CONTENT WARNING:
This installment of Fractal Alliances includes depictions of short bursts of violent combat, physical abuse of a subordinate by a person of higher power, and a major character experiencing a mind-controlled blackout.
August 1994 E-10
First, they were getting coffee at the center of camp to wash down the grit of their rations before their mission crew left. Then, the world faded to gray, then red-black, and Ev ceased to be themselves.
The world sputtered back to life with gasping clarity and Ev stumbled over their own armored boots, catching themselves on their vambrace and narrowly saving themselves from face planting. Pain lanced up their side and they could feel blood trickling down from where their head had been struck, their visor knocked clean off. They threw up a weak shield charm just in time to block a plasma round from their current assailant. They rolled back onto their feet and spun around, kicking the soldier back, and fired their own hyper-pistol at him. He was clad in a Tartarun shade of red, and for a horrified second Ev thought he was Talkian. By the time his body hit the cobblestone street, they knew it was the anarchist rebellion’s shade of red, and that they were still in Malekah.
Everything cut out again with a violent snap to black, and this time Ev was conscious, in a trance.
Teleport, dodge, shoot twice, move on. Twist kick, run, flip off the second assailant and crush the third to the tarred rooftop, shoot the second. Teleport, dodge—
The cycle repeated endlessly, and it would continue until everyone else was dead, or Ev was. They couldn’t remember exactly where they were. What battle it was, the town they were in, the people they were fighting. They only hoped it would end soon.
Every now and again, orders or check-ins came in over HOLO. Ev responded appropriately, shifting location or strategy or responding with their clearance code, but they couldn’t remember what they said as soon as the words left their mouth.
They’d accepted a long time ago that this is what happened when they were engaged in combat. Sometime around 1962, when they became a one-man vanguard and learned to fight without expecting backup. The thing was, Ev was pretty sure they had backup today. In their clouded mind, they vaguely remembered they were supposed to be part of a mission group. Not their squad, but someone’s squad. Probably more than one, at least a whole company was somewhere out in the field, down one Imperial assassin.
Ev couldn’t remember the comm check-ins so they didn’t know for sure who it was, or if that group was real. And believing they had backup out there somewhere was a lot different than receiving help from it. Reality crackled at the edge of their half-conscious mind, fading in and out like the gray and white static of a poorly-tuned HOLOprojector. Wherever help was, it wasn’t coming for Ev.
As they faded in and out of Dies’s all-encompassing control, they caught glimpses of anarchist red and patchwork armor between the splashes of gore and combat magic. They drifted in and out of awareness, wondering if and when they’d be in control again. If some of the red wasn’t the exact shade of anarchist red, they blocked it out; if they were butchering their own allies, they didn’t need to know.
They teleported onto another roof, catching two snipers by surprise. The both wore black-brown armor with the Talkian paint scraped off. One swung their rifle around and fired a pot-shot, and Ev flipped him over the edge of the roof with a blast of staticky blue magic. The other sniper seemed to hesitate, recognizing them perhaps, and amidst the haze of mind-control, Ev spotted the scraped-off gold of the Malekah Armed Forces emblem.
They lost consciousness again, and the next time they phased back into reality, the turncoat was gone and they were on a different rooftop, watching themselves make movements they had no control over, following wordless orders:
Acquire a sniper rifle. Do not point it down the building at the free-minded Aetherian about to snap someone’s neck. Do not… Do not. Walk away. Next roof. Respond to check-in. Use the rifle to shoot the two Amasians, duck the fists of the ex-freedom fighters, shoot them too. Respond to check-in. Jump down into alley, do not cast fall-catcher charm, ouch. Respond to check-in. Smack helmet. Too many damn check-ins!
Wait…
The haze receded with a fizzing hiss and Ev staggered back into their own body. They took in a harsh gasp of air, like it was their first breath in hours. Maybe it was.
They cursed whoever re-padded and re-wired their helmet. They ripped it off, throwing it to the ground and dropping their rifle—they had no need for the damn thing, they were shit at using the sights on Tartarun rifles. Over the years, six different Star squad rangers had said it was because they were left-eye dominant and trying to shoot with their right-eye, but Ev had never believed it. They scoffed at their useless, uncomfortable helmet. No need for it either, really, but protection was protection…
After a subconscious glance at the Grid, they decided they could break for a ration bar and water. They backed into the wall with a curse and sank onto the cement. While they rehydrated (from the tiny waist bottle they kept, not from one of the Coalition’s clunky canteens, no thank you, Chaser), they checked themselves for injuries and gave their pistol a once-over.
Where had they gotten this one? It wasn’t Aetherian and—they checked for an allegiance symbol—it wasn’t a field acquisition… Then it dawned on them: this was the new prototype that Archian syndicate heir had lent them. What was his name… Wilson Alder? Sweet man, but a bit of a nutcase. The prototype was perfect, though, even if they didn’t remember it being quite this red when it was given to them…
And that was blood. Yep. Lots of dried blood.
Ev vanished the gun and looked down at themselves, disgusted to find that the rest of them was also covered in an obscene amount of gore, including their gloves. They glanced at the ration bar in their hand and let out a sigh of relief when they saw they were holding it by the wrapper. Small mercies.
Gods, they wished they had the ability to make Second clean their armor as punishment for all this. If only he was really their subordinate… But thinking of him made their temples burn.
Knowing they were about to earn themselves an ass-whooping and a demerit (which would mean nothing since the Council 1) couldn’t hate them more and 2) couldn’t demote or further diminish their rank), they reached up and toggled the privacy settings the Chirrells and Thelia had helped them install on HOLO. They locked Deis out of their chips and their visor. The virus effectively severed his tether to them, making the connection weak enough to prevent him from taking control unless he got to them in person.
Good riddance. Ev already felt like they’d run a marathon, they didn’t need him physically fucking them up even more.
