In one instant, all the lies Zelen had told himself came crashing down. Left in their place was the stark truth of Silon’s words, staring him in the face.
What kind of freedom did you think was possible for us Spiegels?
“It’s okay…” Zelen heard himself whisper, muffled as though drowning in water. “It’s okay, Silon. I’ll get you out.”
He first reached for her arm: pale, fragile, and smeared—like the rest of her body—with a dull filmy substance. He reached for it and stopped, convinced that it’d break the moment his hand wrapped around it.
“It’s okay…” Zelen barely heard himself over his thudding heart, his laboured breathing. “I’ll figure this out. Leave it to me. God knows you’ve helped me out of enough tight spots over the years. Time for me to pull my weight.”
He reached for her waist, sought out purchase amidst concavities and bony ridges. His hand landed, with no conviction, upon flesh that was somehow at once sclerosed and friable. The same hand slipped, immediately, from the slickness of the film that covered Silon, from his own lack of resolve.
His heartbeat only quickened, impossibly fast, pulses merging into one continuous siren. His airways constricted until he felt anew a spectre of death.
His eyes took in the whole picture then, reminded him of the insanity—the futility—of his task. A hairless ageless creature not much bigger than a young child, bent and twisted in all the wrong places, swollen joints ready to come apart at the first jolt to her crumpled vestige of a human body.
What anguished Zelen most, ravaged his heart until it became a pulp of torn muscle, was her pose. Head, neck, and limbs all folded toward her centre. Hugging herself. Seeking the only source of meagre warmth she could find inside her metallic prison.
“Oh, Silon. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m—”
Shrunken skin folds where eyes should have been, caked with the same filmy substance, opened into cracks. Then, as Zelen watched in stricken horror, the cracks widened into gauzy veils, then these veils brightened into gossamer bulbs of recognition.
Then Silon’s eyes well and truly opened—wide with alarm—staring past Zelen and at the threat that loomed behind him.
And though they weren’t bound by the Nexus, the Reiter responded to his Spiegel’s warning, as readily as if they’d been together on the battlefield. He spun, ducked, and dove in one smooth motion, tackling the encroaching figure into the next row of metal containers.
A grunt of pain and surprise escaped the Kurator, but the man made no immediate attempt to fight back, with both of his hands held high in the air. Zelen saw why. Shaking precariously at the ends of the Kurator’s flailing arms was the barrel of a service pistol.
Zelen let go with both hands and reached instead for the pistol. But the sudden shift in pressure caused the Kurator’s arms to swing through the air, and at the same time, the gun went off with a deafening bang.
The inevitable. The impossible.
Though they weren’t bound by the Nexus, the Reiter froze, sensing the sudden change in his Spiegel as readily as if they’d been deep in conversation. He spun, slowly this time, as if in a daze.
A hairless ageless creature that knew no other way to seek warmth than to embrace herself. And from her centre—the core toward which her head, neck, and limbs bent—now spread a lurid red substance.
Blood. Fresh. Familiar. Full of life. Fading life. The sight of it was made only more grotesque by the juxtaposition. Only heightened the wrongness of Silon’s reality. Of humanity’s lies.
Then a beep. Unbroken. Soft yet unmistakable. The termination of vital signs.
Zelen screamed.
“WHAT DID YOU DO?”
He rounded on the Kurator who, with all the fight gone out of him, merely slumped against the back of another container, service pistol dangling limply from one trembling hand. Zelen shook him, with his rage demanding an answer, an reaction, an enemy for him to kill.
“What did you do? Give her back! Give me back my Silon!”
But the man ignored him, stared past him, with vacant eyes pointed only to the open sustainment unit labelled ‘433’. A unit he must’ve opened, cleaned, and serviced a hundred times. A unit he was seeing for the first time.
Zelen dropped the Kurator roughly onto the floor. His thoughts turned to more urgent matters. The mission at hand. There was still a way. A way to save her. He didn’t know how he knew this, but the truth of it was as self-evident as the roiling abyss within his chest.
He knew, as surely as he’d known anything else before, that he needed his Eidolon. He needed the Nexus. And he needed it now.
He broke into a sprint, paying the Kurator no more mind. As he ran out of the room, he heard the report of another gunshot, but he didn’t stop to wonder where the bullet might have landed. No more. No more extraneous thoughts that could only distract from the mission.
The hangar was still deserted. Still full of unmanned Eidolons. He made a beeline for his ash-laden phantom. Threw himself into the cockpit.
He ignored the console, ignored the HUD. Forget the systems check. He needed the Nexus. Only the Nexus could save Silon.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
As his senses attuned to those of his Eidolon’s, he searched within the endless expanse, a graveyard of the universe’s memories. He searched for the divergent stream. The other possibility. A new cascade of [ENTROPY].
He couldn’t find it. Nothing changed. Or rather, it didn’t change enough. He was still inside his Eidolon, still forgoing a systems check, still frantically searching for a reset, a way to put Silon back.
He was stuck—trapped—inside an endless loop. An endless loop of fresh grief and aimless desperation.
Each time, he discovered anew the reality and permanence of Silon’s death—of his own hand in it. Each time, he carried with him the cumulative scars of all previous loops, forever etched upon and within vaults of Bone. He couldn’t forget. The Nexus wouldn’t let him forget.
Zelen’s world was a blinding flash of ghostly blue. And the deaths that awaited everywhere and everywhen.
