Heat.

Sweat.

Worry.

Panic.

Terror.

The world coalesced around me into being. I was panting. It was hot.

Sweat dripped down my face. It was hard to breathe. The sun was slamming down on my body, burning like a brilliant, blinding sphere in the hazy sky. The waters of the retreating Aral sea glittered in the distance. The port of Aralsk became visible, emerging from the blur of the world.

I tried to wipe my mask’s lenses but they were badly fogged up. Each breath hurt.

The face of a doctor swam into view, forming out of the super heated, warping air.

“Administrator! I…”

“Out with it!” I barked through the mask.

“It’s smallpox, Administrator!” The doctor cried out.

“Impossible,” I said.

“I’m certain of it, Administrator. We’ve run all the tests. The symptoms match.”

“How many?” I yelled.

“Twenty infected. Three dead.” The doctor shook in terror, glancing behind me at the soldiers armed with flamethrowers.

“So it is true. I was hoping that the reports were wrong,” I sighed.

The breathing mask on my face felt heavy as if it weighed a ton.

I took a step forward and the port of Aralsk melted away. A block of apartments formed in front of me. People looked out of the windows at me and the soldiers. Their faces looked worried, afraid.

I turned back to the gathered doctors and soldiers. “Everyone is to be immediately evacuated from this block! Construct a tent city on the outskirt of the city. Inoculate everyone with the vaccine I brought.”

I handed the doctors a case with the vaccines.

I turned to the men behind me. “Once everyone is out, burn everything that the infected touched. I want everyone in town inoculated. Every single man, woman and child. Do it by force if you have to. Quarantine the entire town. We have to stop the spread here and now!"

The world blurred with the heat of the beating sun. Soldiers broke down the doors and pulled families out of the apartment block.

I was sitting on a concrete block, my head was spinning.

Three were dead.

Why did that poor girl have to take plankton samples that day?

Four hundred grams. That was all that it took to kill her and her family.

The apartment block behind me ignited as soldiers pointed their flamethrowers at it. The inferno added to the heat of the desert sun in late summer.

I pulled my mask off and started to sob, rubbing my burning face.

This was my fault. All my fault.

I had designed a new Variola smallpox strain. I had released it over the testing site.

Damnation. I hated myself, hated my guts, wanted to die. Wanted to inhale the virus myself and perish. Wanted to kill myself…

“Slava?”

I raised my tear-filled eyes and looked up. A white-haired, approximately twelve year old pioneer girl was there, standing against the backdrop of the Karakum desert, wearing a schoolgirl uniform and red tie.

“My name is Doctor Kerenski,” I told her. I glanced at the soldiers. Why hasn't this girl been evacuated? How did she get inside the perimeter? How did she know my first name?

“Dante... Slava, you’re dreaming,” the girl insisted, shaking her silver, glittering hair. Piercing-blue eyes looked at my face.

“Look, kid,” I said. “I don’t know…”

Stolen novel; please report.

"You've made it back to Novazem, you got back to the tree, just like you planned!" She said. "It worked! Sort of..."

"Sort of?" I blinked.

"From what I can see... Your soul looks shredded as heck, fractured. I've been trying to put it together using Chrysalis with my forty shards in this tree," she huffed. "It's a lot of work and I'm not very good at it, but I'm trying! I swear I am! I've been at it for a week now. You've no idea how much I missed you, Slava! The real you, not the hollow shell that the damned Giovashi left when she banished your soul from your body. He's fake... empty, only responds when he's spoken to. No drive, no purpose, no magic. I ordered him to sit by the tree, so he'd stop moving about."

"I don't know what you're talking about," I said, wiping my face. "Look, all of this is my fault. I have to fix this. I killed someone. More will die unless I…"

“Slava.” She insisted looking at the burning buildings behind me. “This…. This isn’t your fault!”

“Yes it is, damn it!” I yelled. “Three people are dead BECAUSE of ME! People lost their things and homes because of me! I’m a monster! I’m a murderer! I designed the killer-virus and it got loose!”

The girl stepped even closer to me. “Slava… Please listen to me. You need to focus. This is just a dream. I've been watching it with you, again and again, for days on end. My name is Delta and I’m your soul-sister, your twin!"

“You’re talking nonsense, kid,” I said. “I have no sister. Leave. Evacuate.”

The girl began to circle me like an angry, little shark. “I’m not going to go away, Slava. I… care for you. I don’t like seeing you in pain. I hate watching you be trapped in this loop of self-pity and despair. You can’t keep blaming yourself for this old memory, it’s hurting you, tearing you apart from within. You have to get past it, wake up!"

