With the enemy gone, and with Energy Reserves partially replenished, there was no reason left for Zelen to stay on the coast. Enough daylight remained for him to travel farther inland, perhaps to seek out more Syntropy hotspots. The Eidolon itself was certainly in good enough shape for another fight or two.
Yet he found himself unable or unwilling to take flight. Even after he’d slipped back into the Nexa-Suit and rebooted the system, a leaden inertia rooted him to the spot.
Gone almost entirely was his earlier bloodlust, so intense and so imperative while in the midst of seeking out Vendetta. What he’d found instead had been so outlandish and so far removed from his self-imposed purpose to have sucked all momentum out of his progress—to have robbed him of a sense of direction.
Whenever you’re lost, look at me to find yourself again.
When Zelen finally did move, it wasn’t to take off into the air. Instead, he walked at a leisurely pace until he returned to the edge of the cliff, this time while inside his metallic phantom.
He knelt beside the lone flower, better to centre it onto his visual field. The screen inside the cockpit filled with red petals and swaying stalk. Such a fragile thing. Such an ephemeral thing. Yet, in the moment, this flower was unmistakably alive in ways no other flower Zelen had ever seen could lay claim to.
“Silon, do you see what I see?”
I do, Zelen, but I must say that I’m… somewhat confused. Why would there be a synthetic flower here of all places? So far from the nearest base, and all by itself?
“Look carefully, Silon. It’s not synthetic.”
Do you mean that… this is a real flower? But… that’s impossible.
“I know.”
The last global survey to have turned up any living flora was more than 50 years ago. Even with the samples we did manage to recover, all efforts to re-integrate them into the Akroplitan environment failed. The planet… has long been dead, Zelen.
“I know.”
I sense you came to me for answers, but I’m afraid, in this case, I’m just as lost as you are.
Zelen sighed, though not from disappointment. If anything, he felt relief. Relief that there were still things left in the world for him and his Spiegel to discover together.
“No biggie, Silon, I wasn’t really expecting answers. Maybe just… discussion? Debate?”
It sounds as though you have some theories to explain this flower’s existence.
“Oh, nothing so lofty to be called theories. Questions, more like. Questions like… did the global surveys maybe miss something? I mean the Joint Forces only have the one main base in Akropolis. It takes enormous manpower and resources to scour the whole planet. Unless, I suppose, every Reiter could learn to be self-sufficient like me.”
I suppose it’s possible that the surveys were incomplete…
“You don’t sound very convinced.”
I don’t doubt the possibility that there may be other living things we don’t know about, like this flower. I simply don’t see the value in knowing if that may or may not be the case.
Zelen nodded with a slight grimace. He readily saw where Silon was coming from.
Even if the surveys had missed these tiny pockets of life in the unseen corners of the world, what did that matter at this point? Earth had been as good as dead 50 years ago. 50 years later, the Syntropy War still raged on, keeping the planet and all its battlefields as inhospitable as ever. Say the General got his wish, and the war ended tomorrow. What then? Did Akropolitans even have the know-how or the means to heal the planet? To bring Old Earth back to life?
And yet…
“These Syntropy seemed to think there’s value.”
A brief pause.
What do you mean?
“That’s what they were protecting, isn’t it? This flower.”
Why would the Syntropy do that?
“I’ve no idea, and yeah, it sounds absolutely insane to me too. But I don’t see any other explanation. Why did they dig in here, send so many of theirs to die? There’s nothing special about this place… other than this one red flower.”
… I’m sorry, Zelen. It seems, on this front, I’m out of my depth. I don’t have anything useful to add.
“Don’t sweat it. I’m just thinking out loud. Besides, speaking of things having no value, I can’t think of a more futile exercise than trying to explain aberrant Syntropy behaviour.”
Zelen said this with a nonchalance that felt forced even to himself. It was as though he was trying to reflect the casual attitude of his words, rather than the other way around.
Silon was right. As rare a sight as it was, the flower meant nothing in the grand scheme of things. Neither did it matter if or why the Syntropy had deemed it worth protecting.
And yet…
What does this flower mean to you, Zelen?
“Excuse me?”
Let’s forget the big picture for one second. Let’s also not worry about the Syntropy. For you, personally, does this flower hold any significance? Is it… is it worth protecting, do you think?
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Zelen fell silent as he stared at the image on the screen. Red petals that shed ocean sprays as though they were teardrops. Slender stalk that looked to be buckling—wilting—under the wind, even as Zelen watched.
“Yes.”
And why do you say that?
“It’s… nothing. It’s a stupid reason.”
Don’t do this to me, Zelen. You have to tell me.
“I don’t have to do anything!”
Fine. Think of it as a favour to me, then. Please tell me why you would want to protect this flower. I want to know.
Zelen sighed.
“I just… it’s so… alone. And vulnerable. Don’t you think? I just think something so small, so fragile, so alone… Someone ought to protect it. That’s all.”
Someone… or you, Zelen?
“I can’t do it. You know why.”
Because he couldn’t stay. Because he was on a mission. Because he was out for revenge. Because he needed to kill.
I too would like to protect it, if it were up to me.
It took Zelen a moment to realize what his Spiegel had said.
“You care about this flower, Silon? But you said earlier…”
I stand by my earlier analysis, but remember, I also said to forget the big picture: put aside the war and everything else. Right now, purely in the moment, I don’t want to see this flower die.
