~March 27th, 140 AH~

~Sector Pisces, Gold Rush FOB~

The first casualty of the Uprising War, as Asena learned, was a Joint Forces Reiter by the name of Eduard Vesnin. A lieutenant from the class of proto-Reiters whose ‘graduations’ had been accelerated in light of the Mothership’s resurfacing, Vesnin had been 18-years-old when he was killed in combat.

The second casualty was an Alliance Jaeger by the name of Tino Lluvia. As soon as Asena received word of the nature of his death, she knew instinctively that she had to break from her original plan and make for the Gold Rush FOB as soon as possible.

Tino’s killer was a young Essential woman called Ruhua, who used to work the canteen at the Reiter Garrison until her secondment several months ago. She was Asena’s age—two years older than Lieutenant Vesnin. So far, no one had gotten her to divulge how she’d gotten her hands on a service pistol, nor her motivations for using it. But it didn’t take a mindreader, nor indeed a Kurator, to guess at the latter.

In any case, Asena hadn’t rushed to the Gold Rush FOB in order to mourn Tino, nor to question Ruhua. She had a much bigger worry, and as she flew in her M-024, she listened with mounting dread for updates on the radio. At any moment, she expected her headset to explode with frantic reports of uncontrolled violence—of an Alliance Reiter that had gone berserk.

Thankfully, the chatter on the radio remained uneventful in nature if tense in tone. And when she transited through the Gold Rush’s barriers, she found an encampment that was wholly intact and densely populated, despite the drastic upheaval it’d undergone in the hours past. For at least the time being, Asena’s worries proved to be nothing more than paranoia.

Asena strode through the camp at pace, not stopping to gauge its temperature. She’d have time later to engage the first cluster of Akropolitans the Alliance needed to win over to their cause. But her fatigue and lack of sleep had rendered her incapable of multi-tasking. Right now, there was only one face she wanted to see—one worry she needed to assuage.

The mood amongst her fellow Alliance members told her just how close the woman called Ruhua had come to being the third casualty in the Uprising War. And Asena’s worries flared anew when, upon asking for Zelen, she was directed to the very tent where the ‘prisoner’ was being kept.

“You just let him go in there?” she asked incredulously. “By himself?”

Panzer Kari Falten merely shrugged, though her clenched jaws spoke plenty of the efforts that went into maintaining her casual demeanour.

“He said he wanted to speak to the prisoner alone. Why, was I supposed to stop him?”

“Yes,” Asena exclaimed, unable to mask her exasperation. “Didn’t it occur to you that it might be unsafe? For the prisoner, obviously, but… also for Zelen?”

Kari raised an eyebrow, even as her jaws worked some more.

“No, can’t say it did,” she said coldly. “With everything else that’s going on, I can honestly tell you that the personal safety of Tino’s murderer might actually be the farthest thing from my mind. And why should I be worried about Zelen? He’s in there with an Essie canteen worker that’s zip-tied to a post. What do you think is going to happen?”

Asena didn’t answer, and instead broke away from the conversation. She felt light-headed, nearly losing her footing as she sped toward the tent in question.

Kari was right about one thing. There was entirely too much going on, all at once. Asena herself would have to reckon with ‘everything else’ sooner rather than later. They were, after all, the direct consequences of a war she’d chosen for herself.

But… one task at a time. One worry at a time.

The ‘jail cell’ was a repurposed storage tent whose contents had been pushed to one side. Zelen, in his black-on-white Alliance fatigues, sat calmly upon a makeshift chair of supply crates, while Ruhua the prisoner leaned against a tent pole, with hands tied behind her back and dishevelled face cast to the floor.

As soon as Asena walked in, she received the final confirmation she needed to put her paranoia to rest. The stale air inside the tent was free from any threat of violence. Only a profound sense of sorrow wafted between prisoner and ‘interrogator’, same as the emotion that dampened—and softened—Zelen’s smile as he looked up to greet the newcomer.

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

“Asena,” Zelen spoke first, earnest and polite despite everything else, “I’m glad you made it here safely. And… I’m sorry you had to see this place in such disarray.”

“Never mind that,” Asena said, slightly breathless. “Could you—can we talk?”

She glanced at Ruhua, but the prisoner showed no reaction. Neither had she given any indication that she’d noticed the arrival of a third presence.

Zelen too turned his sorrowful smile onto Ruhua for a moment. Then, as if reassured by the prisoner’s despondency, he stood to join Asena outside the tent.

