It was a few more minutes before I could muster the strength to explain the events of the past two weeks to them. It was only two weeks! I was pulled from the dry room on the third and now it was the nineteenth—a little over two weeks. It might as well have been an entire second life—and it almost was, really.

I almost became something totally different.

It took thirty minutes to explain, in brief enough terms, what Neville had actually wanted and how he went about trying to set it in motion. The perfect crime; or, rather, the perfect show. One little display to bring the whole charade to its end.

Now, though, with Neville dead and all his plans left to ruin we were right back at square one.

But I found, in the spur of the moment, that I did not want to the truth. I’d never had much of an inclination to lie to Prochazka but I found that I couldn’t bear the thought of him knowing that I was fully ready to throw him under the bus for what I saw as my only way home.

To a home, rather. To just any old place.

Instead, seeing as all parties involved were dead, I kept the details short and said that I bought time until the eighteenth, and when Neville brought me into his office for the final decision, I put an icicle in his skull immediately, and then when I emerged from the basement, Cygnus was more or less right there. I told them what Neville wanted with me. I did not tell them what I wanted with him.

I told them that Bell got him to the right place but no further, and that seemed to go over well. They both nodded as though they’d long suspected that Bell would do something like that. If anything, Prochazka seemed at least a little pleased that she even bothered to help at that point, seeing as she’d clearly made up her mind to abandon this wild waste of time long ago and still found some soft corner of her heart with which she gave Cygnus one last boost.

I told them about the murder.

I didn’t tell them about the police. Prochazka didn’t need to know that in a moment of weakness I spilled the beans. In my head it already didn’t matter but I could tell from the way Prochazka listened to me tell the tale, deadly serious, that he still believed in the heart of the mission and my soft betrayal of it would not go over well.

Loybol, though, did not look so hard. Her expression was much softer. While Prochazka frowned at my description of Neville’s plan, shaking his head, Loybol did not move. She let the words sit as they were.

At the end of it all, though, she was still the first to speak. She said, “I’m so sorry, Erika. I can’t imagine how that must have been.”

Prochazka offered a solemn nod; I found myself less accommodating. “It’s fine.”

We all paused at that, recalling the sheer howling with which I had melted ten minutes ago, and silently, collectively agreed to ignore what is and always has been a throwaway hand-wave statement designed to end conversation.

“I’m glad you didn’t give in,” Prochazka said. “That takes strength. Real, inner strength.”

I found myself unable to respond to that, and I was bailed out by Loybol, who broke in so I didn’t need to.

“That’s it, then,” she said, after some time. She glanced briefly at Prochazka, and then looked back at me.

Loybol said, “Jan—can I talk to her alone for a moment?”

I couldn’t remember ever hearing anyone refer to Prochazka by his first name. Frankly, I’d often forget he even had one.

Prochazka gave that some real thought for a moment, but then he said, “Okay. I’ll be up in my office.”

Then he stood, looked between me and Loybol again for a moment, and headed off slowly towards the stairs.

We both sat and waited for him to leave. Still sitting on the cold tile. Neither of us made a move to more comfortable accommodations.

Loybol said to me, “Do you have any idea what you’re going to do now?”

I pursed my lips. Shook my head. “No.”

“If you’re not going to be here,” she went on, as though it needed clarification.

“I know,” I replied, subdued, “I just don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“Anything but this, then,” Loybol said, which I answered with a nod.

She scraped her upper lip with her teeth. “I don’t blame you. I’d be done with this forever after all of that, too.”

While there were certain things I couldn’t bear the thought of Prochazka knowing about me, with Loybol I didn’t have as many barriers. I knew her for much less time but I trusted her twice as much.

She knew things about me that Prochazka could never understand.

“He wanted to adopt me,” I said to her. “He meant it. The whole point of his war was to rescue me from Prochazka. He had the whole thing lined up. All I needed to do was say yes to his plan to reveal magic, and I did. I did say yes. I was going to help him before Cygnus managed to get inside and assassinate him. I didn’t pull the trigger. I didn’t do anything. I—”

I was about to start crying again so I clammed up. “I didn’t do it. I failed and got lucky.”

“That’s not true,” Loybol said. But she said it too fast; I knew she didn’t mean it.

Or maybe she did; I don’t know—but I decided immediately that she didn’t and therefore it had to be.

“It is,” I said. It hung between us, heavy and swollen. There was no last stand here. I’m sure I’d dreamed of one at some point and I’m sure I stopped doing so because of how certain I must’ve been that I’d get one. It was practically a guarantee with the life I’d lived. The idea of going down in a blaze of glory seemed more like a given than anything else in my life—eventually, they’d come for me, and eventually, I’d have to uncork everything to escape with my life.

Or, at the very least, take them all down with me.

