Chapter 1: Survivor

Her home is just as she had left it ten years ago. With a few key differences, of course.

In place of flames there is ash and dust.

In place of booms and screams there is silence.

In place of harmony there is wistfulness and tragedy.

In a way, it’s kind of nostalgic for Sykra to walk these roads again, even if they’re broken. If she wills herself to, she could still imagine how it must have felt to be a few feet shorter, with only shoulder-length silver-white hair and carmine eyes still filled with joy.

The young woman spots something from across the road to her left. An old playground she used to swing by when she was little.

It seems relatively untouched from the destruction that laid waste to the town, though there is some stray rubble from nearby homes scattered about, some having crashed right into some playground attractions, like the slide and the sandbox.

Sykra continues walking. This is not what she’s looking for.

Her walk is monotonous. Ruined home after ruined home, some in disrepair and others a pile of rubble. Car after abandoned car. A long stretch of broken road. It all just blends together in Sykra’s mind as one big tedious relic of destruction.

But soon, she finds another thing to catch her interest down by the roadside.

It’s a skeleton wearing a black and white skinsuit, similar to her own.

She approaches the corpse and rummages through the nearby satchel—presumably the skeleton’s in their life—and pulls out a small black and blue rectangular device.

With a tap of her finger, it expands with a sharp whir and reactivates with a faint flicker. Seems like it still has some juice in it after all.

“Raven Hill,” Sykra reads aloud with a faint voice, “Age 27, Codename: Wildfire, C-Rank…”

“...Last active 4 years ago.”

‘Relatively recent compared to the decade old ruins,’ Sykra remarks to herself.

The young woman hums as she turns off the device, stowing it away in a satchel of her own, hanging tightly to her hip.

But just before she gets moving, she rummages through Raven’s satchel one last time.

And…

‘Hmm, not here. Seems like someone stole their Armor Module.’

With that, Sykra gets up and continues moving forward.

After a few more minutes of walking, another corpse blocks the road, this time far more interesting than just a skeleton.

‘A Blitz Suit?’

Right in the middle of the road, leaning on a rusted green car, is a hulking, silver suit of armor, tinted with rust and damaged beyond repair.

Its sleek and supple yet bulky form is riddled with rips and holes, and its thin visor stretching across the helmet’s face is cracked, seemingly from one big impact.

She kneels down by the limp suit and puts a hand on the square of its damaged chest and two fingers on the side of its neck.

Her scarlet eyes widen in surprise as the entire suit flashes white and blue, and the light continues to grow to consume even the girl.

Sykra screws her eyes shut, the light still penetrating her eyelids.

But soon, she eases the tension in her eyes as the light gradually fades, and moments later, the tension is gone for good.

The light hitting her eyelids has gone, and Sykra doesn’t hesitate; her eyes flutter open to a small device the size of her hand in her grasp and–

“Eugh. They stink…”

She moves away from the rotten husk now leaning on the car and inspects the device now in her hand.

‘A standard BS Armor Module…’

Silver with blue highlights in the shape of a diamond, cold to the touch but with latent heat within. Familiar, but it’s not her own, and it seems low on power too. Whoever this person was evidently didn’t get to use it for long before getting shut down by bullets and blades.

Sykra’s eyes drift back up to the mummified corpse.

A shirt and loose slacks… Not standard attire for a Blitz Suit.

Odd… But it doesn’t matter to Sykra either way. She could make a thousand conjectures and it wouldn’t amount to anything. It’s not her place to dig into other’s past.

So once again, she stows away the device in her satchel and walks away, not even bothering to ID the mummified husk. This is still not what she’s looking for.

Hours after she found that corpse, she is once again put to a halt at the foot of another.

Her breath hitches as she takes a few steps forward, stopping just a few meters before the shredded picket fence, for going beyond that would mean entering a catacomb of old, burnt memories.

It’s a corpse that holds a myriad of colorful recollections, now smouldered and decayed. It’s where her memories were born, nurtured, and killed in hellfire—this corpse was her home, a reminder of the bells of war that first tolled over the nation of Corrin… and when her hometown became target to ravenous decimation.

Sykra takes an unconscious, delicate step forward.

