Chapter 7 – Silence in Figaro, Part One

You know what? Recounting that last conversation made me realise that if the Emperor had been even a little bit savvier about the events in Narshe, events (at least from my perspective) may well have unfolded in a very different matter.

Think about it; for the first eighteen years of my life, I lived and breathed the life of an Imperial serviceman. My friends were my fellow cadets, my teachers were Imperial officers, and any news of the outside world typically came through the carefully filtered bulletins of the Imperial Broadcasting Centre. To be frank, both Terra and I were loyal soldiers and reasonably happy with our lot, and while seeing the Imperial brutality at Maranda may have shaken our faith in the Empire a little, if it had just been a single, independent event I'm sure we would've simply rationalised it as 'a few rotten apples' and moved on with our lives.

That wasn't the case, of course, because then there was Narshe. To be more accurate, there was the Emperor's rather frantic, ill-thought-out response to the discovery at Narshe. If Kefka hadn't acted as he had, I probably would never have even heard of the damnable place, and when the eventual international conflict broke out I would've quite happily sallied forth to do my duty as a Sentinel and an Imperial serviceman. With the Mage Knights firmly in the grip of Imperial propaganda, Figaro may not have been able to develop an effective countermeasure to Magitek technology, and I may even have lived to see Edgar deposed and Gestahl come to rule the entire world, or at least those bits that were worth taxing.

Surprisingly, my fiancée actually agrees with this theory, although this is probably because she's a sore loser and reckons we won only because she was surrounded by incompetents. In her opinion, Gestahl was a weak, arrogant man who was surrounded by idiots and lived in constant fear of losing his grip on power. When the Esper came around, he panicked and green lit the first plan that seemed like it might make the problem go away. Unfortunately (or possibly fortunately, depending on your point of view), the author of that crazy, sadistic plan happened to be Kefka, which in turn...well, you know the rest.

Anyway, that's all hypothetical and by-the-by, but it's interesting to wonder how different my life would've been if Gestahl had maybe taken the news of the discovery a little bit more philosophically.

Still; enough navel gazing! Let's continue talking about things that actually happened!

I was tired. I was tired of talking, of preventing regicide, and I most definitely tired of participating in giant robot deathmatches. To be honest, however, what I was most tired of were people. For the past few days it felt like I'd been doing nothing but dancing for the benefit of everyone else, and at this point the thought of engaging someone in another pointless conversation about stuff I knew nothing about was starting to grate more than the stench of badly burned bread. I needed some alone time. I needed to sleep, and have a shower, and try and process the chaotic combination of crazy jester generals and burrowing castles and, well, everything! It was all far, far too much for me to deal with, especially while I was weathering a constant barrage of questions from this king and his pet freedom fighter.

With that realisation, I rather curtly excused myself and went in search of some form of bedding, or failing that some nice, concealed corner where nobody would come and start talking at me. This train had a bar that had the capacity for a full-scale party; surely it had somewhere to go lie down. Considering the rumours I had heard about Edgar's nocturnal activities, I figured it was practically guaranteed.

Thankfully, I was not disappointed. After passing through a nicely-appointed dining car, I found a number of large rooms that on closer inspection appeared to be cabins. While a little more scouting located the royal bedroom, the gurgling and snoring coming from within suggested that it had already been bagsied by my sister. A little irritated by this development, I went to go and find a bed to call my own. A shower and a good, long snooze would do wonders for both my nerves and my mood...

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I slept poorly, tossing and turning through a variety of nightmares that were a garbled, tortured mess of recent events. Before my eyes, Kefka shrieked and howled with laughter, and then exploded into a mass of shadows and fangs that chased me, relentlessly, down an endless castle passageway that slowly filled with sand as it sank deeper into the ground. I struggled onward against the rising sands, wading laboriously as the fine grains hissed around my feet, ever aware of the icy breath of my inescapable pursuer.

Suddenly, my boot caught on something hidden under the sand and I fell painfully onto the shifting surface. From behind, I heard a roar of triumph, and turned to see the monster surge forwards across the sands, reaching out towards me with its wickedly curved pitch black talons. Almost sobbing with panic, I tugged desperately at my caught boot only to find itself stuck fast, and finally found my voice in a terrified scream as one of the enormous claws descended towards me...

'...wait...'

The claw stopped, and retracted. For a long moment I stared stupidly at the creature, my mind too paralyzed by fear to fully comprehend what was happening.

'...this one is mine...'

Beside me, the silhouette of a black, Imperial boot touched down soundlessly on the sand, and I looked up to see the small, shadowy figure of Elli staring down at me with malicious intent gleaming in her black eyes.

'...it appears I find you in a bit of a bind, Firmi...'

I tried to reply, but found my tongue too fat and unresponsive to be in the slightest bit coherent. Eventually, I managed to force out something like 'gnuh?'.