But just as always, that didn’t happen. The army that was sent to get me, got me. There was no final fight.

All the best laid plans of man and so on.

“I didn’t do anything,” I said, again.

And Loybol faced me. “You survived,” she said. “Most would not have.”

I didn’t reply.

She glanced back at the staircase for a moment. Prochazka was, in fact, gone—I'd followed him with droplets until the door to his office came between us, so I knew that already, but Loybol must have suspected that he’d only gone as far as a hidden corner so he could eavesdrop. No—he gave us our space, and I’m sure he expected to be filled in on whatever this was later.

I wasn’t so sure of that, though. I didn’t work for him anymore, and Loybol only took his orders as far as they matched her own.

Maybe he’d never get to know the truth.

Loybol said, “This whole endeavor, categorically, was a mistake. Every part of it was ill-advised. Neville should not have declared war on Prochazka. Prochazka should not have heeded the call. I shouldn’t have bothered helping him.”

I expected her to trail off—it sounded like she was about to—but then she added a few more. “I should have just killed those prisoners when I had the chance.”

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

I paused. “Who were they?”

“The prisoners?” Loybol shrugged. “Nobody in particular. That’s the thing. It was just a few operatives who didn’t realize whose territory they were in.”

Again—I thought she was going to trail off, but she didn’t. She was just choosing her words carefully. “I—I have a bad habit with things like this. I'm a hoarder. I tend to keep these things, these people, close. On the off-chance I’ll ever end up needing them. I’m not sure where I got that habit from. Maybe it’s because I grew up poor, that I can’t bear the thought of throwing anything away.”

She looked at me again, expressionless. There was no pity there. No hate, no love, nothing.

It reminded me a lot of the way Bell used to look at me.

She said, “Prochazka should have left you alone.”

I blinked. It did not occur to me that anyone outside of the organization would have an opinion about that. My origin story was so set in stone in my head that it didn’t make sense that someone could see it as a violation or a wrong. Something that should be undone if given the chance. I could question it all I liked but hearing someone else say it was almost insulting—like being told I was breathing too loudly.

“I’d be dead,” I said, simply.

“You don’t know that. And now, from here, you’ll never know.”

I let the droplets fall away from her face and tilted my own downward. “I guess.”

A pause. And then: “But there’s time now, Erika.”

That got my attention again. “What do you mean?”

“You’re free. It’s over.”

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” I said, after a moment—more as a deflection than anything else.

“You don’t need to,” Loybol responded. “But I can give you some suggestions, if you’d like.”

Weakly, I said, “Okay.”

She may not have put it in her eyes but her words still felt like pity. The hard knot of tears rose in my throat again. I couldn’t cry—not in front of Loybol, not in front of anyone—not in front of myself most of all.

Those, though, were Radiant rules. I didn’t live there anymore. This wasn’t my home—it was just a place I was in.

So they came. Slow, but they came. This time there was no haunted wailing. It was a quiet affair. I let them roll and didn’t say anything. Loybol regarded me plainly again and said nothing for a second, watching me—and then she leaned forward with her arms out and I let her pull me in for an embrace.

I sniffled, face in her shoulder, for a second. For a second I was, again, just a child.

Alone in the woods with nothing at all. Nobody coming to save me.

Turn around, Erika Hanover.

In that position she whispered to me: “If you come to Hinterland, you’ll be safe.”

I didn’t respond and she continued: “I can get you a place to live and a spot in a public school. It’ll be the closest thing to a reset you can have. And...I won’t ask you for anything. You live your life and I’ll live mine. One day I suspect we’ll need each other again. I don’t think it’ll be as long as either of us would like. But until then—you know as well as I do. You have to try.”

“I have to try,” I repeated.

“The path forward will not be clear. You won’t even know you’re on it until you look back. But you have to try. If you ever want this to truly stop, you have to try.”

“I do,” I said. Quiet. Slow.

“Then come with me,” she said, “and then go alone.”

0 0 0

This place is empty now.

It was never particularly full, of course—this factory, in its true heyday, had more than a thousand workers in it and even in the Radiant’s best years it only ever maxed at around a hundred—but without the rest of Unit 6 around, without the faces I knew, I couldn’t help but feel like everyone was gone.

I didn’t bother to analyze and learn the faces of random people in other units. I could see back then; I didn’t need to. I recognized their faces even if I didn’t know their names—but now without the former I’d need the latter to re-identify them.

But I didn’t live here anymore. I didn’t want to know.

Being faceless didn’t stop them from staring. They stared even in the best of times, I knew—that part I remembered clearly. We were always pariahs. Without the rest of them to deflect the blame, though, it concentrated on me.

I’d made up my mind to go up to our old barracks and nothing was going to stop me from doing that; but the eyes laid upon me from every side-corridor made it tougher.

