The moment Slade said that he was court-martialing me for an Article 86 violation, I felt like a demon grabbed my intestines with two hands and started kneading them. In the US Marine Corps, Article 86 was a violation of Absence Without Leave, also known as going AWOL. For a Breather, the punishment ranged from forfeiture of pay to minor prison sentences in extreme cases. But as I mentioned, following October 3rd, when a mass Sickle AWOL resulted in a 10% decrease in the US population, being convicted of failure to report during a riftbreak was an executable offense. I was officially fighting for my life.
“Sir!” I protested. “I had no control over—“
Don’t lie to me! Slade said, using a strange tone. Soldiers who don’t follow orders hit the court.
I could almost laugh at the absurdity of it all. I was late because I saved people from a colossal stalk—and now I was facing possible execution for it. Whether I’d actually get executed was up for debate. I was the top performer, and in my three years at Pier Zero, I had yet to see a top performer get executed—for obvious reasons. Still, Article 86 wasn’t a joke, and the conviction rate for that particular charge was consistent as clockwork. So the mere thought of it seemed like cartoonishly evil rage bait—but it was true. That’s exactly what he just said to me.
But there are two things you have to know to understand how I responded: Clint Slade and I had bad blood before he even became my officer—and we wanted each other dead before I joined the military. That’s a strong word, but I assure you this isn’t an exaggeration. We wanted each other dead from the day we met—and then I spent the better part of three years speaking to him every single day. So when he laid out a potential execution order, I didn’t think about any possible reasons he might’ve given that order and said:
“This is murder.”
What did you just say, Private? Slade asked.
“I said that this is murder, you bitter fuck! This isn’t discipline. This is personal! It’s not my fault that your fucking son—”
I’m adding contempt to the charges. Report to the Brig tomorrow. We’ll let the court decide if this is “murder.”
Click.
I chuckled this caustic chuckle, head wrapped in throbbing agony, nerve pain shooting down my spinal cord, trying to ignore the sound of machine guns blasting away at the skyline. I thought I could stay still forever, but after a minute or so, the officer I was working with turned to me.
“Did he stop you from fighting?”
I rubbed my face and grabbed my head, feeling sick from the rewrite symptoms I was experiencing. “Uh… no.”
He snorted and nudged his head toward the turret.
I got onto it and surveyed the battlefield. Most of the stalks were dead, so it was mostly maws over the water. Soon, they’d probably switch me to the other side. But before they could, my eyes were drawn to a peculiar sight.
The helicopter. It seemed so strange to see it moving to the Beta. I was captivated by it for some reason—
—and then, as if the Beta sensed that the helicopter could take away its prey, it made its move.
The tulip-like bulb underwater opened, exposing jaws like a Venus Flytrap snapping at the orange cargo ship. The motion instantly created a whirlpool that made the ship capsize as dozens of teeth that looked like crab legs snapped around the hull, crunching the 15,000 ton vessel like an empty soda can. Then, in that horrifying moment, I saw it—there, in the back of its throat, in the center of a sphere the size of a beach ball, which seemed as bright as a tiny star, was a blue core. It was aegis type—proving that it was sporting skin and bones eight times stronger than reinforced concrete. There was no way in hell that a torpedo barrage was going to kill that thing. The only way it was going to go down was for it to open up its mouth again as a reaper drone dropped a massive bomb down its throat—
—and the military knew that. There was a helicopter right above the Beta when it happened, and all vessels over the water contained Sickles. The military knew where the core was now, and I knew what was about to happen.
I turned down the pier and saw a massive white ferry that popped against the disgusting purple waters. In only a few moments, the military would take all the problem Sickles and load them up, ferry them out, and use them as bait to get the Beta to open its mouth again. I was damn sure of it.
I clenched my fists, mentally preparing myself for the possibility, when I saw something strange. Despite the cargo ship’s crew getting eaten, the helicopter I was protecting had continued on and was now directly above it.
My eyes widened as I watched. “What are they—“
A thin yet penetrating wave of aether cut me off, making my body buzz as more Sena slowed my world by primal instinct. It felt like someone stabbed my brain with a knife, but it sharpened my vision and allowed me to see something I’ll never forget.
