The Swords of August

The sensation of breathing again was a shock. The instant in time between taking Saul's hand and appearing in this new dreamscape was very small, I was sure, but it felt like an eternity to me.

I didn't see a forest, or a mountain, nor any natural wilderness that I'd become semi-accustomed to during our time on August, instead I saw Larsen, sitting alone in a cramped barracks on the thirty-eighth floor of a towering skyscraper.

It wasn't quite like the barracks I knew though. For one thing, the sheets were decidedly non-regulation, the four mattresses of each rack being fitted with colourful but plain sheets. They were unremarkable little refuges of slumber.

My eyes swept round, examining the room that was familiar but off in little ways. Colourful sheets, furniture that wasn't standard-issue, and then there was Larsen, hunched over, chin to knees by the window on a plush black couch. The world outside crawled, a distant portal displaying the sight of Curiosity City as the cars rushed by and the lights blazed in the darkness.

She looked lost, sitting on the couch as she looked out at the window. Less the strong, stoic soldier I had come to expect and more like a woman who didn't know which path to take or how to take it. Like someone who had lost her way. It was eerie. Just the quiet city and the dim haze of its lights bleeding through into a too-quiet room.

Finally, she deigned to speak to me. "Come to talk me out of my decision?"

"And what decision is that?"

"If I'm not getting out of this as myself, I don't want to get out of it at all."

"You do know what will happen if you don't accept the changes, right?"

"I know. There was a voice that explained it all before you came, but it's gone now."

"A voice?"

"Saul's voice. Only, I don't think it was actually him. More like an echo or a recording."

"I see."

"I can't say I'm fond of being forced to make a life-altering choice without any warning, but that's nothing new for me."

"What do you mean? This isn't like donating a kidney or something. You'll die if you don't make the right choice."

"I said I know, Edward." She looked at me. Her irises were purple. Not blue, like they should've been; purple.

"So, what then? What's the hold-up? We can't get through this without you."

She smiled sadly, then resumed looking out the window. "You can. You did."

"Again, if I have to say 'what' one more time…"

"He showed it to me. Or maybe it did, the voice, whatever was inside me. I saw how you all moved on without me. I also saw how lonely the war becomes, fighting Saul's crusades with him. It doesn't matter whether I live or die, does it?"

I couldn't contain myself. "It matters to me, damn it! What's your problem? Are you just going to sit there because you're afraid you won't be human afterwards? Talk to me, Victoria. Please."

She remained still, ever the statue, staring out at the cityscape.

"I don't want to be something other than who I am. All my life I've been forced to make choices, but I've never had the chance to make my own path. First, it was either take charge of the company, or disappoint dad and run away to join the military. Then, it was serve my five years, or re-up and go for ten. I'm tired of it."

"We can make a path starting today, or tomorrow. It doesn't matter. You're not going to end up as someone else, I promise. You just have to keep fighting."

"Can you really promise me that? Just like you promised Waters you'd take responsibility for exposing that arms cartel?"

"What?" A cold chill prickled my skin. "How do you know about that?"

"We're both in each others' heads." She paused for a moment. The silence was heavy. "I know what you did, Edward."

My thoughts drifted for a few long moments. I had taken responsibility for the op that day, but I'd not had any better options at the time. It was take the fall for it all or endure a full inquiry which would've been a headache ten times as painful.

Larsen remained silent for a while. Long enough that I realised she was waiting for me to answer her question. I brought myself back to the present.

"I promise to try. You're my friend and I definitely don't know you as well as you do yourself, but I'll try. We'll all try. We're not going to let you do this alone."

"I don't want to be some kind of monster, Edward. I'd rather die first." It took me a fraction of a second longer than it should have to realise she was shaking.

I took a step towards her, sinking down to my knees and laying a hand on her shoulder. "Hey. Look at me."

She turned her head to face me. Larsen's eyes held a familiar vulnerability, a terror that I'd experienced before, not just seen on others' faces. I felt my eyes water slightly and before I knew what I was doing I'd wrapped my arms around her.