Her carmine eyes stare at her long-collapsed home, feeling as though death itself is laid bare to her in those distant remains. She could still smell the faint traces of ash swirling around, and if she tries hard enough, she might still feel the wrathful heat of the flames, and hear the muted cries of her mother to the right of her stock-still body.

“...”

Sykra could feel her heart beginning to race and her head beginning to ache. Not a good sign. She is becoming herself.

She unzips her satchel one more time, and instead of taking from the corpse, she will instead be taking from herself.

‘I thought the initial dosage was enough…’ Sykra thinks absentmindedly, ‘But I’m wrong. What I need is more’

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

A small steel jar now sits firmly in her grip, and with her other hand she unclips the lid, and with a flip, the jar is open.

She tilts the jar into her open palm and shakes out four grey and white pills, which turns into five with another stubborn shake.

In one smooth movement, she tilts her head along with her palm and downs the drugs in a practiced gulp.

She will be fine. In a few minutes, she will be as she usually is, like she was still the little girl that once gawked at her burning home.

A husk.

It only took a minute for Sykra to feel dazed. Dazed enough for her vision to blur.

“Ugh!”

Dazed enough for her legs to give, knees to the ground and eyes facing the pavement.

Her bleary mind starts to converge and stir with one another, and reality and dreams become one. A small price to pay for the drug’s wicked sorcery, but worth it in the mind of the girl.

Imagery of things she knows and once knew flash in her head.

A house. A fire.

Her mother. A heart monitor.

Her father’s statue. His disappearance.

She didn’t even realize her eyes were shut tight until she found her breathing ragged. That’s when the visions stopped, and she found herself lying on her side in the middle of the road.

Her eyes are still a bit blurry, and her breathing is still rough and heavy, but she could feel herself coming down from the side-effects’ climax.

The young woman slowly pushes herself up from her knee and onto her feet.

She looks around to get a grip of her surroundings, and that’s when she laid eyes on her house, still intact. The white walls, the pale red roof, the windows and the white picket fence, all still there.

But she knew it was a dream. One that doesn’t belong. So she blinked, and it’s gone, the home in her dreams returning to the truth of ruin that it now is.

Of course, she doesn’t feel anything about the revelation. No grief. No despair. She just is.

Right now, she’s more interested in counting how many more pills she could take today.

She took three before her deployment, and five now… which leaves two more opportunities before things become bad. Heck, maybe she could slip in an extra one or two more pills just before day’s end, as a treat.

Sykra looks to her left and right before putting her focus back to the rubble.

Indeed, this is what she’s looking for. A landmark she could use to coordinate her objective.

The Lwyney Hearts and Souls Hospital should be a sharp right from her home, then a left, and another left, and…

Well, she’ll think about it more from there.

For now, it’s best she put her energy into walking.

She departs from her ruined memories and onwards to her objective with not a single sentiment of the past on her mind.

Not even the love she has for her mother.

Dusky twilight casts its shadow over the ruined town, painting the roads and remnants with an orange hue and blackening the things that remain hidden between them.

Leaning over the corner of a darkened alleyway that has yet collapsed inwards, Sykra takes a peek at her objective’s location: Lwyney Hearts and Souls Hospital, her town’s one and only hospital.

It’s a relatively large looking building, quite wide and tall with what were supposed to be white walls, though the paint seemed to have worn over the decade of its abandonment. To say that it has aged well in comparison to the rest of the ruins around it would be an understatement; in major disrepair it may be, at least it’s not a pile of worthless rubble.

Which means that it’s worth a lot for people that would like to take shelter… or hide.

She can’t see anyone peering out of the various shattered windows of the building, so getting intel before engaging is a bust.

Sykra emits a low hum.

This is the assigned location. Since the commission she took is public it’s possible that her adversaries have already left with the objective knowing that they might be attacked soon. But…

Sykra opens her satchel and takes out her phone, opening it to a blank map.

‘Nav-Jammer’s still here. And the surrounding locations have already been proactively secured to blockade any attempts at escape. So yes, they should still be here.’

With her objectives assured location in mind, Sykra feels through her satchel again and pulls out a familiar, diamond shaped device.

Silver with glowing red highlights, warm to the touch and radiating with power that races even through the young woman’s veins. This is Sykra’s Armor Module.