A soldier on a harness daringly let themselves drop forward, allowing them to face down the Beta’s throat. In their hand was a large black pipe that was pointing into the Beta’s mouth. I could still remember thinking, Are they fucking stupid? because I thought that it was a large rifle—
—I was wrong.
Orange aether—something I’d never even heard of being used—sucked into the tip of that rifle like a black hole. In an instant, it created a surreal cosmos image of a scene, with a vortex of orange aether moving like a saw blade in a hundred-foot diameter. It was colossal, but the officer behind me was oblivious. They all were—
—until it shot.
The gun was dead silent. There was no pop or bang or crack of thunder. But out of nowhere, the shot created massive tidal waves in all directions, as if God dropped a stone into a still pond. It was biblical.
The Beta died on contact. Its entire body spasmed, and then all the energy in its body dimmed further and further until it was just another mass miles from shore, invisible to all eyes.
A minute later, the Sickles around me exploded with cheering in slow motion. Then the Sena, allowing me to view that godly moment, cracked again, flooding my mind with all the information I processed. I instantly hit the ground—
—and screamed.
2
[1] From video footage of Cutters Crabhouse, May 28th, 2027
Video footage shows Brigadier General Nicolas Caldwell of the United States Rifter Defense Command (USRDC), a balding man approaching fifty in a suit decorated with medals, walking into the restaurant.
Teams of soldiers and scientists take pictures of a dead Beserker-type, Delta-class Neon Horned Drake (Avescornutaspinae draconis) with a window attached around its neck, trying to figure out why it died without any apparent reason.
All soldiers present: Sir!
Lieutenant Mores of the BI5 ballistics team stands up. Before she addresses him, Alphonse Carmichael, a man in a business suit, stands up.
Alphonse: Finally, someone with authority.
Lieutenant Mores: Sir, you must—
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Alphonse: No! This isn’t hard. (turns to Caldwell) Have you punished him yet? It’s a simple yes or no.
Caldwell: Punish who?
Alphonse: I don’t know (he scoffs) He’s a Sickle. Asian guy. Black hair… normalish eyes, and a light pink button-down t-shirt and slacks. He killed this thing and jumped off that railing. How the fuck don’t you guys know who he is?
Lieutenant Mores: Sir! You mustn’t address—
Alphonse: No! Two of my business associates died today because of your Sickle, and I want answers!
Caldwell: (coughs into his elbow) Let me guess… You’re Amazon?
Alphonse: (laughs) Yeah, I’m Amazon. We were all Amazon.
Caldwell: And Amazon’s King here…. Well, I’m not from here. Let me tell you who I am. My name is Brigadier General Nicolas Caldwell of the USRDC. And as of this moment, you’re going to sit your ass down and tell me everything you know about this Sickle, or I’m going to throw you, this woman, your boss, and your boss’s boss into that bay. Got it?
3
From Shiloh Kensington’s Diary, Dated May 28, 2027
Well, I came back to change… so here I am. Obviously. God, I don’t have time for this! But here I am, so let’s get it over with.
Killed a beta today. Feels like shit, considering that an entire crew got eaten. That part wasn’t our fault, but it still sucks.
The kill itself wasn’t special. It was a simple top shot with a kinetic bone marrow projectile. The shot took place right below the area where the rift opened, so the kena density made aiming irrelevant. It’ll take a month to scoop that thing out of the bay, but once they do, I’m sure they’ll find a fifty-foot crater on the bay’s floor. It felt like cheating.
Something did happen, and I’m still not sure I believe it.
For the first time, I saw Akash pout from getting outshone. It was actually pretty comical. We were in a fresh break in a helicopter, so Laura was burning sena, and Akash was hyped to “make it rain,” as he likes to put it. But as we were flying over the bay, someone with tracer shells butchered a dozen stalks faster than Akash could aim.
He was pissed and said, “Tyrell’s got some nerve. Doesn’t have the balls to go over the water but has no problem showin’ off,” because Tyrell was the only person that could beat his time outside of the SEG. But that was the thing that was perplexing—it wasn’t Tyrell, and I summed that up succinctly: “Tyrell doesn’t trace.”