"I can feel it changing me. I'm… scared."

In a wordless reply, I hugged her tight. I felt her tears fall onto the crook of my neck. "I know, but you have to do this. I'll be right here with you."

We stayed like that for a long time, but at some point amidst sniffles and tearful smiles we separated and she took a deep, shaky breath.

"I'm ready." She said, laying down on the couch. I choked the knee-jerk reaction to step back, I had to show her I wasn't afraid of her and that I wasn't going to turn back, no matter how dangerous it might get.

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I had no idea what to expect and I suspect, neither did she. She lay there as I sat next to her, waiting for something to happen. I don't really remember a lot after that, but I do remember there was a lot of crying and the air felt charged with energy.

However long it took, I wasn't expecting to be pulled back to reality into the middle of a Mexican standoff.

I flashed back to reality. The discord between kneeling down next to Larsen and suddenly being flat on my back hit me like a lightning strike—and I had firsthand experience with one of those.

I groaned, getting to my feet even as my hands searched out my gear by reflex. "Someone mind telling me what the hell is going on here?"

While Saul hadn't decided to butcher everyone, something I was grateful for, there were a few extra faces in the room.

"Ah, our wayward mercenaries return. Everyone alright?" It didn't escape me that I'd seen the three new faces in the room before, and that they were angry.

I didn't receive an answer. I also didn't see the purple lightning that lashed out and cooked each man in seconds. I snapped round to centre on the direction of the attack, only to find Larsen's twitching prone body.

"It looks like she's dreaming." I said.

"Really, Ed? Because I've never seen anyone dreaming shoot lightning before."

I laughed. "Well stick around this place long enough and I'm sure we will. About that…" I turned to Saul. He had a faintly amused expression on his face.

"I will not help you leave this planet. I cannot spare the time to take you where you want to go."

"Had to ask, I suppose." I shrugged. "So, about all your… bugs."

"Children." He replied.

"Right, children. About them… you'll keep them away from cities and from being a problem?"

"I have no desire to be harassed at this time, but this is not over. We will be speaking again. We aren't enemies. Don't change that."

I chuckled. "I was going to say the same thing to you. We'll stay out of each others' way. As for your war… good luck."

"Edward, what the fuck? You're just going to let him go, after what he did to Larsen?" Chen raised his rifle to cover Saul.

I shot him a warning look. "Don't."

"Quite right." Saul said. He didn't have to be so smug and insufferable, but I guess that was part and parcel of being whatever he was. I wasn't buying that he was a god. Maybe some kind of alien demigod, or powerful general, though.

"Saul." I said, "Thank you."

"I still remember what it is to be human, and to be young in the throes of an old stretch of existence. Call it nostalgia, if you like and... Take care of her. As much as she might be yours, I have a certain fondness for those who can pass my tests. I'll be seeing you both again someday, I think." Less the snake sizing up the rat this time, he actually gave me a genuine smile.

"I will. Just… I have so many questions."

"Which will have to wait."

Before I could ask another of my many questions and without even a goodbye, the enigmatic fuck disappeared. One moment Saul was there and the next, he was gone. I played back my suit recordings. They were never off and captured a wide spectrum of data.

"The fuck? Did anyone see where he just went?" I checked the room's corners, as if that would make a difference. Nothing came back. It was as if the recorders had been paused, Saul had been deleted from existence, and then they'd come back on.

"Didn't see a thing." Chen said.

"Being able to defeat modern sensor tech and fit that technology into a man-portable package…" Carver trailed off. I could practically hear his eyes gleaming.

"Settle down, Einstein. I'm pretty sure he isn't sharing, and that it's not technology as we would understand it."

"Yeah, but still."

I took a look at the charred, crispy things that could hardly be called corpses. Then at Larsen. Still sleeping.

"Let's get her out of here." Chen nodded, and bent to pick her up.