“Will someone please take this girl away! She needs to be evacuated!” I yelled at the soldiers.

A commissar stepped out of the crowd. He noticed the girl. “You! You need to be evacuated.”

Delta, if that was indeed her name, looked at me. “Really? You’re not getting rid of me so easily.”

The commissar grabbed her wrist, his red cap sliding sideways. I sighed. Soon, the strange, insane girl would be gone and I would be alone, left to wallow in my misery and failure.

The girl looked nervous for a second and then she looked at me and her eyes lit up with determination.

"If this is how you're going to play, fine," she growled.

The girl’s arm suddenly flashed and split open into a hundred shimmering, semi-transparent silver threads.

I gasped in horror. What the hell?! The commissar screamed as silver threads sliced him apart. There was no blood there when he fell. He simply collapsed backwards, fell apart into empty, shredded skin. There was nothing in him but hot air.

“W-what is happening?” I gaped.

“I told you this is a dream, idiot!” Delta huffed. She approached me once again. I backed away from the monstrous thing with blue eyes that masqueraded as a Soviet teenager.

“W-what in the devil's name are you?” I blabbered, my teeth clacking.

“I’m your soul-sister and I’m an Astral Phantom,” she replied. “Slava. Please, listen to me. You need to focus on the present, not the past. I know you. I’ve seen all of this, lived through your memories. You are haunted by your past mistakes. You want to create and help people.”

I nodded, tears blurring the view.

More commissars and soldiers converged on the silver-haired girl. She unfolded like a flower, like a tree made from silver mold, turned into a shining, silver blue squid. Hundreds of silver eyes flashed across her face. Threads sliced through the air with impossible speeds, thrumming like metal supports of a wind-wobbled bridge. The empty skins of the soldiers imploded as she pulverized them. She danced, moved between them like a killer, something impossible that was made from living blades.

Red commissar hats flew, gold stars glinting in the brilliant August sunlight. Empty, leather coats fell to the ground. The flamethrowers clattered down to the concrete.

The squid-creature folded back into an innocent-looking twelve year old.

"Please wake up, Slava," she said. "You saved me... from my darkness and the fear of the future, woke me up from Chrysalis with your actions... talked to me, helped me grow up... but now it's my turn to save you. I've been eating things in the Astral, looking for you for God knows how long!"

She smiled at me and I… remembered, no… recalled her smile.

It seemed familiar in some way. I should have been running away from this monstrous, alien thing, but I wasn’t.

I simply stood there, staring at that adorable, devious sideways grin.

“They didn’t die because of you,” Delta took a step forward. “The captain of the ship made a mistake, disobeyed protocol. Maybe he wasn't notified in time. It wasn’t your fault. They came too close to Vozrozhdeniya island. Ships were supposed to stay 45 kilometers away from the Bioweapons testing area. Your government kept too many secrets from their own people, built too many closed cities.”

“I released the smallpox virus that killed that girl technician and her family.” I shook my head. “Their deaths are my fault. We didn’t act fast enough. We could have saved her and her children, if only...”

“Your lab didn't just make bio-weapons. You've made vaccines for viruses too. You’ve saved millions of lives by designing and ordering inoculations for people of USSR. You've brought vaccines to the city of Aralsk on this day,” she chided me. “The accidental breakout of your smallpox bioweapon in a civilian city only infected twenty people total. You were able to halt the spread. You, not someone else.”

“I wasn’t able to save three people.” I shuddered, wiping my tears away.

“You’ve always been alone in USSR. You never had a friend or a sister to help you!" She stated passionately. "Never had a shoulder to cry on. Never fell in love. Never had a family. You got caught in a web of Soviet government control, got forced into your position as the creator of death. This is your chance to undo your mistakes, to make the world a little bit brighter. Take it. Fix what haunts you, brother. Become a healer, a creator, a protector. Accept your second life and use it to help the people of Skyisle with me. Let's work together, grow stronger, save lives. You at the helm and me at your side as an equal. I won't hide what I am anymore. I'm not afraid to show you what I am...”

I nodded.

“You don’t have to be alone anymore!” Delta offered me her hand. "Take my hand, wake up. I'll help push you back into your body, I promise everything will be better! I'm holding onto you with my soul threads. Trust me."

For a second I was terrified to take it, but then I reached out. When our hands touched, a spark shot between them and I remembered… I remembered everything.

Her fingers closed around mine and I smiled.