~February 3rd, 140 AH~

~Joint Base Akra, Kurator Corps HQ~

As Asena settled back into Terminal One, she tried to repress her own memories, better to prepare herself for digging around in another’s.

The conversation with Colonel Shiranui—even more one-sided than usual—lingered in her head all morning, bringing with each replay fresh surges of hurt and anxiety. It was the most emotional she’d ever seen her father, and to think that she’d been the one to upset him so!

The youngest of seven children, Asena had always considered herself to be a model daughter: less unruly than her talented siblings, and more talented than the obedient ones. To be sure, she’d never match the value her eldest brother Makiri brought to the family as Akropolis’s killingest Reiter on record. But she was a capable Kurator in her own right: one blessed with an Einkunst, no less. There was no reason she couldn’t also serve the Shiranui clan—and the Tetrarchy as a whole—in amply meaningful ways.

Perhaps it was this self-importance that had made her overconfident of late. If she wanted her father’s high regard, she needed to earn it. To that end, her queasiness about the mission was the first thing that needed pruning.

So, after a good cry in the bathroom and re-applying her make-up, Asena had returned to Terminal One, as ready as she’d ever be to resume her therapy sessions with one Lieutenant Zelen Athelstan.

She relaxed into the reclined seat and let her assistant finish the rest of the set-up.

First, as always, was the connection into the IO port. The bundle of tubes and machinery that clipped onto her sternum would help monitor her Somatic and Psychic Reserves while maintaining a steady flow of an Anamnium solution. It was the lifeline of all in her trade, and the surgery to have the intraosseous port embedded was an unpleasant if not downright frightening rite of passage for many a young proto-Kurator.

Next came the leathery bands that closed over her waist and all four limbs. Budgetary limitations meant the Kurator Corps couldn’t afford to replicate an Eidolon cockpit exactly (neither would many Kurators have wanted to). But the intensely kinetic nature of many of the memories they worked with necessitated restraints as a basic safety precaution.

Then the already darkened room faded to pitch black as a final piece of equipment was lowered and secured onto Asena’s head. The headset served to simultaneously cut off the Kurator from the sights and sounds of her immediate surroundings while feeding her only information that was pertinent to the session.

The first piece of such information flowed into Asena in the form of her father’s verbal instructions, transmitted from the monitoring station next door, “Remember your briefings, Corporal. Building blocks. All of Lieutenant Athelstan’s dissociated memories are building blocks scattered about upon a construction site. Your job is to build him back up, piece by piece, starting from the foundation. Are we ready to begin?”

As part of the initial mission briefing, Asena had been given a timeline of significant events in Lieutenant Athelstan’s life and career, compiled from reports provided by Yuito Shiranui himself: the subject’s former Kuratorial handler. It’d been an elaborate tapestry made up of a whirlwind Tetrarch upbringing, a demanding proto-Reiter training program, and of course the several years he’d spent in active service, fighting the Syntropy.

Some of these events, Asena had at least tangentially been involved in, what with her being another Tetrarch child just two years his junior (not to mention his eventual fiancée). But a vast majority of Lieutenant Athelstan’s training and career consisted of challenges, hardships, and battles that she could barely imagine, even after perusing her father’s reports and committing them to memory.

How could one merely two years older have led a life so drastically different from hers? It occurred to her that, despite her boundless admiration for her older brothers and their Reiter careers, she’d never picked their brains about what they saw, felt, and experienced all these years.

Well, she got just a taste of it yesterday, and that snippet of the Reiter life had been enough to send her running for the hills.

She wanted to believe that today was different. That her resolve had hardened. That her body could take more of a beating. And, most importantly, that she had a plan.

“I’m ready, sir,” she spoke into the radio, hoping to convey that newfound confidence.

“Good,” came the reply in a voice that betrayed nothing. “Waking the subject.”

There was a click as the radio switched onto a new frequency. Then, gradually, the silence on the other end became punctuated by the soft groans of someone waking from a heavy slumber.

In the previous session, Asena had been overeager in her approach, anxious to initiate and dictate the dialogue. Upon reflection, however, she realized something that she thought she could use to her advantage.

For as complex a life as Lieutenant Athelstan had led, the man that now sat across the radio waves was bereft and adrift. He’d lost nearly everything that could tell him who he was.

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The only thing he had left—his only anchor—was this connection he thought he had with Spiegel Delta-Upsilon.

Asena would be that anchor for him, so he might cease his drifting and turn his attention onto shores to wash up on. But first, let him seek her out. Let him yearn for her. Let him be nothing without her.

“Silon?”

The voice—so forlorn and pitiful—immediately tested Asena’s resolve. In the unseen darkness beyond the radio waves, Lieutenant Athelstan sounded not like the seasoned warrior he was but like an orphaned boy. The thought filled Asena with distaste for her own intentions, but she bit back on her inner protests, and waited, just one more beat.

“Silon, are you there? Answer me. I don’t… I don’t know where I am, and I need you.”

In her still brief military career, Asena had heard her fair share of insipid jokes servicemen told each other in the interest of belonging to a certain culture. Often, these were designed to instill a sense of unity at the expense of one out-group chosen from any number of interchangeable labels. One such joke floated into her mind now, as she let her subject’s desperate pleading wash over her.