"So where's the sword? Where's all the loot?" Carver sounded like a petulant child, and I couldn't help but laugh.

"There wasn't any, and the sword's a long way away from here. What did you all talk about while I was out of it?"

"You don't know?"

"Eh, I haven't checked the recordings. It'd be faster to just ask you."

"Well, we know he's from Earth, or at least the Terran sphere. He said 'us' as if he was one of us."

As we picked a corridor to follow, I considered that. "Maybe he was. He sure as hell isn't now, though."

We picked our way through the decaying ruins of the 'temple', though now I wasn't so sure it was a temple. I didn't know what a man like that needed with a temple when his 'children' as he put it, were all bugs. I doubted they walked around listening to sermons and offering him incense and praying to him.

My eyes strayed to Larsen again, for probably the third time in half as many minutes. Her suit said she was okay, but if she was okay, I was a naked clown.

"Is she okay?" Carver asked, walking up to us from seemingly nowhere. I played back my suit recording. He'd entered from one of the open doorways behind me and I'd been too distracted to notice.

"She will be, I think. We need to get back to our base and get our affairs in order. This planet isn't safe, even if we've taken care of one of the major players."

"Yeah… I suppose you'd know all about that."

"Yeah. Where the hell have you been, Carver? And I don't just mean when we got split up not long ago. I mean—"

"I know what you mean." He assured me.

I was sure that we were all quite curious. He'd disappeared, taken by Sefira, and then he'd shown up here out of nowhere claiming she was misunderstood? Something didn't quite track, but damned if I knew what it was.

"I guess we've got time, don't we? Where do you want me to start?"

"How about when you got grabbed off the street?" Chen suggested.

We followed the passages, detouring where they'd caved in and excavating new ones where we had to. It was nearly an hour before we made it out, simply due to the sheer size of the place. While there were a lot of passageways, corridors, access shafts and the like, many of them were inaccessible or blocked. We finally found a way to the surface, or close enough anyway.

"Stand clear!"

A thunderous explosion shook the room, and earth and soil flooded it. We'd learned from our earlier experience though and we'd created a deep pit inside the temple. Being close to the surface meant while the earth that cascaded down inside the temple was still a lot, it wasn't enough to bury us like last time. Especially not with foresight on our side.

I hadn't forgotten about Leyndal, but I also had little to no idea how to get back to him because I didn't know where we were. I had a general idea, but estimates put us closer to the Mistpoint than the sands of the Empire.

"Figures." I scoffed.

"What's that?"

"We were spat out in the middle of nowhere."

"Yeah, but you know where we're going right?"

"I have a map, yeah, but failing that we could always follow a river."

"Follow a river?"

"Civilisations build around water, especially rivers. Follow one downstream and we'll find people. We find people, we can find a bed for the night and maybe some transport."

"Ah, right. That makes sense."

With our combined auditory sensors, finding a river wasn't too hard. It was still time-consuming, though, so by the time we'd started following a river, Larsen had become conscious again and the sun .

What surprised me though, was the negligent toss of her helmet to the ground.

"What the hell?" Chen sounded like he'd seen a ghost.

A moment's inspection and I could see why. Her eyes glowed.

"What's with the helmet?"

"I can't see through it. Can't even use my implants." She sounded like her old self, at least. Her eyes glowed purple again, though this time it was real.

I nodded slowly. "I guess I can see why."

"The suit reads our irises and links with our implants to see what we're looking at and overlay our HUD. It's all connected, like one big intelligent computer." Carver explained to Chen.

"I'm guessing it can't see through all that glowing?" Chen asked.

Larsen shook her head. "There's that, but… I don't have any anymore."

"Any what?" I asked.

"Implants. They're gone."

That was interesting, because she walked with unerring ease, and it was dark. Not pitch-black yet, but definitely dusk. Yet, she never missed a step, never seemed surprised despite the uneven terrain.

Something had definitely changed and I was willing to bet that the changes didn't stop at her eyes.