‘One hour of use. Estimated 20 minutes for mission completion.’

But Sykra is not in proper position. It’s best she gets close to assure maximum efficiency.

After all, isn’t that the point of a mercenary?

Sykra brushes away a few stray locks of hair covering her carmine eyes before sweeping back the flow of her pale mane, and then vanishing into the darkness of the alleyway, moving forward for the sake of the objective.

Her heart pulses with a steadfast rhythm, and her breath remains steady and concise.

Even her face gives no way for emotion. No, perhaps it’s less than emotion that she is expressing—like her visage has become a voracious void, a stark hole in the darkness.

As she stalks her way to the hospital, her mind has become nothing more than an echo chamber for three simple objectives, repeating the sole reasons she is here in the first place.

“Kill Liberationists. Retrieve payload. Make money.”

Sykra passes through the fire exit by the back in the case the front entrance is heavily fortified or trapped. Thankfully (and strangely), the fire exit is left completely unguarded. Why aren’t there any signs of guards?

Despite that, the atmosphere of this place is completely different from the desolation outside; sparks of anticipation arc through each dim hall of the dilapidated hospital that the young woman looks down.

The blanchette thumbs the center of her Armor Module, primed to unleash its strength like a finger to a trigger.

But she holds back for now. Best to conserve energy in the case of a long fight.

Plus, the flash of light in the midst of transformation ought to help her in one way or another.

‘No sign of enemies so far. Maybe they’re cooped up in one of the wards?’

With that goal in mind, Sykra pulls out a flashlight and starts walking.

As she walks through the eerily silent facilities, and the smell of stale air and cement dust infiltrates her senses, her suspicion climbs ever higher.

‘They can’t possibly have left, right? Where would they go? Wouldn’t I have been informed of such a case?’

‘Tch, no use for wondering right now. Just scan the hospital, find the Nav-Jammer, and confirm with the clients if I find nothing.’

Suddenly, Sykra hears something faint to her left.

A gradual whirring noise echoing in the far distance of a hall before fading as quickly as it came.

Sykra shines her light down that hall and sees nothing, but she knows that she heard something. Something is here with her, watching her, and she thinks she knows what it is.

She runs down the ruined hall and takes a right where she believed the noise had faded. Again, the whirring noise appears unseen, coming from her left again.

She turns left.

Then right.

Left again. Following that whirring noise that remains unseen in her light.

Until finally, the noise stops running from her and waits behind two open double doors.

The young woman looks above the double doors to find a rectangular steel plate barely holding onto the wall it’s hanging on. It appears to have a name engraved onto it.

‘Medical Ward,’ Sykra reads.

That thing… That drone has led her here.

She looks down to her left hand where the Armor Module is still firmly in her grip. Its warmth emanates both power and assurance, and its scarlet light brings much the same.

As she presses her thumb down on the center of the device, it glows ever brighter.

‘Enemies up ahead. Best I present myself accordingly.’

Sykra’s thumb pushes down without restraint, and a click resounds from the device.

As Sykra begins to walk in front of the open doors, a bright red light envelops her entire body.

Her skinsuit grows warmer and warmer, from the tips of her feet to the skin of her neck as a soft yet overwhelming heat wraps around and devours her body. Gradually, the temperature climbs down to something more mild as the sharp sounds of clicking metal begin by her feet. Click after click, the metallic clicking grows louder as they ascend her body from her soles to her breasts, and even further than that.

Sykra’s body grows weightier, heavier, more powerful with each step as metal stacks on top of metal.

Suddenly, she’s a few inches taller, her shoulders grow wider, and her vision has become black as her entire head has become encased in steel.

Then she is granted sight. A vision that lets her see in front of her, behind her, and from her sides.

As the blinding light fades, Sykra finally hears two telltale clicks above her; a pair of triangular sonars have popped up on the top of her head, allowing her to emit a wide radar, which also means…

“Good evening, Mercenary Weiss Saber,” A robotic female voice clinically reports in her helmet, “All systems online. Suit now ready for combat.”

Now, clad in a Blitz Suit of white and red, she takes one last step forward towards the open doors to reveal to her enemies the power held within her sleek yet robust frame.

Make them hear the beating heart of a survivor… while their own is snuffed.