The building is dank, pungent with mildew and isolation.

Saya walks across the empty rooms, assessing the wreckage all around her. Blood staining the walls, faded and brown. Furniture shattered, left in forlorn shreds every which way. The site of the first Chiropteran attack, sealed off by authorities, accessible via Red Shield's numerous contacts.

It is here that Saya and the rest meet with their latest comrade in this latest battle. A descendant of David and Julia Silverstein, the most recent member to carry on the somber mantel of "David". This century's David is tall and well-built, with large broad hands and long dark hair drawn back in a ponytail. But Saya sees something of her long-dead comrade in his unsmiling chiseled face, in his intent blue eyes.

Also like his forefather, he is businesslike, to-the-point.

"Saya," he greets her, as if it is a hello. "I apologize for not being present for your Awakening. If I'd been there, I would have briefed you on the situation much earlier."

Saya shakes her head. "That's fine. But please. I need to know what's going on. How are these Chiropterans reappearing? And where is Haji?"

"We have received no contact from your Chevalier for five months now. The last reports of his whereabouts were in the factory in Berlin. We've tried to infiltrate the area, but the security makes it impossible. It's far too heavily-guarded."

"Exactly what kind of factory is this?"

"Externally, it supplies medical goods. But our scouts have managed to learn certain details about the building. One of which is that there is an area built underground, with a separate entrance and exit. And there are signs that the area is being used to conduct experiments on Chiropterans. Scientists have been seen entering the vicinity, leaving it, at odd hours. Its structure is similar, in fact, to the ancient Yanbaru facility you once infiltrated with my ancestor, the second David."

"Yanbaru…" Saya's voice is faint.

Memories flap and flail behind her eyes, serving her scoops of the darkened building in the leafy cacophony of the jungle, the smell of dust and fear, the sliding metal doors that held out ravening Chiropterans. The place where she had been forced to kill her father with her own blood, vivid red spewing across the floor and walls.

Then Alecto speaks. "Who exactly are these people? How did they get their hands on our mother's blood?"

David hesitates. When he speaks, his voice is lowered, confidential. "This is strictly need-to-know information. The scientists in the Berlin factory are the same ones who were scavenging through our Iceland facility. We've gathered enough details to learn that they're part of a private genetic engineering project. Well-funded, but shady. They've run several operations before, mostly in Asia and South America, but each time, the governments have shut them down because they veer toward less-than-ethical practices."

Tyler frowns. "And… what's the need-to-know part?"

"The Chiropterans created by these scientists. Their source is Diva's blood. And it seems that the scientists obtained this blood from within Red Shield itself."

Megaera's eyes widen. "What? You mean they stole it?"

"No. Decades ago, during the war, Diva's blood was taken from one of the old Cinq Fleshe labs. It was kept preserved in one of our high-security bases in France. To analyze it, to understand the behavior and lifestyle of the Chiropteran queens. The area was inaccessible to ordinary operatives."

"So you're saying someone from within the base gave the blood to these scientists?" Saya interposes, unnerved.

"Worse. A faction of the staff has defected and joined these scientists. They're small in number, but each of them bears vital information on Chiropterans, on yourself and Diva's origins. They also have a deep knowledge of Red Shield's internal affairs. Outguessing them is going to be a challenge."

"And Haji?" Saya's pulse in beating hard and sharp against her temples. "What about him? Do you think he might be held hostage in that Berlin factory?"

David hesitates, seeming to taste his own words before speaking them. "There is a possibility. Our sources conclude that if Haji is indeed alive, it is for the basis of experimentation. Those scientists could have captured him in order to study a real live Chevalier. They've given the impression of being very interested in the biology of Chiropteran Queens and their descendants."

Saya's throat feels the thirst of the Sahara.

Experiments…?

He might be sliced open and half-insane for all I know.

My god, what could they be doing to him?

Saya rejects the unbidden images, grotesque and chilling, that her imagination evokes. She shakes her head firmly, the mental impact of a door slammed shut and locked, and refocuses on David.

"This factory," she says. "Is there any way to get in?"

"It's difficult. Haji tried it, but he could not succeed."

"But you said the governments in other countries shut down these scientists' operations before," Tyler interjects. "Because of ethical issues. Well, what they're doing in that factory is far from legal too. And some of their Chiropteran experiments have wound up loose in the city. Killing a lot of people. I'm sure the government there won't take it any better."

