The building.

The car.

The silent drive.

The street was a blur of people, cars were common enough, it was enough to make me mock the Republic, they hadn’t wanted to give up their luxury to put more fuel to the war effort, and it kept them weak. It also kept the streets crowded with vehicles.

But even so, even that was a swift blur in my mind. I wondered if Being X was ‘skipping’ things, or ‘fast forwarding’ my life through some of the boring moments to get to the part where he gets to screw with me some more. ‘Screw you, Being X. Don’t fast forward through my life like a weeb skipping dialogue to get to the fight scene in a movie.’

The blurry sense of time went on until I found myself in front of an old warehouse.

There were other cars there, and some trucks parked outside. I was surprised to see that, out of the trucks, large numbers of young boys and girls were hopping down and being filed into a wide open loading door. My heart skipped a beat.

“My apologies for the accommodations, Major, but right or wrong, this will only be a few minutes, and no matter what the outcome, you are rendering a great service to the Empire.” His voice was actually kind of grandfatherly, strangely enough.

I’d never really thought of it like that, but he did have that ‘grandfather’ energy, even reminding me somewhat of an old neighbor I had as a boy in my old life.

“I see, but can I at least ask… how, sir?” I waved a hand out toward the myriad number of poorly dressed, shabby children who were talking up a storm while they made their way into the warehouse. Among them, a handful were better dressed, though not by much.

None of them were evidently any older than I was, at least not by much, a few months difference maybe, one way or the other. It’s always hard to tell when somebody is undernourished. I was lucky, going into the military meant that I got better food and more of it. That didn’t seem to be the case here. ‘How stupid. Children may be a burden for a company to deal with, but a society should be treating them as an investment. Undernourished workforces are weaker, sick more often, have both their intelligence and creativity stifled, they underperform in every way compared to those who are properly provided for. It’s just negligence of human capital to destroy the foundation of your future industry.’

It was so hard not to show my contempt for that kind of short sighted thinking. But the reality was that in this world, much like in the one I was born in first, that thinking was absurdly common.

As I was thinking about that, I walked beside Zettour to the entrance. “Just go in and line up with the others, it doesn’t matter where. In a few minutes, someone will come in and they may ask some questions, answer honestly the way you did with me.” His instruction sounded vaguely paternal, and I wondered if in my attempt to avoid stepping into something, I’d fallen into it instead.

He didn’t give me the chance to ask questions, instead he went in through a side door, leaving me to follow his instructions.

The smell was something I’d forgotten. Bathwater wasn’t much available to us at the orphanage, and as a result, everybody kind of stank. I say ‘kind of’ because when everybody does, nobody does, you no longer notice it. Well, I’d been away from it for a long time now, and now that I was around it again, I noticed.

The other children walking past me gave me strange looks up and down, not recognizing my clothes or recognizing them and wondering, ‘Why is she dressed like that?’

I suppose it was strange to see a young girl in uniform with a scary look in her eye.

But even so? Well, I didn’t owe them any answers. They weren’t in a line really, just clustered together with a handful of adults in common worker’s overalls standing around, there was no real order to anything and they showed no interest in changing that.

But my orders had been clear. We were to line up.

“Alright then, maggots! Line up! Form a line, straighten up there!” I stood at the head of the mob of hundreds of children who were startled by my sudden shout, “You! Line up next to her! And you, next to her! Just like that! I want a line of fifty at the front!”

The smaller ones scrambled to obey, but one of the larger boys, probably one who got that way by stealing food from the others, broke from the group to approach me.

“Wh-” He started to say, but I wasn’t going to have any disruption. My punch was enhanced by magic, and it went straight to his solar plexus, all the wind flew out of his lungs and the smug look went off of his face.

As he sank down to his knees I hit him again in the nose, nice and soft. There was an ugly crunch as the bone beneath broke and blood stained my fingers as well as his face while he toppled onto his back, knocking two or three others out of the way as he fell. They hadn’t even bothered to try to catch him.

“I said, line up! Or do I need to carve the words into your brains for you to understand me?!” It wasn’t that different than handling new recruits. A lot of violence is ill advised, a little violence is a notice that there are rules and they must be followed.

I had order pretty well after that, the nameless boy scooted himself back into the mob away from me, gasping for breath probably well after he finally managed to stand up somewhere out of my sight.

“Count, off!” I pointed at the far right and as she counted herself, the next herself, and so on down the line.

Before long I had a front of fifty wide and thirty deep in the massive empty warehouse.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

The warehouse employees wore a mix of horror and amusement on their faces as I brought order to the chaos, I ignored the muttering involved and shouted, “Alright! Keep your mouths shut and your ears open! I’ll let them know you’re ready for… whatever.” I then went to knock on the door and notify the General, he must have seen me coming because he opened the door and said…

“Well done, Major. This will make it easier. Go ahead and take a place in the back.”

“Sir.” I snapped a quick salute and went to the last position in the rear of the formation, and waited.

From so far back, I had no idea what was going on. Not at first. I could see glimpses of a middle aged man and a small entourage going through and weeding people out. I saw a few children fall out to the left or to the right.

I couldn’t hear from so far away, not until they got close enough about half way through, three hours in. It probably would have gone faster, but occasionally I noticed they stopped to talk to one of the kids.

All I could do was wait.