'...you must choose, Firmi...' the phantom pressed, '...either you can have the power to destroy this devil, or you shall be destroyed by this devil...'

As if to drive the point home, the monster's mouth split open revealing an intense, actinic light. Despite my fear, a small, rather cynical part of my brain took the time to wonder at its similarity to the recently-destroyed Golems' laser crystal.

'...your fears stay their hand only because of my actions, Firmi...' Elli said, a cruel smile coming to her lips, '...if you do not accept my deal, then I see no reason to continue protecting you...'

It was stupid. I knew it was stupid, even through the mists of fear-induced insensibility. However, I was also honest enough to know that I was, quite simply, not brave enough to die. I reached for Elli, my pleading fingers searching for the only way out of this twisted situation.

'...Firma...'

"Firma!"

-and then, suddenly, I was being shaken awake aboard a speeding train. For a moment the world was a blaze of colours which slowly resolved itself into the interior of the cabin I had claimed as my own. My sister was kneeling beside the bed, an expression of intense concern lining her face.

"Whuzzat?" I said blearily, and tried to sit up. Stars sparkled gently in my vision as blood rushed back to my brain.

"Are you okay?" Terra said urgently, "Were you having a nightmare?"

"Hnuh?" I replied, rubbing at my eyes, "Wha? Oh, yeah, it was insane. Bloody thing tried to eat me..."

"Well, that would explain the scream."

"You heard me scream?"

"I think they probably heard it in Katastari," Terra smiled, ever so slightly, "I thought you were being attacked!"

"Well, sort've," I said, and shuddered, "It was unpleasant."

"It was just a dream," she said reassuringly.

"I suppose," I said, and squinted suspiciously at her, "Hold on; you're wearing that dress again. Where's your Sentinel uniform?"

"I-well...um...that is..." Terra visibly braced herself, "My Sentinel uniform was covered in sand and blood and soot and, um, well, I thought that it'd be more obvious if I turned up in South Figaro looking like I'd just come from a warzone and this train doesn't have anywhere to do laundry and, um, um-"

"Relax, Tee, I'm not being serious," I smiled wryly, "You can wear whatever you damn well please."

"But-"

"I shouldn't have yelled at you this morning, Tee," I continued, "I know we were all scared about Kefka and his crazy schemes, but that's no excuse for how I acted. I'm...sorry."

"My word, that nightmare must have really unsettled you!" Terra laughed, but I could see the tension draining out of her shoulders, "Are you sure you're feeling okay?"

"About as good as I can be, given the circumstances," I said, "It's been a proper mad couple of weeks."

"Well, you know you can tell me anything, right?" she said, and patted me gently on the shoulder, "It's not healthy to bottle things up inside you."

"So I hear."

"Yes," there was a rather awkward pause, and then, "So...what were you guys talking about earlier? I heard raised voices."

"What, from your cabin? That's pretty-" I stopped, having caught the faintest hint of reddening on Terra's cheeks, "Hold on...were you eavesdropping?"

"Well-" the blush deepened.

"You? My law-abiding, goody-two-shoes twin sister? This is a new development."

"Would you stop that?" she snapped irritably, "I swear, if you don't tell me what you were talking about I'm going to have to punch you."

"Oh, nothing much," I said nonchalantly, "Well, there was something about how you were sent to Narshe on the orders of the Emperor himself and that that thing you were meant to find may be some kind of ancient magical entity from some war I've never heard of..." I took a deep breath, "...and basically they want us to see if we can talk to one of Locke's mum's bedtime stories to see if it can save the civilised world from the wrath of a insane clown and his equally insane posse."

"Is that all?"

"There was a short flare up regarding the relative merits of terrorists versus freedom fighters, but that was about it," I shrugged, "You really should've joined in."

"Well...I was tired," Terra waved it aside, "So, do they want us to go back to Narshe?"

"To be honest? I don't think they really know what they want to do," I said bluntly, "Trouble is, they know that if they don't do anything then we'll be hip deep in Titan tanks before the months out."

"So...what do we do, then?"

"For now? Follow Locke and try not to get fricasseed by Imperial Intelligence," I said, "We don't gain anything by running off on our own, certainly."

"I suppose not, no."

"Just...be careful around Edgar, Tee," I added seriously, "I don't know how good a ruler he is, but he clearly loves his country and he's just as clearly desperate for a solution. The time may come when he asks you to do something...risky."

"Like, um, talk to that thing in Narshe?" she said, and suddenly looked worried, "You'll be there, though, won't you?"

"Well, uh, maybe," I replied, in possibly the world's worst attempt at reassurance, "The point is, yes, Edgar's done a lot for us, but that doesn't mean he can demand that you sacrifice yourself for his country. Don't let him manipulate you into doing something that you don't think is right, okay?"

"But..." my sister, perhaps unsurprisingly, wasn't convinced, "How will I know what is right?"