"That's actually one of the questions we've been asking ourselves," interjects David. "Considering the history these scientists have, and the security around the factory, a mistake like that seems unlikely. You would think they'd be more careful with the Chiropterans, prevent them from escaping at any cost. But if anything, since your Awakening, the reports of Chiropteran attacks have been rising."

"You're right," Alecto intones. "It's much too incongruous."

Saya's eyes narrow. "Either too incongruous, or not at all, actually."

Everyone turns to stare at her.

"What do you mean?" David asks.

"Think about it. These scientists have inside information from Red Shield. They know about my history, about Diva's. About Meg and Alecto. They probably know I'm awake, that the twins are with me. Do you think they might be trying to get our attention?"

"By setting Chiropterans out in the city?" David's eyebrow crooks, bemused and skeptical.

"It's been known to happen before. And you just mentioned that these scientists were interested in Chiropteran Queens. Which the three of us are. There's a chance someone is trying to lure us there."

David inclines his head, and raises the other brow, but mostly to level them out. He seems contemplative, considering. "You might have a point."

"So… what then?" Meg asks, glancing from David to Saya. "We're just going to barge in there and ask them to give Haji back? Even though we know it's a trap? Like, with a twenty-foot neon sign attached?"

Saya purses her lips. "It's something the earlier David used to say, back in the days of the war."

"What?"

"It doesn't matter if it's a trap. We still have to go."

Tyler cringes. "Yeah? I hope that wasn't the motto of his life. Otherwise I'm amazed the guy lived so long."

The current David shoots Tyler a sharp look, and then turns to Saya. "Perhaps so. But you're going to need back-up. Otherwise you'd never make it out of the factory alive without running into trouble."

"That's fine," Saya remarks, with a faint tinge of bitterness. "Trouble is something I have a long and funny history with."


Pure white. Closed off on all four sides, like the inside of a box. The floor is checked, like the surface of a chessboard. Black, then white, then black. Then white again. The room is small, stifling cold. An airless refrigerator.

Haji sees a row of glass test tubes. Slithers of fluid in each one. They gleam in the white light. They look like they might feel cold. Like glossy ice. On a screen, a cold gray needle. A magnification of blood cells. Flattened floating mushrooms. Their color is red. The only color in the whiteness of the room. The screen shows the needle piercing into a blood cell.

A sliver of cold gray penetrating the warm round red.

Large needles are fastened into Haji's skin in this lab. Their tiny metal points stick to his flesh like licks of ice. Each one focusing a sharp, tear-stinging dot of pain. Exerting pressure. He feels them drawing out his blood.

His eyes water. Tears hot, burning sharp in the coldness. Slithers of warm red blood suspended in glossy cold tubes.

A screen with a mysterious graph. A dull drone, flickering images. Numeric and alphabets. Spectrums and charts.

Cold gray needles in his hands. Bunched across his wrists like icicles. Penetrating cold and sharp. Flowing with sparks, filling his skin with cold daggers of pain. His body tightens, his muscles spasm. The pain.

So cold.

Electricity is a cold sensation. Who knew? It feels so hot; it burns so sharp, so acute, that it is unbearably cold. Does that make sense?

It must, because it does.

White figures loom around his shuddering body. Standing at intervals on the chessboard floor. Black, then white, then black. They look like chess pawns. Their faces are hidden by reflective black visors. They have no emotion, no temperature. They are as cold as the room. Haji feels their silent impartial malice, their cruel intent indifference.

At the end of the room, a rectangular black screen. A mirror? A window. He sees hazy images through it. Blurry, reflecting the milky haze of his cold white room.

Needles everywhere. Cold. More cold than he can stand. Pain. So much pain. He spasms with it, jerking back, left, right. The white figures watch him, motionless. He sees his soundless agony reflecting off their black visors. They taunt him with their stillness, their impassivity.

He wants to scream at them, tell them, Stop, stop it.

But he cannot move.

Clouds of deep red in more gleaming glass tubes. Screens and graphs flickering. Voices somewhere. From the white figures? No? Yes? He does not know. A screaming coming from somewhere. Shrill and deranged and endless.

Is it his own?

A dull hum. Something burns, burns, and hurts. Voices, screaming, needles, humming, pain. And cold, so much cold.