Everyone on our team can see cores—so there’s no need to trace one. When Tyrell shoots—he shoots to kill. I had a better question: “How far are we from shore?”
Akash rushed out and grinned. “Half mile out.” He whistled, watching the tracers mowing down stalks. By then, we had already passed the hot zone, so we weren’t in that much danger, so we had five minutes to spare. But nothing’s ever so simple. About the one-mile mark, a Cela-type Delta changed course at three O’clock, moving inbound at 200-300 miles an hour.
It was only a Delta, so we were fine. Akash would blow its body into chunks before it got anywhere near us, and I was back up. And even if we both failed the first shot, Laura would Break it. Still, there’s a special type of anxiety that comes with maw missions. The thought of falling a hundred feet into the water, a mile out from shore, stuck in the middle of a blood-soaked feeding frenzy… yeah, no, thank you. So yeah, we took it seriously.
Anyway, I remember zeroing in on this thing’s core (which was in its head) and preparing for Akash to shoot. We were both on it in less than two seconds, but before we even put our fingers on our trigger, we watched a red laser shoot across the sky and nail the thing two inches away from its core.
WE WERE A MILE OUT!
We’re talking a 1.8 lead on a two-hundred-mile-an-hour target. Lucky? No. There weren’t any other shots! It was one and done, and when the thing turned and went to shore, we saw every turret turning this thing’s head to Swiss cheese. The sniper traced it. They didn’t hit it. They fucking traced a Cela’s core a mile out.
How?!
I wasn’t sure but I knew three things for certain. First, the base had an undisclosed sena. Second, they were a godly sniper. Third, Nick was going to murder the base commander for not reporting on this person. I almost feel pity for them—he’s pissed.
Anyway, it gets even crazier. After we neutralized the target, we did a pass-over, searching the area the tracers came from. That’s when we saw him. You couldn’t miss this guy. He was wearing a light pink button-up and slacks like some new-wave frat boy, and I probably would’ve dismissed him as a weird idiot if he wasn’t exhibiting severe rewrite symptoms. The poor guy was cupping his ears and rocking back and forth against a wall, screaming, while his superior pulled his hands away and yelled at him to shut up. I probably would’ve intervened, but the guy blacked out, and it turned into a big scene.
Akash asked if it was him. I said, probably, and contacted Nick.
This is the crazy part. I got on the line and said, “General. Someone just sniped a Cela at a mile range. They’re suffering rewrite. Do you know who it is?”
Nick didn’t answer. He asked a question instead: “Do you know what he looked like?”
So I tell him. Asian guy. Pink shirt. And you know what the general said?
He laughed and said, “Small world… Small fucking world.”
Apparently, Pretty Boy killed a Delta Berserker just up the street with a pistol before jumping off a two-story parking garage. And unless the guy’s been stockpiling meat and decided to sacrifice his life for the cause, we’re dealing with an unreported Blender, and Nick’s gonna rip Pier Zero’s base commander’s colon out and choke them with it until he gets answers on why this guy wasn’t reported to the BEU.
Also, yeah. Blender. It doesn’t get more serendipitous or timely than that.
It’s almost depressing, honestly. Akash’s pretty low right now and keeps joking, saying, “Hey, at least you’ve gotta replacement,” with a big smile, but no one finds it amusing. No one wants a “replacement” for Akash, but we sure as hell can’t live without a GH. Once he’s gone, we’re fucked.
Anyway, it just kinda sucks, but we’re all coping by sharing in Nick’s fury. He’s honestly pissed. Not only did Pier Zero fail to report this Sickle’s skills, but the base commander is stalling Nick’s request for information on both the restaurant footage and info on the people on the wall. It’s a blackout.
Unluckily for them, Nick’s a Brigadier General who’s not opposed to abusing his authority, and he immediately went nuclear on them, promising a scorched earth campaign if Mr. Pink Shirt turns up with doctored records. Pier Zero said they’d release the footage and information after a 24-hour review, which they have the right to do, but they’re locking down super hard.
