"Back to square one," Haxtes exclaims. He has another sip of his drink. "I kept heading deeper into the city." Images of the ruined cityscape play out inside your mind. "By now I was inside the Forbidden Zone," he continues.

The buildings appear somewhat less damaged here. If the Imperials were to take over a section of the city, they would have picked something still relatively intact, and then patched up whatever needed fixing.

"The outer perimeter, mind you," Haxtes adds. "I had never made any attempts at penetrating the far more intimidating inner cordon. And the hospital building at the heart of the zone was a complete blank to me."

Intimidating indeed. There are several layers of physical barriers, overlapping auspex scanning fields, patrolling sentries, and gun-servitors manning heavy weapon emplacements. And that's just the stuff you can see; there is bound to be additional, unseen security measures as well.

By the look of things - the utter lack of markings and identification sigils, for example - you have a fairly good idea what might be hidden inside. If your assumptions are correct, you're actually a bit surprised that Haxtes managed to breach even the outer security layers. It should have been impossible without the aid of advanced technology or psychics. There is more here than meets the eye.

"I didn't know this area as well as my own part of town," Haxtes says, "but I'd gone through it a few times before," you raise an eyebrow at this claim, but Haxtes ignores you, "and knew the general layout well enough." Another, contemplative sip of amasec. "I kept to the parts where there would be less chance of running into patrolling guardsmen or roving servoskulls."

You sensory probe feeds you images of Haxtes making his way across the zone, moving quickly, surely, and without attracting any attention.

"It was an awful risk that I took," he goes on, "but I had a mission and could not be turned aside. The resolution of my birthday quandary hinged on my success."

Haxtes takes a moment to restructure his thoughts. "Mother had not returned to our new townhouse," he doesn't deign to call it home, "the previous night and I was worried. Worried that my birthday cake would not get done. Worried that there would be no celebration, no present."

He lets out a barely audible sigh, "Jax had followed in Father's footsteps so to speak," Haxtes eyes seem to look inward, "he was rarely at the house, except for meals or when he wanted something. Most of the time he was elsewhere, trying hard to be accepted as a full member of the Kiones, a group of 'freedom fighters' operating out of our zone."

He starts sliding his index finger along the rim of the glass, ever so slowly. "So it fell to young Haxtes to protect the girls and look after the canine." His swirls his glass ever so slowly, making figures of eight in the air. "I tried my best of course, but I was only nine and could only do so much. Jax should have been there," he says flatly. "He was fifteen. Fifteen and a half. A man grown. He knew I couldn't fill his shoes, but he just didn't care." The finger stops and he looks right at you. "I hated him for it. For a very long time I hated him."

You've gathered as much already, but say nothing.

He clears his throat. "At first we hadn't really felt the war. There were no orbital barrages launched against Thira. But as weeks turned into months and late summer became autumn," you watch as the hill country around Thira goes from the arid yellow of summer, to the verdant green of moist autumn, "things started to get more difficult for us. The grid was down more often than not. Food and other basic supplies were getting harder to come by."

The finger resumes its circling movement. "Father had already joined the militia by then." You adjust the probe to get a glimpse of Haxtes' father, but you're too late, catching only his uniformed back as he marches away from the house in the hills.

"He came back to the house a few times in the beginning," Haxtes says, "but then his unit was redeployed to meet some Imperial threat or the other."

You don't bother trying to get a good look - Haxtes has long since supressed his memories of the man. You'll never be able to dig up a clear picture of the man.

"I never saw or heard from him again." The finger stops. "Not a single info package over the grid. No written letters. No word of mouth messages. Nothing." Haxtes' voice is cold and dead. "I do not know what became of him. He was most likely either killed in action or succumbed to attrition." He sounds very certain.

"That is a common enough problem in all war zones," you offer. "Lots of people involved, general mayhem and very little information to work from. The Officio Medicale rarely has the resources needed to sort out every body part found or track down every missing person."

Haxtes nods almost imperceptibly in agreement. "He could, I guess, have survived. Survived and made a new life for himself." The nodding has become shaking. "It's possible, but unlikely. More than a billion people died during the war or in the aftermath of it. I'm certain he was one of them. A true Protasian patriot. Or a rebel and a traitor to the God-Emperor. Pick the one you like best." Tap, tap goes the finger against the rim of the glass, impatiently waiting for you to answer.

"I feel sorry for your loss," you venture.

"Don't be. He had already abandoned his family before the war. This was just the final act of his betrayal," Haxtes adds.

Fleeting images of his father flash unbidden before your eyes, coalescing into a ghostly outline lingering just outside the circle of light. You judge him to be a tall and handsome man, with uncommonly intelligent eyes. He makes the sign of the Aquila, and then he is gone.

Haxtes continues. "Mother had taken to selling her body to keep us fed. I didn't understand it at the time, but it was the way of things. Father was gone, prices were up, and she had three kids to feed, one of them a big lad that was constantly demanding more."

Another poorly concealed attempt at deriding his brother.

"In the beginning it had been to the militia and other Protasians," he continues. "She would go into town for a while, and when she came back she's bring with her food, medicines, clothes, and other necessities."