He has felt cold before. For a very long time. Ever since becoming Saya's Chevalier, his body temperature has plummeted to tepid volumes. On permanent Thermafrost, as Meg and Alecto often remarked in the early days, whenever tugging at his hands to drag him off with Saya to a visit a new place. Saya never used to mind that he had such a minimal body heat. Indeed, in hot climates, she enjoyed the way his hands would feel on her sweaty brow, on the back of her delicate sunburnt neck.

"Much better than an ice pack," she would murmur, smiling at him. "And, best of all, with an added aesthetic element."

Haji, in turn, had always relished how warm she was. Everything about her, around her, seemed to hum, to ripple with an intoxicating heat. It was something he could never explain to her, how that radiant warmth drew him to her like a filling to a magnet. He enjoyed how she felt against him when she was asleep, especially just after they had made love. Her usual scent of flowery shampoo and soap and something inherently balmy and Saya, tinged with a spicy aroma of drying sweat. Limbs slack and tangled with his, subsuming his own body with heat, sharing so unstintingly.

He never felt cold when he was with her.

The chill returned only when he was away from her presence, separated from her during her long sleep.

But this, this is cold, cold in a way no human language can grasp. He imagines, if he ever crystallizes, this is what his body would feel like, the leaden overwhelming numbness. It might have swamped his entirely, a long time before, if not for the flickering heat that pulses through his chest at every silent invocation of her name.

Saya…

Saya…


Saya stiffens, and glances behind her.

For a moment, it feels as though she has heard a voice whispering her name, right against her ear.

His voice.

She gives herself a mental shake, and turns away. She cannot afford to languish in anxiety, in loneliness. For his sake, she will be strong. She will allow herself the luxury of tears only when she is beside him again. Tears of joy, not of grief. This sere-throated agony is a weakness to her with every passing hour; she wants it gone.

Her eyes travel around the pictures lining the walls at Meg and Alecto's apartment. Photographs of different places the girls have traveled, separately and together. Landmarks from a variety of continents, Meg posing exuberantly and confidently in each one, Alecto more reserved, save for her soft knowing smile. In some pictures, they are alone; in others, surrounded by old comrades, friends, family.

Saya even sees ancient photographs of Kai, of Lewis and Julia, when they were all alive.

They pose before Omoro in one photo; the twins are barely into their teens, petite slips of girls clutching at Kai, then in his late thirties, broad-shouldered and tanned. David and Julia stand beside them, arm in arm; David wears a garish blue Hawaiian shirt with flowers that seem to laugh on the fabric; his eyes are bright as though he is on the verge of laughing himself. Julia's face is glowy, her hair falling in her eyes; Saya sees the glint of the wedding ring on her finger, where her hand rests on David's arm. Lewis is beside them, vast and jolly, smiling his broad, infectious grin as he gives a thumbs-up.

A wistful smile tugs at Saya's lips. Her old comrades, her safety net during the war, attenuating her mental burdens with their own resilience and grit. They had the will to carry on, to fight with her and back her up, with a deeply human buoyancy that she found herself imbibing even when she tried not to.

Even when all she wanted to do was close her eyes and sleep forever.

She hears faint footsteps behind her, followed by the heady aroma of coffee. Tyler appears at her shoulder, bearing a steaming mug.

"You look… tired," he says, eyes averted. "Thought you could use an extra caffeine boost."

"Thank you." She accepts the brimming mug from him, holds it between numb palms for a moment before she blows and takes a sip.

Tyler's curious eyes track past her, taking in the assortment of photographs she has been studying. He smiles softly. The action brings out the dimples in his cheeks, makes him seem much younger than he actually is. "So this was your old gang, huh?"

"Yes. Most of them."

He nods thoughtfully. "Meg used to tell me about them all. About growing up in Okinawa, her old school there, the places she and Alecto liked to eat. About the time you awoke, and when they first met Haji…" He tilts his head to one side. "She and Alecto really look up to you, you know that?"

Saya purses her lips, but does not know what to say.

"When I first met Meg, it was all she ever talked about. My foster parents were part of Red Shield, so you were a hot topic of discussion with them too." He slips his hands into his pockets and looks past her. "When I was young, it used to make me feel left out. Isolated. My adopted folks' parents had seen you with their own eyes. They'd experienced the repercussions of the war. They knew what it was all about, and they made sure to tell their kids all about it. But as for me… I'd never seen a real live chiropteran before. I didn't know how to connect any of it with my own life. It stayed that way even when I grew up. You'd think, being raised by Red Shield, I'd feel more interested in it, but I wasn't. I should've been, in theory, but some things can't be helped."

