~February 25th, 140 AH~
~Joint Base Akra, Transit Gate 4~
Curious eyes lingered upon Asena and her companion as they made their way through a part of the base usually reserved for sortieing Reiters and the Panzers that manned the shielded gates. Every time these eyes shifted from naked curiosity to fleeting suspicion, Asena’s heart skipped a beat, convinced that the mission was already at an end, foiled by her own all too recognizable profile.
What’s a pair of Kurators doing at the transit gates? And shouldn’t one of them be at home preparing for her fancy wedding?
As it turned out, however, these challenges remained confined to her imagination. Soon, Asena and Akash—today dressed in the tan fatigues of a Kurator officer—arrived at the ‘watchtower’ beside Transit Gate 4, where they were met by a sergeant from the Panzer Corps.
“Good to see you, sir,” the man, taller and more muscular than most Reiters, greeted Akash with an impeccable salute. Then his stony eyes flicked toward the young Kurator as he added, “Come on in and make yourselves comfortable. I’m ready to go when you are, but if need be, we should have this gate to ourselves for at least the next three hours or so.”
“Good to see you too, Graeme,” the Gaertner-in-disguise responded with a warm smile, tilting his head to make eye contact, “and I thought I told you to stop with the sirs and the salutes. We’re trying to flatten the hierarchy, not uphold it.”
“Sorry, sir.” The man called Graeme spun on his feet, then held the door open for his guests, every one of his movements cut with military precision. “I guess old habits die hard.”
And no wonder, Asena thought to herself. She doubted she’d met many others who looked more at home in the Joint Forces than this sergeant. As such, it was difficult to square this impression of him with the cause he’d pledged allegiance to. A cause she now shared.
The optimistically named watchtower was a dark and compact space lit only by a radar screen and the pale blue that trickled out from nearby generators. It would’ve been cozy for one man of Graeme’s size. For the trio that squeezed into it now, it felt downright claustrophobic.
Suddenly breathless, Asena found a corner to lean against as she tried to quell her rising panic. Nothing about the plan had changed. Nothing was beyond the scope of what she knew herself to be capable of. Now wasn’t the time to be getting cold feet.
Even as her breathing settled, she felt the gazes of her two accomplices: Graeme’s rigid and unchanged, and Akash’s gleaming with something more than the ambient light. Their eyes met, and Asena nodded her grim affirmation. She was as prepared as she’d ever be.
As the headset came down, the last thing she saw was the ghostly blue of Akash’s eyes, glowing with the otherness that surged within him.
The next moment, she too became one with the Nexus. Far away from a workstation, and with her IO port covered shut, she nevertheless felt that familiar stirring within her sternum, which told her that she was ready to Kurate.
She’d already felt this effect once before, during last night’s rehearsal. The foreknowledge, however, didn’t stop her from being astounded anew, at the sheer lunacy of communing with the Nexus in the absence of Anamnium.
Yet, to be precise, she did have a source to draw from: Akash Varana himself. Such was one of the extraordinary powers of his Einkunst [ALLIANCE], which allowed the Gaertner to act as a walking conduit for his fellow Sehers to access the Nexus.
Asena had long stopped questioning the designs behind the Nexus’s choice of Einkunsters and their powers. Right now, she was merely grateful for its facilitating her task, one that required her utmost skill and concentration.
And courage.
They found her before she them. Before she knew it, the full force of their collective consciousness hit her square in the chest, potent enough to produce the sensation of her entire rib cage shattering into bone dust.
Asena gasped with pain and shock, nearly breaking her link. She gritted her teeth and pressed into her corner, readying herself to receive more waves of affective turbulence, forcing herself to share in the Spiegels’ pain. This is nothing compared to what they’ve endured.
It was all there. Grief. Remorse. Yearning. Impotent rage. All the extraneities that could only distract Reiters from their missions: shared, channelled, and dissipated through the caring and all-encompassing minds of their Spiegel partners.