With Deis safely locked out of their mind for the time being (Ev was fairly sure he’d crack the new code eventually, and they’d be given hell when he did), they took stock of their situation. They vaguely recalled Fin submitting an Imperial intervention request. A revolt was getting out of hand in Malekah: a recent event kick-started by several Amasian tribes uniting with extremists from Envari, Linc, Vante, and eastern Moreah. Ev, Loresia, and the IAF High Conuncil must’ve approved the request, and Deis had taken it as an opportunity to flex his at-a-distance control skills. Why he’d waited until they had been in Tartarus for nearly two days they didn’t know, but a glance at their HUD informed them it had been a whopping thirty-two hours since they’d blacked out. His attempt had had overwhelming success.
As if things weren't bad enough, Ev was now somewhere in southern Malekah, presumably alone, with no idea where their mission group was, how the UTAF lines had shifted, or what exactly they had done while under Deis’s control (aside from execute several dozen insurgents).
Their absolute favorite kind of deployment. Not. They started griping to themselves about cluelessness, idiot officers who didn’t know what it was like to be in the field, and Imperial superiority complexes.
Ev’s senses slowly returned in full as they polished off their ration bar, starting with their hearing as their ears adjusted to the local air pressure. Their vision melted back to full color with Deis out of their head, and the ringing in their ears fully subsided. With Deis gone their HOLO access returned too, albeit slowly. All they had besides their HUD was static, at first. Then garbled white noise filled their comms channel as their connection re-established, and the chatter began to clear up. Ev flinched as familiar voice shouted over their private line.
“—Stark, oh my gods answer me you ass! Where the fuck are you?”
Fin.
Somehow, Ev had managed to accept an ongoing voice call. How long had it been since they answered? Had Fin been the one to issue the recurrent check-ins that snapped them back to reality? The call must have been touch-to-respond, otherwise he’d have been hearing them fight this whole time. They vaguely recalled reaching up to their headset to respond to every every communication ping. They’d assumed, amidst the haze, that it was only standard Vanguard or UTAF check-ins, but they were clearly wrong.
They reached up and turned on the live mic. “Fin?” they asked roughly.
“Oh my gods, you’re conscious,” he sighed with relief. “Great. Now what the fuck is going on?”
Great question. “Not a clue. Sitrep?”
Fin barked out an incredulous laugh. “You’re asking me for sitrep? Ev, you’ve been MIA for a day and a half! All we’ve had to go by are your sporadic check-ins, and up until this morning we didn’t even have that. We all thought you were dead in a ditch somewhere!”
Ev cringed and let their head hit the brick wall behind them with a groan. “Fuck…”
“What happened? Where did you go? What’s your location?” Fin demanded. “You’re alive obviously, but what’s your current physical status?”
“Don’t know, don’t know, don’t know, and…” They checked themselves over. No injuries, at least not serious ones. “Viable, I’d say.”
“Viable,” he muttered in repetition. “Viable, they say, ay vitsas Lio, amenth’a vint’as…”
They chuckled dryly and took another sip from their water pack. “Sorry, Fin.”
They smirked as they heard a crackle and his hair caught fire.
“Oh no, your first name privileges are revoked, Stark! None of that buddy-buddy shit until you figure out where the fuck you are and relay your location. Get on top of something tall and start orienteering, asshole.”
Ev snorted and pushed themselves the their feet. They swayed a bit unsteadily, but Deis had evidently made them eat and drink while under his control. Their energy levels weren’t in the ground, and they felt alright aside from a dull throb from where they’d been hit over the head. (Regenerative healing, thank the fucking gods.) They stretched and opened HOLO, smirking at the icon they had saved for Fin Heran: a picture of him drunk off his ass in the gardens at Korenna, grinning wide. It made the chewing out Fin was about to continue a little funnier. They opened their maps.
“I’m loading the local map now,” they told him, opening their Local Dimensional Positioning program (LDPS).
“Good,” Fin snapped.
“You know, technically I have been answering,” they pointed out.
“Yeah, but only since this morning, like I said. You were still MIA for twenty-six hours—and I wouldn’t consider replying in a monotone voice with no co-ords and a different callsign ‘answering.’”
Ev winced as their location finally loaded on-screen. They waited as Fin barked orders at someone and a long screeeeech! indicated a Fireflier drakon swooping past. In the distance on their end, they heard fire bombs being dropped. Fin, they thought with amusement as he cursed under his breath, sounds congested.
The corner of their mouth quirked up. “Did you get your nose broken again?”
They had a distinct feeling that, if he were here, Fin would be glaring at them with enough power behind his voire taratan that they would actually flinch. Since he wasn’t, they smiled instead.
Finally, he left out a a heavy sigh and grumbled, “I got in a brawl with someone we arrested outside the city. Grabbed him from a fox hole. Violent rapist, listed in the dimension database, already convicted, but escaped before his sentencing. He said something absolutely wretched and I told him to shut it or else I’d castrate him myself, but he was out of handcuffs while a medic set his broken hand. He slammed me with his good fist and—”
He cut himself off. Ev snickered.
“Stop deflecting!” he snapped. “Give me your location, ASAP. I’m sending a squad after you—and the other Chaser.”
Fuck, having Chaser on their tail after being MIA for two days? Ev wished their mapping program was offline. As it were, their current location seemed like it would prevent a squad coming for their ass anyway. They sighed, resigned to their fate, and stooped to pick up their godawful helmet. They frowned at it, then waited for another round of fire bombs to pass on Fin’s end.
When all was quiet, they said, “Don’t send a squad.”
“What? Why not?”
They rattled off their coordinates and Fin went quiet.
They were smack in the middle of enemy territory. Judging by the blood, gunpowder, mud, and forest scraps they were covered in, Ev had likely taken the two-hour hike into the core the of the rebel cell’s territory. Deis had likely had them do recon, then sent them straight into the heart of it all. Ev had spent the remainder of the last thirty-two hours on a Council-appointed black op with one order: execute non-friendlies.
As the head of the Imperial Vanguard, Ev was used to those kinds of missions. For the last twwent years, they had more or less been and Deis and Garris’s pet assassin. The primary objective for these kinds of missions, located outside the Empire but inside an allied territory, was usually “breach, dismantle, neutralize.” In other words: their goal was to topple a regime or rebel cell before it could get feet under itself.