The middle aged man in the long brown coat was holding a picture in his hand, it wasn’t a photo, it was a painting, of somebody, probably a portrait.

Those who were routed to the left went back to the trucks, and a few of the vehicles drove away. It wasn’t until he got closer to me that I began to hear the questions well enough.

“You were in an orphanage in Berun?”

“Do you know what your father did? What about your mother?”

“Do you have any magical capabilities?”

“When, approximately, were you born? Do you know an exact date?”

“Do you have any knowledge of any relatives or where your parents were living? Do you know if they died?”

Sometimes questions branched into more questions, and other times the answer seemed to disqualify the person, and the boy or girl was removed.

Another truck pulled away, and then two more. Finally they got to me.

That was when I first got a really good look at the middle aged figure and I answered his questions from memory.

“Sir, I was born in Berun. I do not know my mother’s name. My father was a soldier. I do not know his name or any relatives. I was born on the eighteenth of July in unified year nineteen fourteen. All I was ever told is that he was someone important. I have assumed my mother and father are both dead, but there is no way to know. So if they did, I could not say how they passed. I have exceptional magic capabilities and am currently in command of the 203rd Aerial Mage Battalion, my name is Tanya Degurechaff.”

This seemed to catch him wholly off guard. “What orphanage? What is around it?”

“Sir, it was located on one twenty-nine Deus Vult Road, close to both a local brothel, a beer hall, and the Commonwealth Embassy. There is nothing else there of note that anyone would want to visit.” It was convenient, in a way, I thought, having said what I did. Soldiers, statesmen, brothels and booze were a common enough mix. And of course, if an orphanage was close by, it gave the women a way to get rid of any unfortunate accidents without infanticide. You almost have to admire the cynical efficiency of the Empire in some ways. It was no wonder that Germany in my world was notoriously efficient.

What remained of the group after that was myself and four other girls, the trucks pulled away one by one, until there was one truck remaining in which, at least, those who remained would get a comfortable and spacious ride back to… wherever.

He straightened up and beckoned my General over. “We’ll need to do a blood type analysis to see if we can exclude anyone. Would that be acceptable?”

“Very well, but exercise caution.” He nodded to me, it wasn’t even a question that I would go first. The other four were shrinking, frail violets, clearly they’d need an example, and just like always it would be me.

At least it was simple enough. I stuck out my arm when a man in a white coat approached from the side room, he wore a mask over his face and glasses on his nose, I winced a little when he pierced my flesh with the needle, but it didn’t take long to fill up the little glass vial with what he needed.

After he was done, he patched me up with a bandage, and went to the next, the next, the next, and then the last, labeling each one with our names.

“Will it take long?” The General asked and the doctor quickly answered.

“No, not long. Since all five of these have magic, their blood tests go much, much faster than normal. What would normally take a few days, now takes only a few minutes.” He seemed quite pleased with himself and disappeared as quickly as he’d come.

The other four young girls seemed content to avoid me, which was fine, it wasn’t hard to read them. They were timid, frail, underfed. I thought back to what I’d gleaned from history books, how the march of history had changed very little despite the shocking divergences in decisions. As far as I was concerned, these were like the nameless people who fell in longer wars and greater struggles.

They didn’t matter, they didn’t know how to make themselves matter. In another ten years, they’d be going to work in the same brothels their own mothers probably did, and that’s if they survived to adulthood.

They would live and die… irrelevant, having changed nothing, done nothing, and lived without even properly enjoying themselves. I thought about the man who killed me. Thanks to all the witnesses, I was sure he was very much in jail, his family would forget him, his child’s tuition would go unpaid, his wife would surely divorce him. He would die the same irrelevant mess he always was.

The thing is, I’d warned him what would happen if he didn’t shape up. And these four at least had some option since they had magic. “You know, if you have magic, you should try enlisting in the military.”

I can be a nice person, every now and then, warning the useless that they’re useless is kind of a public service, if you think about it. “The food is better, the quarters are better. And life is easier than what you have now. Or…” I didn’t need to finish that statement.

They knew more than likely where they came from, and where they were going to end up.

That was probably the first time they really looked at me, I wasn’t very tall, of course. But I was well fed and I could take care of myself. Maybe I was scary to them before, but I thought I saw a spark in their eyes at the suggestion.

A few minutes later, the doctor emerged with the results and handed the paper over to the civilian visitor with the Commonwealth accent.

“Tanya.” He said as he looked at the cheap white paper, then again at the portrait under his arm.

“The others are definitely excluded?” He asked.

“He is not the father.” The doctor said definitively.

“Thank you, Dr. Bloch.” He answered, “You are a credit to your Empire’s efficiency.”

“You found what you’re looking for?” General Zettour asked with a rare hint of surprise in his voice.

To answer, the middle aged Englishman turned the portrait to face me. Our eyes were almost identical, his hair was different, but his build and bone structure were a lot like mine, and the nose was nearly exact.

“This is the face of your father. Prince Alfred Albert. Son of the Queen of the Commonwealth. That makes you, Commonwealth Royalty, the last known heir of the Royal family.” He said and went down to one knee. “The Queen is dead. Long live the Queen.”

I really wish I’d had time to prepare a speech or something, if I’d known why I was here, I might have had something inspiring to say, as it was, all I could do was shout…

“What?!”