The flash extended out from his stump of a left arm, then condensed into an explosion that incinerated another Eidolon in the neighbouring bay. No armament. Only the Nexus heeding a Reiter’s call. A call louder than it’d ever been.
The next blast came from the intact right arm and took out two more Eidolons, one of them undocked. Then even his central chassis erupted in waves of uncontrolled energy, translating his anguish, direct from the source. Zelen’s world was fire and brimstone, and he himself was the fire, the brimstone, wrath incarnate.
He killed and killed. He didn’t know how to stop. Didn’t want to stop. The Reiter sees into the domain of WAR, and calls forth destruction and domination. No Reiter before him, no human before him, had ever achieved such purity. A pure and limitless conduit of destruction and domination.
Suddenly, his world of ghostly blue shifted, marred by a red stain. An Eidolon. Live. Moving. A crimson frame streaked with the coils of a centipede.
Spindrift thrust himself into the storm of Zelen’s destructive energy. A round from LA [WINCHESTER] cut through the storm before bursting into Kingfisher’s SPU.
Zelen’s world was the darkness inside his cockpit. And the roiling abyss that flared from his chest. He could still hear the Nexus, and the Nexus him. He could still fight. Still kill.
He raised his arm, willing it to explode and disappear the crimson centipede that coiled before him. But the centipede was faster, with its opponent having crystallized into one [INEVITABLE] wave of destruction. Spindrift’s right arm swung, resolute and unflinching, directly into Kingfisher’s central chassis.
[MJOLNIR] buried itself into Zelen’s chest, into the abyss that roiled within. Then the ensuing shockwave dissipated the blackness.
Zelen, with any and all Reserves utterly spent, felt his connection with the Nexus dim then extinguish altogether. The Nexus deserted him, as quickly and completely as it had once fused with him, and left him an empty vessel.
Finally.
Finally I can rest. I can forget.
But as Zelen faded into oblivion, the last thing he saw wasn’t the crimson frame of his saviour but redness of an entirely different kind. A lurid red that spread across a grey barren field.
~February 20th, 140 AH~
~Joint Base Akra, Kurator HQ, Terminal One~
“Here it comes, ladies and gents, the mother of all hissy fits, just as advertised.”
“AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH—”
“Zelen! Listen to me! It’s finished! It’s done! You’re safe, you’re—”
“Wolfeye! Get in position, and pay extra attention to his right shoulder. That’s his favourite. Jockey, get in there, son, flank him from the other side! Spindrift, you know what to do.”
“YOU LIED TO ME! WHAT DID YOU DO WITH SILON? GIVE HER BACK! PUT HER BACK TOGETHER!”
“I’m sorry, Zelen, but you need to forget about Silon for one second and focus on yourself! Focus on the here and—”
“Asena! It’s too dangerous! You must [UNRAVEL] while you still have the—”
“Don’t you dare, Corporal. Not when we’re about to have our Kingfisher back. You saw it yourself. You saw the power—”
“WHAT DID YOU SHOW ME? WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME? LIES, ALL OF IT! WHERE’S SILON? I NEED TO—”
“Silon’s gone, Zelen! I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do to change that. But that doesn’t mean… You still have… You’re still you.”
“Wait for a sign, boys. Sit tight and wait for a sign. The moment we see the glory of the Nexus flow back into our boy is when we make our move.”
“… I’LL KILL YOU! I’LL KILL YOU ALL FOR WHAT YOU’VE DONE TO SILON! I WON’T LEAVE A SINGLE—”
“No! Zelen, please. Please listen to me. There’s another way. You always have another way, if you’d only—”
“DID SILON HAVE ANOTHER WAY? DID YOU GIVE HER A CHOICE? MONSTERS, ALL OF YOU. MONSTERS THAT NEED EXTERMINATING…”
“No, Zelen, please…”
“Get ready, boys.”
A sharp keening filled Asena’s headset, and she winced in her seat. She felt someone’s hand—her father’s?—grip her arm. And then—
“Now, boys, move in! Hahaaa, look at him go! Fucking beautiful!”
“Zelen? Zelen! Answer me!”
No answer. And despite her sensory deprivation, Asena saw and felt, clear as day, a blinding flash of ghostly blue and the accompanying roil of a blackened abyss.
“No… no, don’t do this…”
“No time to mope, Corporal! You’re up again. You got us this far, now finish the job. If you want to stop your fiancé and your brother from killing each other, that is.”
Makiri. Zelen. The yawning chasm within Asena’s chest. Finish the job? What was she to do? For all her self-imposed mission—of healing Zelen, guiding him to the truth, helping him move forward—she’d only succeeded in repeating the ultimate nightmare, of recycling the moment of his total destruction.
This time, he won’t have to do it alone. I won’t let him do it alone.
How naive she’d been. And how utterly unprepared.
Yet, even in her paralysis, Asena recalled something the General had said, moments before her latest and most terrible of [EVOCATIONS].
You’ll know what to do. You already have the solution. I’m sure of it.
And as much as the thought of it only filled her with more despair, she realized that the General had been right. She’d always had the solution. After all, she, like her father before her, had always been among the brightest and most dedicated of Kurators.
The subject had regained his attunement to the Nexus. Fully and spectacularly. Now, it was time to readjust his relationship with the Nexus, lest he let his latest Psychic collapse burn it all away.
Asena’s sternum ignited with the chaos of a thousand memories. She reached out and grabbed hold of every thread she could find—hers, his, anyone’s—and channelled every ounce of her Reserves. Into her loudest and most terrible call to the Nexus.
[REWIRE].