A/N - 31st December 2013: This is a sister fic to 'Memories of Brighter Days' and by no means a sequel. Rather, it is a prelude to one.

A Gods Eater / Gods Eater 2 fanfiction by Lushard.

Chapter 01

[Reawaken]

09 – 09 – 2075 / 20:44:16

After Ray had told her to eat first and left, Alisa found herself staring at her plate instead of filling it with food. Her mind and body were tired, but still she had no appetite. She had spent the hours before dusk sleeping in a borrowed room upstairs. Even so, she still felt weary and restless.

Whenever she had time to think, her mind would automatically reel back to the events in the past, to mull over and over things she knew she couldn't change. She had gambled, and lost. She had bid her farewell to him, and yet, she would be lying if she believed that she could simply turn away from her grief and live on.

He was alive. No matter what he claimed otherwise. That simple fact alone had rekindled a small spark of hope within her that refused to be extinguished.

Funny, she bitterly thought, how the heart could be so naive and still prevailed over logic. The way he stared at her should have told her to accept reality as it was. He hated her, that much was clear. His discomfort around her was noticeable from the way he acted, which would only supply her with more reason to give up on hope.

Yet she found it painful to do so.

Suddenly desperate to escape the nagging feeling of dread, she stood up, leaving her empty plate behind. She approached a window and opened it, hoping that cool night air would wash away the bitter feelings inside of her.

Alisa breathed deeply, closed her eyes, tried to still her running thoughts. When she opened her eyes again, darkness loomed before her, so black that a house next to Scar's abode was only a silhouette. Electricity was at a minimum level. It reminded her that this place, no matter how close it looked to a Fenrir-labeled shelter, had not as much as energy supply.

Apart from Nemos Diana, she had never stayed overnight at a sector which was not under Fenrir's influence. Then again, whether Nemos Diana could be a fair comparison to this sector—the so-called the Nest—was an understatement. This place obviously had less resources than the former. Less guards against the Aragami, less weaponry, less energy source, less everything.

Scar had told her that it was spacious enough to house hundreds of refugees, but the man had never explained how exactly the governors of this sector intended to preserve the lives within the metal walls they'd built. Considering how young it looked, she doubted that they even had a Gods Eater.

Fenrir was rarely on a friendly term with a rebelling force. If the governors of this sector were indeed labelling themselves as an 'enemy' of Fenrir, then they had little chance to survive when calamity struck. All it took would only be a few Aragami and this place would be ruined. Funny, how some people could be so defiant when it was clear that they were at a disadvantage.

Opposing Fenrir meant a slow regression towards death unless they could manage to develop some sort of countermeasure against the Aragami and global warming. And such, some geniuses came up with an unorthodox idea of copying and upgrading the Bias Factor.

"Do you realize the position you are in now?" A voice she had heard in her 'prison' before she had been released to go back into the Far East Branch echoed in her head.

Alisa let a half smile came to her lips. Of course. All those theories and speculations were nothing but mere deductions. She'd read and heard and seen. She had never felt how it was to live outside of an Anti-Aragami Armored Wall. And before the raid by the Black Cloaks days ago, she had never suspected for that possibility to happen. Fenrir breeds the Gods Eaters. Fenrir controls everything. Fenrir welcomes and protects everyone. That was the kind of dogma that every child under Fenrir's wings was raised to uphold.

The thought of how little her knowledge about lives outside of the Walls made her feel small; insignificant; worse, ignorant.

She remembered how Ray had stared at her with his gun's barrel leveled at her head. His eyes had voiced his pity and resentment, accusation and disgust. Was that how a person who had lived outside of the Walls view the sheltered ones? Was that how some people view Gods Eaters—only as a force of genetically enhanced people whose comfort was ensured by Fenrir? No wonder Scar had told her to stay under the radar. She too would despise her kind were their positions to be reversed.

A muffled sound, much like a soft thud of an object falling to the wooden floor, startled her. She stood still for some seconds, listening. There was only silence in the house safe for a soft purring of a generator. But then the sound repeated itself, a little bit rougher and louder this time. It came from...the second floor?

Before her mind could process anything, her feet were already moving toward the staircase. The house was dark, lit only by small lamps hanging on the ceiling. Were it not for her vision as a Gods Eater, she would certainly have stumbled on the stairs. As Alisa approached the room he was in, it became clear where the sounds had come from. His door was closed. Alisa's pace slowed, hesitating.

Softly, she knocked on the door. "Ray?"

There was no reply coming from the other side. But she picked up a faint sound of a grunt. Should she check inside...? For some seconds she stood there in silence before finally reaching for the handle. It was not locked. "I heard loud noises from your room," she said as she swung the door inside very slowly. "Is—"

What happened next was a blur. She felt, rather than saw, Ray lunging at her—his cold hand seizing her neck, then her back hitting the hard wall. Frantically she grasped for the hand that was choking the breath out of her. Then she saw him. His eyes: blood red, crazed. Mouth slightly opened in labored breathing, his face rigid. The hunger in those orbs was too primal for someone who was not equipped with razor-sharp claws and fangs.