The problem was, that was a job for the entire infiltrate-and-destroy team. Ev was one person. Deis may have had his fun leading them through the masses and clearing a path for the Talkians, but now they were stranded with no backup. They’d locked him out, but they were miles from the UTAF’s front line. Ev might have expected to have some other form of support, but no Aetherians were registered on the drop-in list besides themselves and two ANIC medical teams. Not even other Vanguard soldiers were in the area. They were completely alone in the heart of a city the Malekahn extremist cell now occupied.
“Well shit,” Fin muttered after a bit.
Ev grunted. “That about sums it up, yes.”
They heard clamoring from Fin’s end as orders were issued around him. Someone told him to stop flirting and get moving. He jokingly threatened a demotion but Ev could hear his heart wasn’t in it. He sounded exhausted now that he wasn’t angry at them. His next question was the worst.
“You were deep under, weren’t you?”
He couldn’t be more specific, given their current lack of privacy, but he didn’t need to be. Ev had told him years ago that they occasionally blacked out and turned into killing machine. He knew they had been trained as an assassin for Deis, Garris, and Shas without their own knowledge or consent. Fin knew that what had happened to Ev over the past day-and-a-half wasn't something they themselves had planned. It wasn't some reckless act of selfishness or sucidiality.
But the difference between Fin knowing about these things (and seeing Ev in the aftermath) and their current situation was that he had never experienced it first hand. He'd never seen them slip away. Usually the blackouts happened in Aetherian satellites on black ops missions and Fin got the details when Ev showed up at the Manor, or Vadetta Heights, or Mirral afterward. Ev’s abrupt disappearance yesterday must’ve been mildly terrifying in comparison.
They gave a quiet confirmation and apologized for what they’d unintentionally put him through.
“No,” he said quietly, “it’s alright. I understand now. You didn’t have control over whether or not you left. But… doesn’t that mean he’s here? In Malekah? From what you’ve told me, it only works when he’s close by or in an Aetherian satellite. ‘Voidworlds make for easy transmitting’ and all that.”
Ev chewed the inside of their cheek as they flipped their helmet in their hand. They looked out of the alley and scanned the area—they were in the middle of the city, but it was small. Not a metropolis like Vadetta Heights. They were on a small hill surrounded by tall residence buildings—all abandoned—and they could see fires burning in the distance. The UTAF front lines.
But there was no sign of Deis. Not even an icy buzz at the back of their mind that usually denoted his psychic presence.
“I think you’re right,” they told Fin, “but I can’t see or sense any trace of him.”
Fin cursed under his breath again and they heard him kick someone in the face.
“Fuck him,” he snarled. “But I guess we have you both to thank for clearing a path into enemy territory.”
Ev concentrated on the grid and teleported themselves atop one of the buildings framing the alleyway. From there, they could see fires burning all across the city limit line. “Looks more like I cleared the perimeter.”
“You did,” Fin grunted, and they heard swords clashing on his end. “Your attacks must’ve gone all around the edge of their marked territory and forced them to close ranks, because we’ve been closing in on them since word of the attacks—your attacks—started coming through. We have the city surrounded; Vante sent extra troops. We’re finishing this tonight.”
Ev turned in a circle, looking around them and taking in the damage. The city—they still couldn’t remember its name, but they knew it was a suburb of Pixos, the district capitol—was pretty beaten up. To the west, opposite the oncoming UTAF forces, there were pillars of smoke and bright green flames creeping towards the city from the crest of the hill. A watchtower bearing the anarchist cell emblem went up in inky black smoke. To the south, Ev could see the enemy lines retreating further and further up the street towards the center of town, a line of golden Vantean shields marching towards them.
Fin was right. The Talkian and Vantean joint forces were going to retake the city tonight. The quickest end to a Talkian border insurrection that Ev could remember.
“Do you remember anything?” Fin asked.
They shook their head. “Very little.”
“Don’t supposed to you recall or see anything that might prepare us for what we’re up against inside the city?”
They shook their head. “You’d be better off asking the Vantean corps, they’re advancing quickly in the West. but I’ll tell you what, the city is filthy.”
Ev had grown accustomed to the pleasant environmental cognizance in Tartarus. Their parks, their cities, even their unsettled land was always clean and well-cared for, except in times of civil war. What they saw here on the outskirts of one of Talki’s major cities was, by comparison, utterly abysmal.
“It looks like I’m in the inner city, near the central square,” they told Fin. “From what I can see, I wouldn’t say these extremists are fighting with any of skill or honor we usually see the sovereign Amasian tribes abiding by. They’re just… wrecking the place.
“These aren’t the Amasians we’re used to,” they continued. “Some are MAF defectors who scrapped off their symbols and paint. The group that took over this area are defintely criminals who found a foothold in the anarchist extremist movement, like the one you arrested. They’re likely receiving aid from the Black Market cartels in adjacent Tartarun satellites.”
Ev recalled seeing the sigils and tattoos of the Black Market on several of the people they killed. That wasn’t a good sign. The Black Market wasn’t just a black market of illegal goods, it was a massive underground affiliation of drug manufacturers and cartels, illegal weapons dealers, and bounty hunters. They remembered why they had a prototype from that Archian kid now: Will Alder was the son of an Archian Syndicate leader, Charon Alder, who was dead-set on removing the Black Market from the Iron Archipelagos altogether.
“What a fucking mess,” Fin grunted as his swords clashed with someone else’s. A plasma bolt streaked by his mic and Ev flinched as the pitch made their ears ring again.
Ev agreed solemnly.
They walked across the roof and started looking for a route back to the UTAF battle lines. They could take the high route back until they hit the side of the hill, where a cliff cut off the cityscape and seemed to split between city and suburb, using rooftops to travel over the messy streets. Yes, that would work just fine. They relayed their plan to Fin, backed up, ran at the gap between their building and the next, and jumped.
They were building up a rhythm, alternating between organic jumps and magic-assisted leaps to clear alleyways and main roads, when their foot suddenly caught and they face-planted onto the next roof. Luckily, they had thrown their uncomfortable prototype helmet back on and saved themselves from concussion.
They groaned and pushed themselves off the ground.