"So… why did you get involved with Meg then?" Saya asks. She is not trying to be rude, she is both genuinely curious, and eager for any distraction that will take her fear-induced thoughts off Haji.

Tyler hesitates, then smiles again. "I wasn't interested in Meg because of what she was, to be honest. Her being a Chiropteran didn't matter. Don't get me wrong—I hadn't gone into denial about it. But it wasn't an issue for me either. I was with her because I liked her. To me… she was just Meg."

"And what about when you were made a Chevalier? Did it… upset you in any way?"

"Upset me? No. It was the opposite."

"What do you mean?"

"It used to scare me sometimes, the idea that Meg and Alecto weren't human. Not in the usual sense, but in the sense that I'd never be able to stay with them as long as I wanted to. Because I was human, and somewhere along the line, it would pull me up short. And I didn't want to be deprived of anything with Meg. I can't think of a time I was happier than when I met her."

Saya dares a soft smile. Tyler's eyes are aglow. Something about his rueful expression makes her think of Kai, that day before the MET battle. Seated with him on the bench, shaded by trees and dappled with shifting spots of sunlight. Where Kai had urged her to live on, even when she hadn't wanted to believe she could, when he had smiled upon hearing her say Nankurunaisa.

"After Meg made me her Chevalier, I got my wish," Tyler adds. "Not just that, but the transformation completely changed me. Inside out. For the first time… I understood what it meant, to be part of a unit. To be part of a family. And not just because of blood. My foster parents were good people, but I never really felt like I belonged with them. I tried to, but it didn't happen. But here… it's not like that at all. I feel like I have a purpose with her and Allie. To take care of them. It's like I've found home."

"I…I see."

Tyler pauses then, and glances at her with a sheepish grin. "Sorry. Didn't mean to make you uncomfortable. Meg says I talk too damn much."

"It's all right."

Right now, I really need the distraction…

Her eyes flit past Tyler, to the photographs at the wall again. One of them gives her pause. A snapshot of a dark-haired man and woman, holding a boy with Tyler's sun-dappled hair. She points impulsively. "Are those your parents?"

"Were," Tyler corrects mildly. "Dad died last year, and mom passed away about ten months after him. They were both part of Red Shield's infantry. Guns were their specialty. Their own parents were the same way. In fact, their earliest ancestors were part of the Red Shield squad in Vietnam. That place where…"

Where I went insane and mutilated and slaughtered a hundred people in one night, Saya mentally finishes for him.

Unbidden, her lips press together; her hands knot into vibrating fists around the warm mug of coffee.

Tyler's expression softens with something like remorse. "I'm sorry. I've been told stories of what happened that night. Didn't mean to remind you. Although I honestly don't believe you were to blame for it."

Yes, but how can you know? You weren't there. You don't know what I…

"I can't speak from firsthand knowledge, but I've heard so much about all you've gone through," Tyler adds. Not reading her thoughts, merely continuing the conversation. "There's a lot you've had to suffer, to get through. You shouldn't be so hard on yourself. And… after meeting you face to face, I really think the twins were right about you."

"Right about me?" Saya frowns. "What do you mean?"

"That you deserve to be happy. Because you don't exactly look like you had an excess supply all your life. And I want you to know, I'll all do what I can, to help you and the twins get Haji back. This is me talking, not just the part that's Meg's Chevalier."

Saya is speechless, left mute by the quiet sincerity of the words, by the obvious dedication in this young man's eyes. To her nieces, to her. His new family by blood. Despite not knowing her, despite having just met her, he is willing to search for Haji with her, to help her with this problem. Not out of obligation, not because he owes it to Meg, but because it is something he wants to do.

That kind of compulsion is so rare. This, if nothing else, Saya has learnt from all her years spent alive. It stuns her that, despite everything, she still manages to cross paths with people who possess this precious trait.

Perhaps it is a sign for her, even in her bleakest hours. To look for light in hidden corners, to never lose hope.

She smiles at Tyler, a gentle, unguarded smile, an echo of the ones she used to contain in her earliest years.

"Thank you."