But I did not shrink back. They could think whatever they wanted—they always had; and there was no reason to believe that would change now.

They watched me crouched behind corners, like children—hiding from me—hiding from the king’s procession.

And if—when—I turned to face them, they flinched. Without fail. Flinched.

My eyes alone were enough to cow them.

If I wanted all of this to stop—

I came to our old barracks’ door and paused. For a moment I almost didn’t want to bother going in. What was I hoping to find? Everyone back again, alive and well, as though this whole endeavor was some long-winded prank?

It was going to be empty. Dusty. Things left just as they were—none of the vermin crawling around these halls would ever dare to set foot in there. That was a unholy place, where the demons lived, and to see it was to peek in a portal to Hell.

Or something like that, anyway. In their shoes I’d want nothing to do with it—and nobody had been in there since I was, a few months ago, when I stopped by with Cygnus after I got hurt.

What was I looking for in there? A sign? Would Bell be there again—sitting on one of the bunks, waiting for me to return. The apology I craved on her lips. Benji at his desk—apology on his lips—Ava with her plants upstairs—the apology—

No.

I opened the door and I will tell you what I saw.

The room was empty. The bunks exactly where they were left. A fine layer of dust on every hard surface.

My little stuffed frog, dangling over the railing on the top bunk of the bed I slept in for two years. It didn’t face me but I found myself walking inside and standing in its line of sight anyway—approaching it straight on and plucking it off the rail.

Held it in my hands, bobbing it up and down and feeling its felt feet flap limply along with it.

I wanted to say I found something in there, but I didn’t.

The room was empty. It was over now.

It’s over.

0 0 0

Except, of course, that it isn’t. I am still alive, despite all of our best efforts. It’s not over. I, against all odds, continue. That one point continues to ring true—someone, somewhere, is always going to want me for something.

There’s too much gold here to not go digging.

But those are just my recursive thoughts. They haunt me the same as anyone else—forever asking what, why, how.

It doesn’t matter what happened. It doesn’t matter why or how. The facts—the events as they are—don’t care about these things. I can look at them from any vantage I like and get nothing.

I’m fairly certain, if I was willing to sit in front of a doctor, that there’s medication I could get for that.

The barracks held nothing for me. I got my stuffed frog and left. That was all there was in there.

I resolved to tell Loybol that I was going to take her up on her offer. In Hinterland I could see something new. I wasn’t sure if I was going to try school again but I didn’t need to make that decision right now—although it was September already, so it would need to be made somewhat soon.

The idea of sitting at a desk doing math worksheets again after all of this almost didn’t make sense. It drew a smile out of me, if only because of how silly it all seemed. These pieces were completely out of order—worksheets and then war, not the reverse.

I took the frog with me as I went out of the factory. I took a back door to avoid as many eyes as possible. The last thing I wanted was to run into Loybol or Prochazka again before I was ready.

I went outside to the field, out to the rocks where Loybol spoke to me in one of my weakest moments a few months back. She wasn’t there now, of course, but I could still imagine the outline of her there, the warmth of her breath swirling red like a dying star as she told me who she was.

It would be naïve to pretend that Hinterland held anything particularly special for me. It was just a change of scenery and I knew that, even then. A change of scenery could only go so far—a change of heart was what I needed.

No, Erika Hanover, don’t turn around. You know what’s back there. You’ve seen it. That’s Hell you’ve walked out of—but it’s over now. It’s over. You don’t need to do it again. You never have to.

It lives inside you forever—but that’s what the past does: it exists, once, and never again.

Time will pass and I will be well again.

Now, with nothing left to fear, with no more missions and no more targets, I could stop and look.

Clustered around the rocks and the shrubs were a handful of dragonflies. The air off their wings cooled blue into long streaks that resembled something more grand—wide and feathered like angels’ wings.

They regarded each other and everything between the rocks and shrubs in moments and then they left, as suddenly as they arrived.

I sat there with the stuffed frog on my shoulder. I waited. I had all the time in the world to wait.

The sun was down—the air cool again, the summer heat dwindling with the days, and for a while I sat there doing nothing at all, thinking of nothing at all.

The hope for me is this: after that moment, when I was ready to walk away, I stood up and turned around and I faced the factory again, empty now, whole now, the past as closed as it would ever be. Never again in my life would I be as at peace with this chapter of my life as I was right then, just after the dragonflies, just before I set back across the field.

But now I know. I have the proof—I can feel this way. It can be done.

As long as there is time, there is a chance. And if the time goes on—then so do the chances. They extend as the day is long—as the days are infinite.

I know one thing about myself: I always have—and always will—get up again.

That is what Erika Hanover is for. The clock ticks and she returns.

Invincible as I am—endless as I am—

I endure forever.