“What happened?” Fin asked. He was still in active combat on his end, dodging plasma bolts and bolstering shields as his unit moved forward.
“Foot caught on something,” they grumbled. “Power line, maybe. I face-planted.”
They rolled and looked behind them, and what they saw sent a chill up their spine. Outlined by the pillars of smoke from the Vantean advance in the west was a glowing red and white figure. He wore a familiar porcelain mask, and the fringes of his unnatural red glow melted into a sick golden yellow. A shimmering red cord of magic faded from the gap they had just crossed. Control magic.
“Ev? Your line is breaking up,” Fin said, the static increasing.
Ev snapped out of their freeze response. They scrambled to their feet, then vaulted over the side of the building. The drop was a lot longer than they’d been expecting—they’d reached the cliff that split the low Malekahn city towers from the flat, long apartment complexes and tree-framed lanes of the suburbs. They cushioned their landing with a thick gravity charm and rolled, then came up running. They sprinted into the maze of residential living and ducked into the nearest alleyway.
The smell almost made them stop to retch. Two domestic kavicats lay gutted on someone’s desecrated back patio. An unarmored, blood-covered hand stuck out of a half-closed door into what looked like a restaurant. The entire back alley reeked of blood, urine, and garbage. Ev’s comm line bounced and popped with static as they crossed the next major street and dove between two taller buildings—one hosted a bar, the other a temple of a party god.
“Fin, if you were still thinking about sending a squad, fucking don’t,” they ordered, praying he could still hear them.
“What?” There was a garble of static that followed, and Ev didn’t catch a word of what he said.
“I’m coming to you!” they shouted, making another sharp turn and weaving through more narrow alleys and bursting through a desecrated art fair that had long since been abandoned. “I’ve got our favorite eldritch horror on my tail, and I’ll be damned if he pulls me back under tonight! Be ready!”
There was an electric crackle behind them and Ev knew they had been found. They teleported through the next building, and the next, and when they began to build up their psychic shields, they felt it. That icy, buzzing presence that seemed to cut through their thoughts like a red-hot blade. Deis.
They let loose a string of curses as they continue to run, full steam ahead, towards the growing shadows of Fireflier drakons in the near distance. There was another electric crackle of teleportation magic and Ev dodged a dagger that went whizzing over their shoulder and embedded itself in a tree.
The helmet. They had to get this stupid helmet back off, it amplified his connection. They undid the seal beneath their chin and pulled the whole thing off—oversized visor, weird pointy bits on the sides, way too much padding—and chucked it in front of them. They pulled their Archian pistol and shot the rolling, bouncing visor twice, then teleported a block and a half over and kept running.
Their new helmet, courtesy of some ambitious techie in the IAF defensive design department, was rigged with a special program that connected to Ev’s HOLOchips and biolock, allowing Deis easy, almost direct access to their mind. He could still get to them without it, but at least they’d thrown him off. Now he had to switch methods.
There was an explosion on Fin’s end, and in the field they could see almost a mile ahead atop the next hill, they saw it.
They rattled off the coordinates from their HUD. “I can see your unit!” they told him. “If Aviera’s elite squad is still with you, do me a favor and—”
They yelped as another cord of magic tripped them. They rolled into the fall this time, so their armor got more scraped up than they did, but it left their head spinning. When they staggered to their feet, turned towards the city, they knew they were out of time.
“We’re—city limits—breached!” Fin’s voice came over the line choppy and garbled by static. Ev cursed. Deis was disrupting the connection.
He said something else about Specialist Tieratti, his unit’s pyromaniac demolitionist, then the call lost signal. In front of them, Deis fully materialized. He was wearing real battle gear: a thicker version of his Councilman uniform’s waistcoat, two pauldrons with straps over his chest, proper greave-boots, and a partial helm not unlike the armored crown the First Councilman wore. His blood-red cape billowed behind him, and his enchanted porcelain mask curled into a vicious sneer.
At the edge of their field of vision, four of Deis’s favorite apparitions flickered: Cassius Varril, Marian Ka’Mero, Cole Hackerie, and Asmarin Flynt, all in various states of gory decay. Cassius with a sword through his chest. Marian with her limbs broken and twisted in unnatural ways, her right eye gouged out. Cole with an exit wound straight through the front of her skull. Asmarin with dead eyes, her bare arms tattooed with Deis’s control runes. Behind them, another distorted presence tried to draw their eyes away from their real attacker. Ev knew if they turned around that a zombified Jesse Feht would be there sporting a broken jaw and a syringe holding a deadly sedative dose. Behind Deis, Talis Errison stood with his detached head in-hand, wielding it by the hair.
“No more running, little rebel,” Deis sang, his eyes glowing like red suns. “Your little friend interrupted our mission. Now we won’t get to kill that tricky Gree Maktak before the Vanteans do. I thought you wanted to help them?”
Ev gasped fell to their knees as he tugged on their mind and their brain seemed to attempt to leave their skull. Everything hurt. Deis’s magic toyed with them—their heart rate spiked, then tanked. Their skin burned and prickled, then turned to ice. The edges of their vision faded to red.
“Oh well,” he sighed. “Guess a few of your Talkian friends will have to do. I set myself a quota, see. It’d be a shame to miss it by just a few kills, even if it is a game.”
His evil chuckle made Ev’s stomach roil and threaten to expel their singular ration bar. They glared up at him from where they knelt, their hands on the blood- and oil-soaked concrete of another vacant residential street. The smell of death reeked all around them: civilians killed in their homes, the occasional insurgent laying dead where the fell to a more prepared resident or a protective kavicat. Then there was the stench of rot from the gore dried on their own armor, and the horrible burning smell from Deis’s smoking armor and uniform. The overwhelm of it all sought to overpower them, but they focused their energy on preventing it. Deis would not get to them again, not tonight.
Their vision tunneled. Blood dripped from their nose. Their heart rate climbed and climbed. And yet… Deis couldn’t breach their shields. For the first time in decades, they had somehow managed to lock him out. Behind them, they could hear orders being shouted in Talkian. A mile an closing. They began to laugh—a wheezing, terribly thing that was only made worse by the blood pouring from their nose into their mouth.