What’s more helpless than a fish without water? A Reiter without his Spiegel.

Never mind that most in her generation of Akropolitans had never seen a fish in their life. Nor that any one Reiter piloting an Eidolon—with or without Spiegel support—could raze their entire city within minutes. She saw now that the joke had managed to hit its mark, at least in the case of one individual.

And it was time to put this fish without water out of its misery.

“I’m here, Zelen.”

A short pause, punctuated by the muffled sound of rattling metal.

“Silon?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, thank god…” There was now a choked quality to the subject’s voice that made Asena visualize his eyes filling with tears. “You are real. I thought I’d dreamed the whole thing. But… here you are.”

You are real. The words dug into Asena’s conscience like shards of glass, but right now, the mission came before her conscience.

“I’m always here to support you, Zelen.”

A shaky laugh, streaked with fresh tears. “And you’re calling me by my name again. I had this—nightmare, I think?—where you’d gone back to calling me Kingfisher.”

The Kurator took a moment to take stock of the implication of her subject’s words. A nightmare. Does this mean he doesn’t remember the Ildfugl mission?

“Was it a nightmare, Zelen, or did that actually happen?”

“I mean… I guess you’d know better than me. All I can tell you is that… we were together. Talking like this. But damned if I remember any of what was said.”

So, the first memory fragment Asena had unlocked, at no small cost to her own mental well-being, had been a dud. This wasn’t surprising by any means. According to one of the Old Earth textbooks she’d dug up in preparation for this mission, patients suffering from dissociative amnesia could be stubborn about re-encoding memories that were related to the very source of their trauma.

It was like what her father said. She’d have to build Zelen Athelstan back up, piece by piece. To that end, she needed to deduce what aspect of his life could serve as the most stable foundation.

“Do you really not remember any of our missions together?”

“Like I said, I only remember the together part. And I guess I vaguely know that the missions were why we were together in the first place. But beyond that… It’s weird, isn’t it? I feel like I know you better than I know myself.”

“Then tell me about me, Zelen.”

Another pause, quickly followed by pops and crackles. Was he… snickering?

“That’s a strange request. Even for you, I think? But I’ll bite. What would you, Silon, like to know about yourself?”

“Tell me about the day we met.”

“The day we… you mean the Tethering?”

If her arms hadn’t been tied down, Asena might have pumped her fist. She’d gotten the subject to speak on a discrete component of his background, and it hadn’t even required real Kuration.

As soon as her subject mentioned the Tethering, however, Asena felt a stirring within her sternum that quickly spread to the rest of her bones: most acutely felt in the rib cage and shoulders before attenuating as it reached her extremities.

The Nexus showed the way. She knew exactly which thread to pull next.

“Yes, Zelen. Tell me about our Tethering.”

Along with the verbal prompt, Asena activated her Einkunst: [EVOCATION].

~December 5th, 135 AH~

~Sector Aquarius, within the Militarized Safe Zone~

As Zelen Athelstan lowered himself into the cockpit, he regretted very much his own earlier overzealousness at the canteen.

Today was the last day of the Gauntlet, featuring just the one final challenge, in the form of single combat against an examiner. As was tradition, the proto-Reiters that had made it this far (of which there were only two this year) were presented with a veritable feast for breakfast.

Three-‘Cheese’ Lasagna, Mongolian ‘Beef’, Spaghetti ‘Bolognaise’. Even ‘fish’ tacos, which were a once-in-a-lifetime rarity that would’ve had the other boys mad with jealousy. Never mind that half the menu consisted of words that meant nothing to Zelen, nor that most of these dishes tasted nearly identical to each other. He wasn’t about to pass up splurging on his one decent meal since he’d last been on leave.

Megha Vakta, the other proto-Reiter hoping to earn his callsign today, had tried to warn him, “I’d slow down if I were you, Athelstan. The Trial starts in half an hour, and you’re up first.”

“I’ll be fine.” Zelen had found it difficult to sound dismissive with a mouthful of synthetic pasta and meat sauce. “This is the easiest part of the Gauntlet for me.”

And that would’ve—should’ve—been true.

Zelen had never counted himself an effective soldier. Indeed his friend Megha had outperformed him on every stage of the Gauntlet thus far, from the written exams to the simulated Syntropy scenarios. Yet one aspect of proto-Reiter training in which he’d always been head and shoulders above his peers, for reasons unclear even to himself, was 1v1 against another Eidolon.

“Besides,” he’d said while washing down the pasta with watered down ‘grape’ juice, “the examiners they send to these Trials… they’re all pensioners years out of combat. Even if they’re active service members, they’re meant to go easy on us. I could beat them with my eyes closed, you’ll see.”

That had been thirty minutes ago.

Now, as Cadet Zelen Athelstan lowered himself into the cockpit of his training Eidolon, he worried that he was about to fill it with the contents of his breakfast.

For he’d just been informed of the identity of his examiner, and as luck would have it, an active pilot had found time in his busy schedule to grace this Gauntlet with his presence. Not just any pilot, but the killingest—and cruelest—Reiter in Akropolitan history.

In order to earn his callsign today, Zelen would have to defeat Makiri Shiranui in single combat.