“Care to tell me why? Or is your reason as embarrassing as mine?”
I just think it’s pretty.
Zelen blinked. Then, for one moment, he couldn’t understand why his screen had suddenly become so blurry.
“You like flowers, Silon?” he asked quietly, his voice strangely choked.
I think… yes, I think I do.
“Then you’ll like the gardens back home. We have plenty of flowers there, of all shapes and colours. Granted, none of them are real like this one.”
That sounds lovely, Zelen. But I think… there’s something special about this particular flower, not just for the fact that it’s a living thing. Looking at it, I feel as though I…
Zelen waited, then frowned slightly. Over the years he’d gotten to know his Spiegel, he noticed that the cadence of her speech had grown to be more varied, now containing plenty of gaps, valleys, and crests. Even so, it was rare for her to trail off mid-sentence.
“Silon?”
Tsetseg.
“What?”
Tsetseg. It means ‘flower’ in one of the lost Old Earth languages.
“Oh? That’s… interesting, I guess? But we lost hundreds of languages to the war, didn’t we? Why this particular—”
I just remembered.
Red petals that glistened with ageless tears. Slender stalk that withstood the test of time and entropy. Zelen’s heart skipped a beat before thudding and echoing against the chasm within his chest.
It’s what my parents used to call me. My name… is Tsetseg Tenger.
~February 19th, 140 AH~
~Joint Base Akra, Kurator Corps HQ, Terminal One~
Red petals that glistened with ageless tears. Slender stalk that withstood the test of time and entropy. Asena’s heart skipped a beat before thudding and echoing against the chasm within her chest.
“It’s what my parents used to call me. My name is—”
Blinding light. Pain the likes of which she’d known only from someone else’s memories, followed by darkness and silence. Only then did she realize that her mind had come back to her self.
She was no longer Zelen Athelstan. Their connection had severed, and she wasn’t the one to have disconnected first. How—
“Zelen?”
Static. The radio was still on. Where was Zelen?
“Asena?” Not Zelen. Her father’s voice. “What happened?”
“I don’t know! I seem to have lost him.”
More static. Even Yuito was ignoring her now. Asena ground her teeth. Her nails dug into her palms. Where was Zelen?
“Asena.” Not Zelen! “I’m told the subject has lost consciousness.”
“What?” She bucked against her restraints. “What happened? Is he hurt?”
“There are Gaertners attending to him as we speak. I’d worry about yourself, first and foremost. Are you well? Everything seemed to happen… so suddenly.”
Worry about herself? She didn’t even know what to worry about. One moment, she was in the midst of [EVOCATION]. And then… she wasn’t.
The restraints came off. Then the headset and IO port. Yuito’s frown—deeper than usual—swam into view. As her vision readjusted to the dimness inside Terminal One, her mind tried to reorganize the sequence of events that had abruptly ended her latest session.
“In the memory fragment, Zelen had a strong emotional response while conversing with his Spiegel. The onset of clear Psychic disturbance. And yet… it’s almost as if I experienced the same disturbance on my end. In the present. As if… as if something reached across the Nexus and pushed me away. What could’ve done that?”
She looked to her father, to his experience. Yuito’s eyes then shifted to and from the corners of the room, as though checking for prying ears hidden in the shadows. The two of them were alone, of course. Ever since the previous session, Colonel Shiranui had taken it upon himself to be his daughter’s dedicated assistant.
“Not what but who,” he eventually said, though the slight tremor in his voice suggested he could hardly believe his own words. “There was only one person who was connected to you via the Nexus, and therefore… he’s the only one who could’ve forcibly terminated the session from his end.”
“You mean Zelen did this himself? But how?”
Yuito stifled a sigh. “This is not to leave this room, but toward the tail end of last year, Lieutenant Athelstan began to show signs of partial attunement to Jaegerschaft and Panzerschaft. Quite literally unheard of, and we can only assume it’s some peculiar byproduct of his Einkunst. It therefore isn’t entirely preposterous that he might… dabble in aspects of Kuratorschaft…”
A strange expression came over Yuito then, as though he was realizing something for the first time. It passed quickly, however, then he continued, “If my assumptions are correct, this is… this is good news, Asena. It might not be Reiterschaft, but he’s attuning to the Nexus all the same. If it’s not full recovery, at least it’s a breakthrough. The first since the sessions began.”
Asena failed to share in her father’s positive appraisal of the situation. The moment of their disconnection, of being violently thrown from the Nexus—from Zelen—had been too unsettling to feel like ‘good news’. Not only that, but the latest session had also unearthed something else. Something monumental. Something terrible.
It was Asena’s turn to cast her eyes about, checking for prying ears that she knew full well couldn’t have been inside the room with them.
“Father,” she spoke quietly, suddenly fearful, “does the name Tsetseg Tenger mean anything to you?”
Yuito’s eyes widened to reveal their bloodshot edges. His face instantly drained of colour. And though he remained speechless for some time, his reaction already told Asena enough.
A nameless anger erupted from the chasm within her chest. It was all she could do not to lunge at her father then, not to grab him by his too-loose collar, not to shake him and ask, who are you, and what lies have you fed me all my life?
Trembling, glaring, she instead said through gritted teeth, “I don’t care what orders you have from Fenix Duodecim. I don’t care what honour or ideal you claim to serve. Right now, you will tell me all you know about Tsetseg Tenger, and why Zelen Athelstan’s Spiegel called herself by that name.”