They spat and looked up at him with unclear eyes—the world around them was spinning, and what little they could see was red and gray.
“You’re fucked!” they cackled, delirious.
There was a subsonic crack! and their shields broke. Ev’s world went dark.
The next thing they knew, Deis’s control receded in a sharp blast. Pain burst across their left shoulder—a plasma round had struck the unprotected strip between their pauldron and shoulder mag plate. Ev dropped to the ground and dug their fingers into dirt and gravel, not cement. They were no longer in the suburbs. They were in the woods.
Chaos swarmed around them and Ev registered the clicking of plasma weapons shifting up one, two, four levels. Orders were issued in a sharp language—not Talkian, but still familiar: Alcairok. Then, further out, there was Talkian. Strings pulled at their wrists, their neck, their chest until another shot rang out and Deis’s psychic presence was cut off in a searing blast of magic.
Ev understood part of the next order shouted and repeated in quick, accented Alcairok: “Pursue and aim with prejudice.”
They dropped onto their side, then rolled to their back as a dozen armed Alcairon warriors ran past them carrying heavy rifles and more knives then Ev had owned in their entire life. One knelt over them, her familiar gold-green eyes dark under furrowed brows and a golden dermal piercing.
Aviera asked them something, but the ringing was back and Ev’s vision was swimming. She snapped her fingers over them and they didn’t respond. They were too busy trying to breathe again. Everything hurt. Their shoulder burned like it had been doused in acid. Deis’s control magic was gone, and so was he, but the fear lingered. Hazy images of Marian Ka’Mero, Cassius Varril, and Talis Errison still swam on the edges of their fuzzy vision.
Aviera shouted for a medic and the pale face of Padma velTuro, VaTiera’s official replacement and trainee of the former Fireflier Chaser, came into view.
“Verde Stark, can you hear me?” she asked, holding a scanner over them. She passed the device off to Aviera when she couldn’t get a reading and began to pull off their gritty chest plate. When she had a clear shot, she scanned their heart and the injury on their shoulder. She said something to Queen Lance and ran off again.
“Dia vitsas, Ev’eah,” Aviera whispered, shaking her head. “You should have let me help decades ago.”
Ev didn’t have the energy to be mad at her.
Padma returned with a medipac began spinning a healing circle around their torso. She rubbed healing gel into their shoulder with gloved hands, getting beneath their padded over-armor and undersuit, neither of which had melted into the wound. Everything burned, everything ached, but as Ev reached out with their sense of the Void grid as far as possible, they found no traces of Deis or any enemy combatants.
But there were two bodies on the ground in front of them, shot dead.
“Who’d I kill?” they choked out.
Padma’s hands didn’t stutter, but her jaw twitched. Aviera’s eyes went cold.
“You killed no one,” Queen Lance assured them. She stood, her armored skirt swaying as she fell into a murderous walk. “But I’m about to.”
Her steps hushed and vanished as she melted into shadow, running after her squadron. Padma finished working and the healing circle activated. Instantly, cool relief flooded through them. They gasped as they finally got a good breath of air in, and Padma helped them sit up. They leaned on her with their face in her shoulder, catching their breath, and she forced a canteen of water into their hands.
“It has an electrolyte packet it in,” she said. “Drink.
They obeyed. When they had drank a few swigs, she moved them to sit against a large cedar tree and Ev got a good look at their position. They were in the woods outside city limits, but barely. Talkian soldiers were moving in, sweeping through the abandoned streets with plasma rifles, burning swords, and a war chant. Across the horizon, they saw green flames cleansing the city as a Vantean war cry rang over the valley from the conquered hilltop. The occupation of the city was officially over. If Gree Maktak—the psychotic narcissist in control of this particular extremist group—was still alive, he was likely about to surrender, if he hadn’t already.
Ev turned to look at the two bodies that had been in front of them. To their right lay two Talkian soliders—loyal, with their paint and allegiance symbols still intact. One had received a plasma round to the head, her skull blasted open. The other had one of Deis’s knives sticking out of his neck. A stasis spell hovered over him, but Ev saw the blood pooled around him. He’d be lucky if he survived the night, even with Padma’s entire medic team working on him.
The forest floor detritus—mostly cedar needles and birch leaves—crinkled as someone knelt at their left side. Ev didn’t turn. Their eyes were fixed on the UTAC soldier they had killed, and the one to whom Deis had ensured a slow death. They were unaware of the figure that separated from the medics and walked over.
“It’s not your fault,” Fin said. He wasn’t on a comm channel now, he was right next to them, but he might as well have been miles away.
Wasn’t it?
A mission alert blinked in the corner of their HUD from ten minutes ago, unanswered. The title read “Find UTAC General Stark and KICK IMPERIAL ASS.” Fin had sent a team after them when their call was cut. They reached up with one blood encrusted glove and turned it off.
“They knew what they were walking into, coming to get you.” The two soldiers they had killed were part of the mission group.
“Then they’re dead because of me,” they murmured.
“They’re dead because of Deis,” Fin corrected. Someone had set his nose, but he still sounded off. Ev looked over to see him sporting a busted lip now, too.
“The woman,” Ev said. “I knew her. Tara Keller.” They turned back to her corpse. “I shot her in the head. That was my pistol, not Deis’s. I killed her.”
“You weren’t in control—”
“It was my weapon.”
“Deis—”
“I raised it against her. For all intents and purposes it was my—”
Fin took their jaw in his hand and made them look at him. “Were you in control?”
“No,” they said, blinking at him.
“Were you willingly targeting your allies and aiding the enemy?”
“No, but—”
He took them by the shoulders. “You. Are not. At fault. Say it.”
They grimaced and tried to pull away from him, but they could barely lift their hand. They couldn't run away if they tried.
“Ev.”
They shook their head, tears rolling unbidden down their cheeks. Fin tried to do something, to wipe their tears or make them face him again, and they twisted their head away. He pulled away, bracing one hand on their knee instead.
