Her parents. Little Elie, who only wanted to heal people and eat mangoes. The Amigos. And a hundred other people who didn’t deserve what the Enforcers had given them. With those images in my mind, my resolve hardened.

Over the next few minutes, I continued to question her. And during the course of that interrogation, I learned that once my uncle had been confirmed dead, the enforcers’ true elites had retreated back to Nova City, leaving the organization’s lower-ranked members to manage the area. That certainly explained how I’d run through them so easily. They weren’t quite the dregs – no Enforce could be considered that – but they were far from the best the organization had to offer, either. Even the leader, whose name was Camilla Laster, had only just become a Banshee, and her ascension was rumored to have been less about her capability and more about who she was sleeping with. Of course, I had no idea whether that was true, but the technician seemed to believe it.

Which made me rethink my victory, such as it was. Winning that fight had required Patrick’s intervention, and even then, I’d barely managed to come out alive. Not only had my hand been rendered useless, but I’d been gutted as well. The only reason I hadn’t been entirely incapacitated was because of my various abilities. Without them, I would’ve already been dead.

And that was against their B-Team.

No, it was worse than that. I wasn’t exactly sure how the Enforcer organization was structured, but from what the technician said, the force that had been left in Mobile after the death of my uncle was the bottom of the barrel.

That made my path abundantly clear. If I was going to take on people that powerful, I couldn’t stop improving. My uncle had once told me that I would always be training, in one respect or another, but while I interrogated that technician, I came to realize just how right he’d been.

Finally, after I didn’t think I could get anything else out of her, I asked, “Who sent you?”

“What do you mean?” she asked, having relaxed a little since the beginning of the questioning. “We work for the Ruling Council of Nova City.”

“Not the politicians,” I said. I knew precisely how things worked in Nova City. The members of the Council were elected as figureheads, and they didn’t do anything unless their masters told them to. According to my uncle, even those masters worked for the alien overlords who couldn’t descend upon the planet for another seven years. I couldn’t get to them, so I’d have to make do with the lackeys. “The real rulers of Nova. Who gave the Council their orders?”

“I…I don’t know…”

I pressed my dagger against her slender throat. “You sure about that?” I asked.

“I…I don’t know…I swear…I’m just a technician!” she sobbed, tears falling down her cheeks. “I don’t know anything about the people in charge. I just get my orders, and I go do what I’m told.”

“So, you were just following orders, huh?” I asked. “You’re a technician, right? You had drones in the sky, didn’t you? Or did you man one of the cannons that tore this town to pieces.” She didn’t respond, so I hammered her forehead with pommel of my knife. “Answer me!”

“I…I just…I was just following orders…”

“Orders,” I growled. Again, I leaned close. “Your orders killed thousands of innocent people. You killed my friends. My only family. You might not have pulled the trigger. You might not have guided the plasma bombs. But you’re complicit, same as the ones who did.”

With that, I raked my dagger across her throat and watched as she bled out. I didn’t look away until the life was entirely gone from her eyes.

And I felt nothing.

Just a pervasive numbness.

Rationally, I knew that she probably didn’t deserve what I had just done. She was just a cog in the machine, a woman trying to make her way as best she could. She’d even chosen a non-combat career path, proving her intentions. But on the other hand, I just didn’t care. She had contributed to so many deaths that her entire being was stained red with the blood of innocents. She was just doing a job. Following orders. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t complicit in the horrors she had facilitated.

Still, as righteous as my anger had been, I felt no satisfaction when she breathed her last, gurgling breath. Just an exhaustion that I couldn’t quite understand.

Mechanically, I retrieved everything of worth they had on them – including the drone, which barely fit in my Arsenal Implant – and set off back to the church. There was no point in continuing my search, what with the Enforcers already moving out of the area. I was in no position – mentally or physically – to fight the lot of them, so I had no choice but to give up my hunt. Before I left the corpses behind, I used Mimic to adopt the technician’s identity.

Ultimately, it was all so disappointing.

In my head, I’d imagined myself as an avenging angel, doling out punishment and judgement in equal measure. What I got was the anticlimactic execution of a woman who was clearly in over her head. It left a bitter taste in my mouth that, even when I saw the church, still hadn’t faded.

I circled the building, making certain that no one had found the place while I was away. The area was empty of threats, though, so I went inside. When I did, I found myself facing the barrel of a pistol.

“Knock it off,” I said, slapping it away. “It’s me. Mira.”

“You don’t look like you…”

“That’s because I’m using an ability,” I said. “It lets me take on the appearance of another person. I found and killed a drone technician, so I took her identity. The way I see it, there’s no way I’m getting into Nova looking like myself. So, I snatched her uniform, too. When we get there, I’ll just bluff my way through security. Once we’re inside, I’ll either go back to being me or adopt another identity.”

“What about me?” Patrick asked. “And how can I be sure it’s you?”

“Your name is Patrick,” I said. “But until this morning, you went by Pick, which was what you used to call yourself as a child. Your mom called you Pickle, though. That enough? Or should I keep going?”

He sighed, obviously relaxing. “Fine,” he said. “So, are we leaving, then? Or do you still have…stuff to do?”

“Nobody left to kill,” I said. “Everyone that was left is leaving. By tomorrow morning, this place will be completely deserted.”

I crossed the room and sat down. Then, I retrieved a couple of ration bars from my Arsenal Implant and tossed one Patrick’s way. After ripping the packaging open with my teeth, I dug in. As I did, I said, “I think there was probably a uniform in the pile that would fit you. That, along with my stolen identity, should be enough to get us inside Nova. From there…well, we’ll see.”

He sat next to me. “Do you want to talk about it?” Patrick asked.

I shook my head, saying, “Not even a little bit. I’m not really the ‘talk-it-out’ kind of girl. More of a bury everything inside until it eventually explodes type. But thanks. I’ll be fine.”

“Can’t be healthy.”

I shrugged. “I’ve spent the last few years training to be a deadly warrior,” I said. “Healthy never even came into the equation.”

I took another bite, then continued, “Which reminds me. You’re going to need some training with that pistol. While we’re headed toward Nova, I’ll help you as much as I can. It won’t do much, but you might advance your skill.”

“Oh. Thanks,” he said. “I hope…yeah…that makes sense. Thank you.”