“I’m sorry to hear the parley didn’t go so well,” Zelen was again the first to carry the conversation. “Did Ghata Vakta… have anything productive to say? Is there any hope for further dialogue?”

Asena took a moment to consider—to wonder if the name ‘Vakta’ meant anything to Zelen beyond representing the face of the enemy. She then shook her head.

“It went about as well as we could’ve expected,” she said, then left it at that.

Zelen nodded his understanding, then fell silent, perhaps in search of answers only he himself could provide. The pause gave Asena the chance to delve into questions of her own.

“What were you doing in there, Zelen?” she asked, blunt and straight to the point. “What did you hope to learn?”

Zelen met Asena’s gaze, and for a moment, his own eyes flashed with a blackness that was terrifyingly familiar to the Kurator. But the moment passed quickly, leaving only a sorrowful smile in its wake.

“Did you know, Asena,” he began by way of a response, “that the people of Akropolis had a slur with which to refer to the Tetrarchy—to us? ‘Tetrat’, they sometimes called us behind our backs. I only heard it for the first time this morning. It was one of the last things Tino said, before he died.”

Asena frowned, failing to see the thread. She did know about ‘Tetrat’, though she too had only learned of it after befriending members of the Apfel Alliance. Knowing the man Tino Lluvia had been, she could readily imagine the heated vehemence with which the slur had reached Zelen’s ears. The chasm within her chest made itself apparent again, along with worries that refused to die down completely.

“And did you know also,” Zelen continued, “that Reiters aren’t the only people who’re capable of killing? I suppose I always knew that, but this morning, I saw it with my own eyes. First, a Jaeger who saw fit to kill a Reiter. Then a canteen worker who was driven to kill a Jaeger. And all it took was one shot. One bullet.”

The chasm in Asena’s chest widened. She now became aware of her own rising pulse, as she wrestled with the irony in Zelen’s words.

Oh, Zelen. Of course you of all people knew that. The very fact of it was what had set all of this in motion in the first place. All it took was one shot. One bullet.

“Zelen—” she began, not knowing where she might go next. But Zelen wasn’t done with his thoughts.

“He went by Eddy,” he said softly—almost reverently, “and that in there is Ru. They met when she still worked at the Reiter Garrison back on home base, and while he was still a seventh-year proto-Reiter. It was pure coincidence that they both got posted to the same FOB, shortly after Eddy’s early graduation. A happy accident. Only…”

Zelen fell silent as he cast his gaze downward, as if to push down the blackness that threatened to rise again. Asena was compelled to speak, but she didn’t know of what, other than to say,

“I’m sorry.”

He shook his head, then looked up with a sorrowful smile.

“Ever since my [REWIRING], I’ve been looking.”

She opened her mouth as if to respond, then stopped. Instead, she listened quietly.

“Looking for the real me. One reality to latch onto. To make everything simple. So I never have to doubt. Never have to wonder who I’m meant to kill, or what I’m meant to fight for.”

His eyes lost their focus then, as if he was seeing past Asena—and past their shared reality altogether.

“The answer—or the pieces of an answer—come to me in dreams. At first, I hated them. They weren’t helpful at all. Only muddied the waters. I tried my darnedest to ignore them, and found that I just couldn’t. ”

His smile widened just a touch, taking on a hesitant yet unmistakable note of delight. A reluctant fondness. Nostalgia.

“I'm a different person in every dream. And yet, I'm also the same person in all of them. I don’t know how I know this, but I do. In one dream, I was thrust into the role of commander. In a different dream, desperate people looked to me to lead an uprising. Maybe not unlike the one we’re in now. And in yet another, a disembodied voice called me a liar and held me solely responsible for the deaths of millions—no, billions upon untold billions.”

The intensity of Zelen’s gaze returned to the present, and trained upon his companion. But Asena found herself utterly unable to match his smile. Instead, she looked on in stunned silence, even as her worries settled into the chasm within her chest.

“I want to remember everything,” he said, as his sorrow settled into the blackness behind his eyes. “I know that now. As surely as I’ve known anything else. Every truth, every pain, every death, every kill, every hateful word, every reason behind every tear. Everything that I ever was, and every possibility that I let drift back into the Nexus. It’s all me. I never want to forget that. I never want to forget again.”

His eyes lost focus one last time, seeing past myriad realities before settling on one face among billions upon infinite billions.

“I never want to forget her.”