“No one here blames you,” he said, his voice soft. “I don’t blame you. Everyone on my team and Aviera’s—everyone who saw what Deis did to you and those two warriors—knows who and what Deis is. We blame him, not you. Aviera’s elite squad is tracking him as we speak. He’s going to spend the rest of the week locked up in the Vadetta Heights supermax, and he’s not getting out. He’s not going to get you again. Do you hear me? He’s not getting to you or anyone else.”
Under his breath he added, “If Aviera has her way, he won’t be going near anyone ever again.”
Ev was still staring up at the canopy, at the dying orange glow of the mossaeca, but they could feel Fin’s eyes on them. Eventually, he gave in and sat against the tree trunk with them, a few inches away.
“Are you even still listening?” he asked.
Ev nodded mutely. They weren’t dissociating. They were too wired for that. But hearing him didn’t mean they believed him. Fin’s fingers found their left hand and he peeled off their glove. He squeezed their bare fingers tight, and Ev let their eyes drift shut, their head fall back against the tree. In the distance, thirteen Alicaron warriors shouted a Lionan war cry. Banshee squad, Fin’s personal unit, responded with shouts and a war cry of their own that sound roughly like “kill the bastard!” in Talkian.
Ev remembered the original ANIC interference request now, and who their mission group was supposed to be before Deis abducted them. Aviera’s team had been called in to take out Gree Maktak, who had become something of an interprovincial terrorist over the last decade and a half. Talki had claim to him, since he primarily exploited their most vulnerable peoples and dared to interfere with Amasia, copying and bastardizing their ideals. Alcairo—or Aviera specifically—had an outstanding warrant for his arrest after he raped a member of the Korenna royal guard after knocking her unconscious. Ev and a select number of ANIC soldiers had responded to aid in Maktak’s take-down and dispense humanitarian aid to the city he had placed under malicious occupation. They had been set to work with Aviera’s personal unit.
Apparently, said unit hadn’t taken to kindly to having their Imperial friend kidnapped.
Ev’s eyes widened and they flinched viciously as a link in the back of their mind was broken permanently—a crude psychic link to Deis. One they’d known about but barely been conscious of most of the time. Pain radiated behind their eyes until the link was completely severed in one final blow, as if someone had take a cudgel to Deis’s head and bashed his skull in.
Or as if Aviera’s armored knuckles, coupled with a headbashing charm, had made full contact.
Queen Lance’s voice crackled over Fin’s comm line declaring the link psychic broken, along with Deis’s mask and nose. Fin acknowledged her, then turned off his open line and turned down the volume on his unit and UTAC comms. He squeezed Ev’s fingers again.
When Padma velTuro’s healing circle had run its course and faded out, Ev felt almost alive again. Fin offered them a hand up, which they took, and the pulled them into a hug before they could stumble.
“It’s gonna be okay,” he whispered, his voice cracking.
Ev raised shaking arms to return his embrace, fully sinking into his chest plate. They turned their face into his neck and sobbed, praying the scent of leather and cinnamon would overpower the lingering stench of smoke and rot, and they’d have a bit of peace before nightfall.
“We’ve got you,” Fin said assured them, murmuring into their hair. “You’re gonna be alright.”
For the first time, Ev began to believe him.
Some time later, long after night had fallen, Ev awoke from a nightmare on a cot in the UTAC main camp. They had set up a mile into the woods outside the city—called Tonaha, they now knew—and everything was quiet except for the laughter of the squads guarding the perimeter. Ev’s head felt like it had been stuffed with cotton—an after-effect of the sedation shot they’d been given to get to sleep—but they were comfortably warm despite the local chill of winter. At their back, they felt the front side of someone who hadn’t quite stripped himself of his armor before crashing.
Ev blinked into the darkness and saw they were on the same shallow cot they’d fallen asleep on. Fin had somehow managed to squeeze onto the thin pad with them. His greaves were pressing awkwardly against the backs of their calves and while he was no longer wearing his utility belt, he was still wearing the solid under-layer of his abdominal gear. At some point he had taken off one gauntlet and forgotten to remove the other, and with the corresponding glove.
Although they had no recollection of it, or much of anything from before they passed out, Ev had been stripped to their unders. Even those felt suspiciously comfortable, like cotton instead of Aetherian synthetics. They remembered being herded into a shower by two medics and thoroughly decontaminated. They remembered being forced to eat, even if it was just a protein gel pack and half a ration bar, and given a whole twenty-ounce bottle of water to drink. Then they’d been sedated.
They wished someone had thought to put them in sweats. Even with Fin’s body heat, it was chilly in the tent. They attempted to roll over, to at least mash their face into Fin’s chest and keep their nose and hands from freezing.
They didn’t do it quietly enough, because he stirred and snorted in a startled breath of cool air, then almost sneezed. He made a face when he the sneeze didn’t come, then blinked his eyes open. His hair sparked as he found himself nose to nose with Ev. Their cheeks heated. He looked down as Ev looked away, both of them realizing at the same time that they were tangled in each other's limbs on a bunk in a communal sleeping tent for the third time in as many months.
“I think we’re developing a habit,” he mumbled, his words muffled by the pillow they were sharing.
Despite the dull ache in all their joints, despite everything that had happen in the last two days, Ev laughed. Fin smiled at the sound and Ev’s heart tried to crawl up their throat. He took note of the goosebumps that had spread up their back and shoulders and reached for the blanket stashed under the cot. He shook the grass out of it and pulled it over them both, then summoned a wave of Hellfire that warmed Ev from head to toe. Ev grinned into his cotton undershirt, which smelled like sweat and armor polish, and for once it all felt real.
Then, as if they’d been stabbed with an icy dagger, reality hit them again. Their smile faltered and they pulled their hands away from him. They sat up.
Deis had tried to kill them today, and he’d targeted members of the United Talkian Armed Forces.
“I blacked out,” they said, choking on their own words.
Fin’s bare hand touched their shoulder. “You did,” he confirmed.
“I remember everything, I—I tried to kill Talkian soldiers. I massacred dozens on rebels. Deis tried to—to kill me.”
Nothing new. Ev killed people every week. Deis tried to kill them almost as often. But it had happened here, in Tartarus. They’d fought under his control in dozens of worlds, in countless battles, but never here. Never in Tartarus, let alone in Talki.