Why? I don’t know. It’s super sketchy. But guess what? We found the guy because he’s the only goddamn person wearing a pink shirt in a hot zone!
His name’s Kei Nakamura, and according to Nick, he leads the Sickle leaderboard for tracing, machine-gunning, sniping, sonar, completed missions, and spotting at Pier Zero. The reason that we haven’t heard of him is because he’s less than ten confirms from hitting the promotion threshold that would’ve put him on the BEU’s radar. It wasn’t just that. Nick says that Pier Zero has used every legal loophole imaginable to keep this guy off the map. The guy’s record is a bureaucratic masterpiece.
It’s probably just because they didn’t want the USRDC from sniping their stat cruncher, but it doesn’t matter anymore. I personally watched the guy mow down a dozen stalks, so he hit the promotion threshold, and they have no choice but to report him. And you best believe they’re fucked. Pier Zero’s about to get slammed with a full audit to find other people like Kei. The base commander’s about to rue the day they tried to bend the rules.
Anyway, we’re taking turns watching over Pretty Boy, and it’s almost my shift. So I gotta go. I hope I never talk to you again.
4
The Red Cross Medical Pavilion in the Marriott Waterfront’s parking lot is a staple of Sickle-living. Despite how popular it was, it was ultimately a glorified fireworks tent you’d see fifty feet over the border of any reservation in late June. It housed over 50 cots on each side, packed so tight that it made you wonder why they even bothered. Most people in the tent were fresh bite victims, crying and pleading and screaming that they didn’t want to become a Sickle—or they were already in a coma, going through Lepidogenesis, the process of haphazardly developing a core to process the aether injected into their body from monster bites. Between the groaning, crying, and bleeding, it was incredibly loud—which was the last thing I needed. Every cry felt like a corkscrew getting twisted into my frontal lobe, and there was one voice that was far louder and more piercing than any other.
I looked up and saw Sandra Kennel, the businesswoman wearing the purple blouse from Cutter’s Crabhouse.
“Y-You’re wrong! I’m not sick! I’m not fucking sick!” Sandra yelled, slapping an orderly’s hand away as they tried to do bloodwork. “Get your hands off me!”
“Ma’am. Please calm down.” A doctor walked up. “You could start coring at—“
“Calm down? You people didn’t do your job, and I was nearly killed! Now, you’re treating me like a… like a… Sickle? Let me go! I’m calling my lawyer!”
“Please sit down,” the doctor said as two soldiers grabbed her.
“Get your hands off me! Do you know who I am? I manage drone logistics at Amazon! One call and—”
“You used to manage drone logistics,” the doctor said. “Now sit down. If you start coring in your state, you could die of psychogenic—”
“I’m not sick!”
The doctor looked at her leg, which was bleeding from a small stalk bite, likely from something smaller than a hawk. “Yeah, you are.”
I grabbed my head as she screamed, feeling her every word stabbing into my brain like needles. I needed to escape, so I sat up, determined to leave the tent since the doctors weren’t gonna do shit for me anyway. Unfortunately, Sandra noticed me as my feet touched down.
“It’s you… it’s you!” she screamed, pointing at me. “This is your fault! After you left—get off me!” The guards pulled her back as she rushed forward. “You did this! You’re fucking responsible!”
-
[1] All supporting documents accompanying Kei Nakamura’s memoir have been added since the 25th Anniversary Edition of its release, following the decision to declassify all documents regarding him. Mr. Nakamura was unaware of these documents, reports, recordings, interviews, news stories, and other evidence sources while he was writing his memoir. His bad habit of promising to show what happened and letting people determine things for themselves, only to forget to provide commentary later, likely stems from his desire to write an objective account, his inability to confirm what happened, or simple ignorance. In some ways, it has backfired, creating a source of confusion, debate, and frustration. Thus, the Nakamura Foundation has decided to provide these supplementary documents to provide accurate documents, which often supports, enhances, or contradicts his claims. Please keep in mind that Mr. Nakamura is unaware of much of what you are reading.