But not lost. Never lost. Within vaults of Bone rest the Mind’s secrets.
What was most remarkable—and most heartbreaking—was the purity of their pain. For theirs were the selfless pain of those who gave and gave, and never asked for anything in return.
They grieved for their Reiters’ losses. They regretted their own shortcomings. They yearned for a kinder battlefield. And they raged against a world that wouldn’t provide one.
Not a single thought for themselves. Not even the acknowledgement of their own predicament—of its cruelty and inhumanity.
Asena knew this to be the product of their thorough and constant re-education. That the Spiegels didn’t know any better. Her resolve wavered momentarily. Was she doing the right thing? Wouldn’t it be kinder to leave them be, to let them perpetuate their illusion of nonexistence?
She shook her head, as firmly as she’d braced for the pain. Because she also knew of another Spiegel-Reiter pair, ones who had taken a different path. That path had led to both of their destruction, but it’d also been one of their own making. Because theirs had been pain shared in the truest sense of the word. Because the Reiter in that relationship had been as attuned to his Spiegel’s pain as she his.
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And that had made all the difference, for better or for worse.
Asena opened herself to the Spiegels’ pain, as much as Zelen had done once upon a faded memory. She held their pain within her chest, and closed the chasm with pain of her own.
First, whispers. Then the whispers coalesced into threads, then these threads gathered into networks. She saw clearly now—just as she’d suspected—that the Spiegels’ networks of self were interconnected, through bundles that were as intricate as they were dense.
She first happened upon the idea during the fateful ‘debrief’ with her father and the General, the one in which she was inducted as the ‘29th member’ of the Spiegel Program. While neither Yuito nor Fenix brought it up, Asena herself found it odd that Spiegel Delta-Upsilon—Tsetseg Tenger—had avoided detection even after rediscovering her latent memories.
But if Tsetseg’s Ascension hadn’t been as ‘undifferentiated’ as the authorities might have claimed? If she might have become a Kurator in a different life, one in which she’d been born to a family that didn’t fit the selection criteria for proto-Spiegels? And if she’d learned to manipulate her own memory fragments, to camouflage them within the larger network?
Along with a confirmation of her theories, Asena felt the bolstering of her hopes. Perhaps Tsetseg and her quasi-Kuration wasn’t unique among the Spiegels. Perhaps there was a way for more of them to fight back, just as Tsetseg had…
Asena dove deeper into the network, began to tug at the threads—gently, almost in shy greeting. The Spiegels, for their part, met Asena’s intrusion with what could only be described as detachment. They were aware of her, perhaps even questioned her alien presence. But they didn’t reject her, didn’t shy away. They’d been trained—re-educated—to accept any and all forms of human contact.
Well, this was one interaction they might soon regret. These Spiegels might well rue the day they let the 29th member of the program into their midst, to shake the very foundations of their nonexistence. For that, she must apologize. Apologetically, resolutely, she forged ahead with her mission.
My name is Asena Shiranui, and I’m a Kurator with the Apfel Alliance, she spoke through the Nexus. I have a memory to share with you all… and a favour to ask.
~February 25th, 140 AH~
~Joint Base Akra, Eidolon Hangar~
Nervous eyes hid from Zelen and his companions as they made their way through a half-empty hangar. Every time these eyes shifted from recognition to evasion, Zelen felt… nothing.
Captain Collima Duodecim led the way, followed closely by his uncle Fenix. Zelen couldn’t quite tell if the passersby were scared of him or the General. Perhaps both? Not that he particularly cared either way.
“How’s the wedding preparation coming along?” The older man turned to him with an expansive smile. “I trust you would’ve had the rehearsal dinner by now?”
The General’s smile was friendly enough, as befitted a larger-than-life uncle figure among the Tetrarchy. Yet, for reasons unclear to Zelen himself, the sight of the smile agitated something deep within his chest. Something akin to bile, a toxic cloud… a roiling abyss.