Their voice cracked. “I killed your people.”
“Deis used you as a weapon to kill my people,” Fin said, squeezing their arm.
They put their head in their hands.
“Aviera personally delivered him to Vadetta Heights. They searched the entry records, and there was no trace of him entering the dimension with your ANIC group. He came on his own, separately, with ulterior motives. If he doesn’t get a sentence at the supermax, he’ll be facing interdimensional criminal charges for attacking Coalition soldiers and interfering with his own Empire’s humanitarian aid mission.”
“You should arrest me,” they said bitterly.
“Nah.”
They figured he’d say as much. Ev sat up and Fin’s other hand, still gloved, lifted the blanket around their shoulders. They wrapped themselves in it, wincing as the rough fabric scraped over the abrasions on their hands and knuckles and tugged on the bandage covering their shoulder wound.
“Here.” Fingers snapped and Fin handed them a pair of his old sweats and a t-shirt he’d stolen from them over a year ago.
Ev stood and dressed. Although the cold grass still left their feet a bit chilled, the rest of them was significantly warmer. It didn’t take much; even in Tartarus, the coldest winter temperatures barely compared to a spring night in Averon.
“I shouldn’t be here,” they sighed, plopping back down beside him. Two cots over, a giant bulk of a man snored like a hoverjet.
“Correct,” Fin said, looping his arms around them. “You should be in a healing tank. Or in a real bed somewhere, instead of crashing on one of my field cots.”
They scoffed and leaned into him. They looked up to the flimsy metal frame where their undersuit, now washed and mostly dry, was hanging. Their armor was stacked at the foot of the cot, scrubbed clean by some private with a strong stomach. Fin’s gear lay next to it.
“He’ll get out using some bullshit excuse Shas invents come morning,” they said.
Fin clicked his tongue. “He can try, but Aviera held him in contempt of the interdimensional standards of humanitarianism and brutality. Not ours.”
Ev blinked. “She… she can do that?”
“Queen Aviera Lance helped write the latest amendment to those accords, so yes, she can.”
“Oh.”
They slumped back into his chest and stared out the tent’s door flaps, twenty feet and eight cots away, as they fluttered on a warm breeze. Banshee squad’s logo—a banshei drakon—glowed in the dark on the outer flap.
Deis might actually face jail time, or a trial in an interdimensional court of law. Shas could still get him out of it—Garris’s family could, even… But there was a chance.
“They could still put the blame on me,” they realized. “I’m the face of the Empire, the one everyone thinks is in control.”
“The interdimensional courts know more than you think,” Fin said, rubbing his thumb over their forearm.
“Deis or Shas could make me lie and take the blame if they put me on the stand.”
“They’d be detected. Interdimensional courts—and Tartarun courts, now—have tech installed to identify control magic when it’s present or in use.”
They snorted. “Well, don’t you just have all the answers.”
Fin grinned down at them and pulled them down onto the cot again. They let themselves be wrapped up again and threw their arms around his waist. Outside, someone lit sparklers and began to sing. It wasn’t a jig or a folk song or some war chant, but something melancholic about bittersweet victories and returning home when nothing feels the same. Not for the first time, Ev wondered if certain empaths could just sense when someone nearby was in need of a subtle shove in the right direction—in this case, towards sleep. And towards Fin Heran.
“Thank you,” they said softly. “For everything. Liraas.”
Fin hummed contently and rubbed their back. “Ay. Thank Aviera too in the morning. She’s going to absolutely drag Deis’s ass in court.”
They laughed into his gross undershirt and hugged him tight. “I want to be there when she does.”
“We’ll make it happen.”
He took in a long, deep breath and Ev felt fire whisper through their hair when he exhaled.
“We took back the city,” he told them. “Vantean intelligence says there’s a holdout group barricaded inside one of the major hotels. They claim to have hostages, but most civilians were evacuated a while ago. We suspect they might have a group of MAF defectors who wanted to turn themselves in when you broke through their perimeter. They’re the… ‘hostages,’ we think.”
And if that was true, well… The UTAF didn’t take kindly to traitors. Many wouldn’t have any qualms about send that hotel up in flames. The rules against cruel and unusual punishment in Talki didn’t apply to certain criminals, those who breached sexual consent, or this particular breed of defector.
“General Vor’has—the leader of Vantean forces that came to our aid—said one of his unit leaders punched Gree Maktak in the face.”
Ev hid another laugh in his chest. “What?”
“There’s a video of it floating around the message boards. Cursed him in Lio’s name and everything. Apparently, she’s the bastard’s niece.”
“That’s amazing.”
“Mhmm.”
They exhaled through their nose as Fin’s fingers began to card through their hair, once again cropped short after the medics saw what was tangled in the long, uneven ends. With each exhale of breath, fire leapt from Fin’s skin to theirs. The solid beating of his heart seemed to lull them to sleep.
“Vos’general,” Fin purred softly, hugging them close.
Ev was glad no one was around to tease either of them. He’d been calling them “vos’general”—our general, in Talkian—for months. Some of his squad members were beginning to elevate that to Arv’heil—the Arv’hein’s partner or right hand (usually both).
On the other side of the cot, behind Fin’s back, a weary voice grumbled, “Just call them Arv’heil already so we can call them that for real.”
Beneath their touch, Fin’s skin seemed to burn a bit hotter. He twisted around and threw something—a sock, maybe. “KP duty, Credekker. One week.”
The Banshee soldier—Credekker—scoffed at him, and Ev saw her raise her middle finger at him. He did it back and let his head drop onto the pillow again. He rolled his eyes for Ev’s amusement and their stifled another laugh.
“Go to sleep, ziojic’a,” he huffed, pinching their elbow.
Ev tried their best.
Fin left as dawn was breaking, donning his armor for patrol. Ev let him go, gladly taking up the space he had left and soaking up the rest of his body heat. Sometime later, when the moss was glowing blue and Ev had shoved their face into their pillow to continue sleeping, he came back in. He rolled them onto their side and laid down with his back to their chest without a word. They looped one arm around him and drifted off again.