Every Gods Eater could instantly translate what that look meant: It was the look of a predator ready to feast on its prey. The look of an Aragami that was about to feast upon a fresh kill.

Alisa tried to say something—anything—to him but her air supply was cut short when he tightened his grip on her neck. Her mind began to black out, her struggles weakening.

A rush of feelings, memories and haphazard images assaulted her mind. They all screamed in unison for blood, for the torture to subside, for everything to end. They surged and merged until they became a wave of emotion that she could not quite place at first but then did. Desperation. So simple and pure it almost make her scream along with the voices of his past.

"...To live." A boy, sharply featured, short in stature. Blood-stained and battle-worn. Empty eyes stared back in silence.

The boy was swept away in the briefest of moment, another memory already jutting out and zooming in. This time, a familiar figure stood out in the same white room. Black skinned, enormous built, solid. "Dunno about you, but I wanna live and see tomorrow..."

"Test subject one—"

Needles, so many needles, pierced her—his —skin. Shooting pain became a numb sensation at the back of her head. A new voice rang to accompany a series of mental images that featured a blueprint of an underground facility and descending scalpels.

A man's voice echoed. It beckoned him into a room filled with monitors and tubes. "You want to know the truth?"

'Tell me,' Ray's voice, low and raw with anger, bellowed.

"No more secrets, then. You were—"

Stop...!

"You're Number One, right? Let's stick along for the time being, eh, former Gods Eater."

"Three is better than two, you mean."

"Max?"

Stop!

Abruptly, Ray released her, ending their Resonance. She fell crumpled to the floor, coughing and gasping hard for air. As blood began to flow again in her veins, her senses were slowly returning, and she heard him spitting out a word "Out!" ruggedly. She lifted up her head. Ray was several paces away, his hands and knees on the floor. "Get out!" he rasped again.

Alisa took a step forward and wrapped her arms around him. Ray tried to jerk away from her upon contact but she held him firmly. He turned violent in her embrace, seemingly desperate to have her as far as possible. "'The hell are you—" His voice died when she kept him from breaking free.

Then pain seared her sides. He was yanking at her in an attempt to break free, as though he'd rather have her flesh torn than staying still.

Tears started to sluice down her cheeks. This was the same Ray whose back she had followed with all her might in her junior year. This was the same man who had led his team home from one fight after another.

Was he not?

Not for the first time, she felt the harsh bite of reality shredding her heart at the spark of denial that had almost enveloped her being. It overwhelmed her, this little voice of defiance that refused to see him as the same person he had been a year ago. And for a moment, it was so tempting to just give in to the delusion. To see him as no more than a mere ghost of the dead Ray.

It was a simple fact, his death was, that even the victim himself had declared to accept. But the rekindled hope, that he was not all lost to the experiment that had made him into the person in her arms now, was stronger than the intimidating feeling to succumb into the pit of despair.

To be truthful, she wanted to let go of that hope; wanted to scream at it, to be free from its burden. But couldn't.

"Let go!" he said against her shoulder, again attempting to disengage himself without success.

Alisa opted to say nothing, knowing that words would not help much in this situation. All she could do was to hold on to reality, to the real, physical pain that helped her to silence the discouraging voices in her head.

Eventually, he grew limp. His breathing was slowing and his struggles were subsiding. The hands that had been trying to rid her a second before fell to his sides. She could feel his muscles slack, but Alisa waited until he was still before she loosened her grip around him.

"Rest," she quietly said. Her hand moved to lightly bury itself in his hair, easing him.

There was a second when Alisa thought he would fight her back, but that moment passed and his head lolled to one side. He had fallen asleep. So fast that she would have started panicking if it weren't for a faint beating of his heart resonating against her body.

All of her remaining strength was being drained away by the oracle cells at work. They were nullifying the pain, already on the move to stitch her wounds. Fast healing was a gift every Gods Eater possessed. Now, it was a gift she suddenly despised.

Tiredness blurred her vision. The semi-darkness lulled her to close her eyes. She swatted it with several blinks. Carefully, she eased Ray onto the bed frame.

His breaths were deep and even, contrasting the fact that it had come out in gasps and hisses barely a minute ago.

It felt surreal to look at him when hatred wasn't emanating from his features. He looked peaceful. Serene, even. But as her eyes drifted to his right wrist, she was again reminded that people in the past stayed in the past. They could never cross the borders of time.

He was dead, in a sense, to her and to the people he once may have cared about. Just like her parents. Just like everyone else she had failed to protect.

Alisa reached out to touch Ray's wrist. Warm blood was wetting the bandage still. Behind the soft cloth was torn flesh she knew would scar him for the rest of his life, a cruel token passed down from his former self which time wouldn't heal.