"I'm, um, I'm not sure," I admitted, "But I'm sure you'll have great fun figuring it out, though!"

"Thanks, Firma," she said acidly, "Has anyone ever told you that you can be totally, bloody useless at times?"

"Yeah."

"Who?"

"You, for starters."

"That doesn't surprise me in the slightest."

"Probably not," I said, and stretched luxuriously, "In any case, I'm not going to get any more sleep. How long 'till we get to South Figaro?"

"We're almost there, actually," Terra said, "I was just coming to wake you up when I heard you yell."

"Really?" I said, surprised, "But...I thought it was an overnight trip! I can't have been asleep that long!"

"Good afternoon, Firma," Terra said, with a mocking little smile, "Locke and Edgar wanted to wake you earlier, but I thought you needed the rest. I...don't think they really understand how tiring magic can be."

"Me either, apparently," I said, and took a slightly disbelieving look out of the window. True to Terra's word, the rolling, verdant landscape had been replaced with the more arid scrublands of South Figaro, "My word."

"'Guess you needed it!" Terra said, and scrambled to her feet, "Anyway, I've asked Locke to make you some toast before I came to get you, so I reckon he's probably just about gotten around to it."

"Really?" suddenly, I realised just how hungry I was, "Thanks, Tee."

"No problem," she said, as she turned to leave, "No going back to sleep, you hear? It's time to get up and get moving!"

Thankfully, the door closed on my biting retort.

Edgar's gilded horror of a train rolled into South Figaro about an hour later. Fortunately, Edgar and Locke had been hard at work while we were asleep, and had managed to cobble together some semblance of a plan to get us out of South Figaro with our lives and dignity intact. Unfortunately, it had to be said that it wasn't a particularly good plan, and it rather seemed to me that the only way we would be able to keep our respective limbs was if the entirety of Imperial Intelligence had accidentally lobotomised themselves at some point over the last week. Thankfully, however, the short walk between South Figaro's train station and the brilliant white walls of the town itself gave me a chance to air my grievances with the one person who actually seemed to understand my fears.

"Look, pal," Locke was saying, struggling to be heard over the constant traffic, "You an' I both know that Imperial Intelligence are going to be watchin' South Figaro like hawks. There's absolutely no way that we're going to be able to get in, get what we need, and get out again without someone seein' us. Our best hope is to be gone before they can get together a team big enough to be a threat."

"They could just hire people," I pointed out.

"Ah, I wouldn't worry too much about that," Locke said, "After Kefka's little paddy in Figaro Castle, nobody's going to want to be seen interactin' with those blasted Vectorans. There's shifty bastards in South Figaro, true enough, but most of 'em are patriotic and they know how to make life really, really interestin' for those who ain't."

"Really?"

"Oh, aye," Locke looked off into the middle distance, apparently lost in a memory, "Really interestin'..."

"So...Terra and I'll hit the Sentinel aid station for supplies, grab some provisions, and meet you guys this evening at the...Royal, was it?"

"Aye," Locke nodded, "If yer can, try and talk to as few people as possible. I'd reckon that most people aren't too happy wit' the Empire right now, an' with that accent of yours...well, they might get a touch irritable. Even more irritable than the last time you were here, if you get my drift."

"Maybe you should come with me, then."

"An' leave yer sister and His Royal Highness together?" Locke glanced at the two up ahead and snorted, "Yeah, right. They may be smart, and they may be brave, but they're about as subtle as a half-brick to the face an' they both have the self-preservation of a particul'y suicidal lemming. Yer may as well send up a flare."

I had to admit that, yes, he had a point, "I'll try to keep my mouth shut, then."

"Aye, it could probably do with the rest."

The white-walled buildings of South Figaro shone brilliantly in the afternoon sun, and I could feel the heat rising from the cobblestones even through the thick soles of my walking boots. Thankfully, however, there was a cooling breeze coming off the sea, which managed to turn an otherwise intolerably hot day into a merely unpleasant one. Despite the heat, however, there were still a few Figarans out and about, although the streets were definitely more deserted than before and what few vendors remained seemed to be hawking their wares in a rather dispirited fashion to the occasional passer-by.

There was definitely something different about the city. Whereas South Figaro had seemed like a vibrant and lively city, the atmosphere was now tense and oppressive. Compared to before, it was almost silent; only the occasional cry from a trader broke the otherwise deadly quiet. Previously open shops were closed and shutters barred, and everywhere there were signs saying that the owners were on holiday or otherwise indisposed.

It felt, if I were being honest, like the entire city knew that it was living on borrowed time.

"Odd," Locke summed up my thoughts perfectly, "It's a bit quiet, doncha think?"

"Is it perhaps 'too quiet'?" Terra said, almost hopefully.