Around dinner—or at least when the mosslight began to change hues—Ev physically could not sleep anymore. If the medics wanted them to get a few more hours in, they were going to have to sedate them again. As it were, they woke to Fin sprawled out on top of them, completely divested of his armor, a bandage wrapped around his right bicep.
They tried not to wake him. They really did. But it was hot out now, even in the tent under the trees, and now Fin’s furnace-like body temperature was now a curse, not a blessing. They tried to focus on what it meant that he was still here, sleeping with them instead of helping pack up camp to move or disperse back home. But, eventually, Fin began to stir.
He slid off of them to let them breathe, but left his arm across their chest. Whether it was because that was the only thing keeping him from rolling off the narrow bunk or because he wanted to, Ev didn’t know or care. They just liked it.
But alas, nature called. They rolled off the cot and shuffled outside into one of the little canvas stalls that had been put up around a hole-in-the-ground toilet. When they returned, Fin was sitting up and drinking from a canteen. He offered it to them as they passed and they drank, knowing fully well that a medic would find them if they didn’t. Medics had a seventh sense for that. Ev dropped down next to him and leaned on his shoulder.
“You look like you’re feeling better,” he said, taking the canteen back. “Do you?”
Ev shrugged and picked at grass. “Physically, yes. The Nineteenth Chaser works wonders with healing magic.”
“VahTee builds powerful healers,” Fin agreed.
“Agreed. But mentally, emotionally… I feel like shit.”
He nodded. “Yeah. I kind of figured.” He took a long swig of electrolyte water. “Do you remember what I said to you after you tried to eat your pistol a few years ago?”
Ev shook their head. “Not really.” But they hadn’t tried since.
“I asked you if, in the case of a dimensional warlord like Phantasma taking over Tartarus and forcing us to do terrible, awful, sadistic things, you would blame the Coalition for the actions we carried out under his complete control. Entirely unconscious and unable to control our minds or bodies. Do you remember your answer?”
“Nope.” Their memory was fuzzy around that particular night in 1987.
“Well, you didn’t say it right then. You were too out of it. But when we talked again the next day, you told me that ‘of course’ you wouldn’t hold any of those actions. You called Phantasma—and I quote—a ‘fucking heretic and a sadist,’ and ‘nothing he makes anyone do against their will is their fault.’”
Ev avoided his eyes. Yeah, they could buy that they’d said that. They hated Phantasma.
“Are you finally going to take your own advice and cut yourself some slack?” he asked, putting a bit of Arv’hein authority behind it. If they said no (at least outright) he’d order them to see the barracks psychologist and get a referral.
They sighed and took the canteen again, drinking slowly so they wasted time. “I’ll try,” they said finally.
He beamed. “Good. If you had said no, I was going to call Thelia and have her convince you with her ‘adorable little sister ‘look.”
They laughed and swatted him. “Ouch, Heran! That’s brutal!”
He threw his hands up. “What other choice would I have had?!”
They were still laughing when he grabbed them by their good arm and pulled them into a side hug, laughing with them and sending waves of cheery Hellfire over their skin. They caught him purring and he flattened them onto their back when they teased him about it. He dropped right on top of them, all of his weight knocking the air out of their chest. He weighed almost two times more than they did, they were so thin and wiry. He propped himself up when they couldn’t stop coughing, giving them room to breathe again, but then he was braced over them. The last time they’d been laying like this, well…
Ev’s cheeks had flushed a likely bright shade of red when the tent flap opened again and Banshee squad came pouring in, some clapping pauldrons together to wake up whoever was still left sleeping—Ev, Fin, and two others. Fin scrambled away before anyone saw the two of them, and Ev took his offered hand to get to their feet.
It was time to pack up and go home. Half the UTAF contingent would be staying here at Tonah to help with clean-up, and to receive the rest of the Imperial ANIC humanitarian aid force that was shipping out from Vadetta Heights now that the combat zone was mostly neutralized. The other half was going home, and Fin told Ev they were coming with them.
“No weapons until you get evaluated at the Manor or in Taerin,” he ordered, confiscating their present weaponry and asking for most of what was in their Void.
Reluctantly, they handed it all over—with tags, so he couldn’t claim any of it as his, which he was prone to do. He let them keep one solitary knife: the one that fit in their boot sheath. he vanished everything else.
Banshee was the last unit to take down their sleeping tent. When they were packed up, and someone had found Ev a duffel bag for their armor and remaining gear, they all headed for the last dropship that would take them up north.
“How long you stayin’ this time?” a tall, bronze-skinned woman with golden horns asked as Ev crammed into a dropship seat next to Fin. They recognized her: she was one of the medics that had helped them last night.
They smiled sheepishly. “I… don’t really know.”
Her brown-black eyebrows raised. “Oh? That’s a rarity.”
“They’re staying at least a tenday,” Fin huffed. “Until that asshole Aviera put away gets sentenced.”
The same war cry Ev had heard yesterday—”kill the bastard!” in Talkian, or thereabouts—went up and scared them out of their skin. The medic patted their shoulder and Fin ordered everyone to pipe down a bit. No one listened. The entire ride back north, the dropship was rowdy and full of curse words, war songs, bad jokes, and people telling one guy, Hurl, not to throw up. (“Hurl,” Ev assumed, had not gotten his name for lobbing grenades.) Ev settled into it, not participating but watching contently from between Fin and the tall medic.
Fin corralled them into the psychologist’s office after they touched down at the Manor several hours later. He left them there for the duration of the consultation, then picked them up after with food and coffee. They sat on the roof and talked as they ate, watching a storm brew over the southern ridge. As it blew in, Fin pulled them into a vacant watch tower and warded the windows so they could watch the storm. They sat toe-to-toe on the small circular floor, staring out between the pillars. Electrice drakons—tiny, fast little things that rode in on storms and ate electricity—swooped down towards the Manor, drawn in by the lights, and some crazy winged Guardsmen whooped and hollered as they danced through the air with them.
Rowdy dropships. Scary, efficient medics. Storm watching with Fin Heran.
Yeah, Ev decided. They could get used to a lot more of this.
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