Something other than nothing.
“Yes.” He managed to swallow the not-nothing that threatened to rise from his throat. “I’m no expert, sir, but to my untrained eyes, everything appears to be going smoothly.”
“By god, son,” Fenix’s eyes widened in mock admonishment. “I don’t think you could sound less enthusiastic if you tried. Lighten up, soldier. It’s a cause for celebration, and god knows those are in short supply.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I for one can’t wait. I’m like a brat on the night before Messiah’s Mass. A union between two honest-to-goodness Tetrarch families. It’s hard to believe how rare that is nowadays. Enjoy it, son, but more importantly… don’t fuck it up.”
Fenix followed this up with a booming laugh. The laugh was good-natured enough, as befitted an uncle figure ribbing one of his many nephews. It was more than that. It was… loving.
In this moment, Zelen had no doubt that Fenix Duodecim loved him, as he loved all of his soldiers and all of Akropolis’s children that would one day grow up to join and serve the war. And for reasons unclear to him, the heat of this love only inflamed the abyss that roiled within his chest.
Zelen swallowed again, and said nothing.
Eventually, Captain Collima came to a stop on one of the catwalks and began to fiddle with the external console. The General stood back and watched, smile as wide as ever. Zelen’s gaze turned upward, toward the model ES-V that towered over the trio.
The once ash-laden phantom had received a thorough clean and polish, along with a new coat of paint. It gleamed anew in midnight-blue, just as Zelen had once pictured it (had he, though? If he had, he couldn’t picture it now). All four of its limbs were intact (why wouldn’t they be?), svelte, and muscular—mission-ready.
War-ready.
“Alright, Athelstan…” Collima looked up from the console. “Hop in, and let’s get this thing started.”
As Zelen climbed into the cockpit and slipped into the Nexa-Suit, he felt… nothing. No, not entirely nothing. Echoes of a distant past. Whispers of a far-reaching future. The tears that bore someone else’s sorrow.
“This is Hawkbit, calling Kingfisher. Radio check, over.”
“This is Kingfisher. Loud and clear, over.”
“Right. Tethering session 140-2B is a go. We’ll follow standard procedure and start with Training Scenario 1—break, Kingfisher. Stand by for additional briefings… Uh, Kingfisher, disregard previous. We’ll do something a little different, as per the General’s request. Training Scenario 19A. Acknowledge, over?”
19A. Zelen’s memories of the training scenario designations were fuzzy at best. But for reasons unclear to him, he knew exactly what 19A entailed. And he could no longer contain the not-nothing that surged through him.
“Acknowledged.”
“Good enough. Stand by. Scenario starting now. Hawkbit out.”
The radio cut out, then the Eidolon’s HUD filled with the visual mock-up of a dark rectangular space. With a beep, a solitary red marker appeared on the radar. Just one enemy unit. Still out of sight, but Zelen could picture perfectly the obsidian monster that hid within darkened corners.
And as Zelen readied to welcome the enemy—anti-Eidolon unit ZT-01, designation ‘Vendetta’—his senses suddenly filled with the aggregates of a thousand different whispers.
—morning, Kingfisher. This is Spiegel Alpha-Eta. Are we clear to—
—to make your acquaintance, Kingfisher. Spiegel Tau-Sigma speaking. How—
—take it that you’re Kingfisher. My name is Spiegel Iota-Mu, and we—
Along with the whispers, Zelen was overcome by fresh waves of not-nothings, potent enough to leave him momentarily reeling in shock. What were these? The yearnings of someone else’s heart. The joy of someone else’s laughter. The blood from someone else’s screaming lungs.
Yet one distinct signal rose above the whispers—above the waves of not-nothings that threatened to drown him—and spoke to him in a voice only he could hear.
“Zelen. This is Asena Shiranui. I need you to remain silent, and listen very carefully to what I have to say.”