His very attractive mother appears as an apparition in the darkness. She is nude. Cascades of dark hair that fall almost to her waist, revealing more than it conceals. Her age is indeterminate; mature, but youthful at the same time. When she notices you staring she gives a little laugh, flings her hair and dances away on bare feet, leaving you to admire the memory of her curves.

Haxtes gives you an appraising look. "I guess the ironic part is that Mother was feeling...quite well during this period. There was none of the angst or apathy that normally gnawed at her soul. She rose to the occasion so to speak. Or maybe she just enjoyed a bit of whoring. Going into town to fuck strangers. Bringing regular customer back to the house for a little more intimacy." He chuckles. "In my book that actually sounds a lot better than sitting around the house crying, while watching your kids starve. One of the few things she got right." A real smile this time. Very brief, but it was there.

Haxtes gives a minute shrug and continues. "When Thira was occupied times became harder for most folk. I guess we thought that we had it really rough, but truth be told that wasn't the case. Sure the city was bombed and shelled. Sure there were few enough houses left unscathed. Sure infrastructure was shot to hell. Sure there was little enough food. Sure the IGs treated us like shit. But we were not burned to ash by plasma bombs. Nor were we hit with kinetic obliterator strikes, thermonuclear warheads, or any other sort of mass strategic bombardment. We had little food, but we had food. Our drinking water was not poisoned. No strange diseases ravaged the city. In short we were doing good, relatively speaking."

Haxtes stops for a moment, chokes down the beginnings of laughter, "I'm as bad as Vern," he says in an uncharacteristically merry tone.

"Please," you say, "do continue. Additional detail helps with my understanding. I get brilliantly clear images from Thira as you speak, but without a little extra guidance I don't think I would manage to fully understand the context. Alternatively I could disengage and check the librarium for records on Protasia, but from what you and Vern have told me I do not think I'd find anything worthwhile."

Haxtes looks at you. His eyes are flat, almost lifeless, but there is a faint smile on his lips. "Speaking of the librarium. Before you compartmentalized your mind I was able to discern you're in a secure library, under close scrutiny. You have now been motionless, starting at the same page, for quite a while. Maybe you should form a new mental compartment to handle the occasional turning of pages?"

By the teats of Horus, you should have thought of that! "Yes, of course, give me but a moment."

You've already been begun improving on your mental architecture, putting in an emotional buffer between your observation compartment and the interactive compartment. That way you can get deep immersion while retaining rational control over the interactive mind. And it helps you avoid cluttering your ego core with unwanted emotions.

Now is as good a time as any to put in a fourth division to handle the motions of your real body. You know can handle a fourth, you've done it many times, but you also know that it will tax your resources if you have to sustain it for very long.

In the librarium your hand slowly turns over a page. Your eyes gain a little more life and movement. It should suffice for now.

"There. I am done," you say. "Do please continue."

The faint smile disappears from his lips as Haxtes returns to his story. "The actual Battle for Thira didn't really touch my family. The closest we got was a Commissar trotting a squad of IGs. They searched through our house, looking for guns, but of course there were none. That and the ceaseless chatter of smallarms and lasweapons, interspersed with liberal doses of heavy ordnance going off."

"The IGs let you remain in your house?" Just like that?" you ask, finding it somewhat hard to believe.

Haxtes makes the minute shrug again. "Depends on what you mean by 'just like that'. Listen to the story and draw you conclusions later."

It doesn't really matter anyway, so you just nod to keep him going.

"The biggest change in our lives came a few weeks after the battle was over," Haxtes continues. "The Imperials didn't want people living on the outskirts, so we were herded into town and assigned an apartment in a building that was still standing."

"I'm betting that undamaged country house of yours was a nice bonus for some nameless regimental officer," you add.

"Possibly. Probably." An almost genuine smile threatens to appear, but is quickly dismissed. "Mother took to working the Imperial Guard instead of the militia. She got paid in Lucid Palace-underwritten Thrones instead of Protasian Drachma, Guard rations become the most important part of our daily food intake, and our blankets and other equipment carried the Aquila emblem instead of the Six Rods of State."

He makes a dismissive gesture. "You'd think that this fraternizing with the enemy and selling the God-Emperor's equipment would get the guardsmen in trouble. Maybe it did, but the soldiers did it anyway. And besides, their Commissar was quite fond of Protasian women, Mother in particular. I guess they had some sort of understanding." He pauses to let you speak.

You fill the gap effortlessly. "He's the one that came to your house isn't he? That's why they left you alone initially, right?"

Haxtes salutes you by raising his drink in a mock toast.

"Most Commissars are rather zealous in their pursuit of absolute discipline," you counter.

Haxtes twitches his lip in what is probably his version of a lopsided grin. "Could well be, but there are always exceptions. I've met more than one Commissar who has been willing to bend the rules a little." He nods to himself. "They are the wise ones who have realized that morale and loyalty can spring forth from many wells, not just the barrel of a bolt pistol pressed against the back of a man's head."

Granted, you haven't met all that many Commissars, your duties rarely take you to warzones, but those you have met have all seemed like men of great integrity. But rather than gainsaying Haxtes over another unimportant point, you gesture for him to continue.