"Nah. You'll know when it's 'too quiet', cause it'll be jus' before an assassin leaps out and guts yer with a billhook," the thief looked around again, and shook his head disgustedly, "I reckon people're probably keepin' their heads down safe indoors. Uncooperative bastards."

I knew what he meant. As a group, we contained a rather scruffy-looking Kohlinglese bloke, a Sentinel, a young woman in a bright red dress, and a gentleman who was trying and totally failing to not look like the sovereign. While we probably could've hidden ourselves within the brightly coloured crowds of a normal Figaran day out, on these relatively clear streets we stuck out like a sore thumb. I definitely began to feel an uncomfortable itch somewhere between my shoulder blades.

"Alright, we may as well do what we came here to do," Locke said, and nodded at Terra and myself, "Go grab your gear, and we'll see you at the rendezvous point in a couple hours, okay?"

"Okay," I said tersely, "C'mon, Tee, let's go and get ourselves kitted up, shall we?"

"...okay," my sister said, eventually, "You know, after what you said about this place I thought it'd be...well, more relaxed."

"It's a little creepy, isn't it?" I said.

"Feels a bit like Katastari," Terra agreed, and shivered despite the heat, "I suppose that they've heard about Figaro Castle."

"Mmm," I said, and decided to change the subject, "Anyway! At least this time I know where the bloody Sentinel aid station is. Couldn't find the damn thing for love nor money last time..."

We proceeded slowly down the street, passing empty tavernas and silent restaurants on our way to the seafront. Despite the hairs prickling on the back of my neck, I was attempting to perfect a walk of total nonchalance whilst simultaneously looking every which way at once. To an onlooker, it probably looked like I had a particularly severe nervous tic, but at least I'd know if someone was attempting to sneak up on us.

"Say..." Terra began, as if broaching a subject of intense sensitivity, "Have you, uh, considered, er, our...um..."

"That's a pretty uncomfortable sentence, Tee," I said, "Could you finish it quickly, please?"

"...our...backstories? Locke said 'Listen, lass, if yer wanna have a foolproof disguise, then yer gotta have a backstory, aye?'"

My eyebrow went up, "That was... a remarkably good impression."

"Thanks," Terra cocked her head, "I'm pretty sure he's just trying to stop me from thinking about Imperial Intelligence and their...oh, what did he-"

"-billhooks-"

"Yeah, those. Still, it sounds like fun! Anyway, I told Edgar and he now wants to be called 'Gerad' until we're out of South Figaro. Just so you know."

"Gerad."

"Mm-hmm."

"Like, an anagram of 'Edgar'."

"I believe so, yes."

"My word," I said, "What a foolproof plan."

"I know. Isn't it a good idea?"

"You're agreeing with me to annoy me, aren't you," I said looking at her suspiciously.

Terra's lips quirked, ever so slightly, "Well, I thought about it, and I came up with new names for us, too! How do- wow, what a view!"

We had reached the sea, and paused for a moment to drink in the tranquil scene. Like the rest of the town, the sea was almost completely devoid of human activity, with only a couple of boats bobbing up and down out in the bay. Given the number of empty harbours, I guessed that some of the owners had decided to try their luck somewhere further down the coast.

"Do you...think there'll be a war?" Terra was clearly thinking along similar lines as me.

"I think there already is a war, Tee," I pointed out as gently as I could, "You don't casually take pot-shots at the sovereign of another country, y'know."

"But maybe...maybe..." my sister kicked out at a nearby balustrade and shouted, "Oh, this is all so stupid! Why is the Empire doing this? All these people...for what, exactly?"

I shrugged silently in reply. From past experience, I knew that it was best just to listen quietly while she worked through her frustrations.

"This isn't right, Firma," she continued, "This isn't right at all. Maybe we should talk to that thing, if it means everyone here can get back to their lives...maybe...I...ugh!"

"Baby steps, Tee," I said, eventually, "Let's start with what we can do before we think about challenging the entire Empire. C'mon, the Sentinel aid station is just over there, see?" I pointed down the street to a small, unremarkable building that stood slightly apart from the rest, with a small black-and-silver flag that was flapping rather disconsolately in the gentle wind. A Sentinel was loitering in the shade outside, apparently enjoying a cigarette with a young woman who, either through bad luck or total lack of taste, was wearing very similar clothes to Terra.

"Fine," Terra said moodily, but then squinted with sudden interest, "Hey, is that girl wearing my dress?"

Suddenly, the world exploded. I was dimly aware of tremendous heat and noise and then a sensation of flying, followed a moment later by a blow that drove the air from my lungs. When my senses returned I found myself lying in a crumpled heap on the cobblestones, staring up at a sky that was now filled with smoke and flaming masonry. As I staggered uncertainly to my feet, a large, glowing rock crashed to the ground nearby, peppering me with shards of red-hot ceramics. All around me there was flame and smoke from the descending wreckage, making it impossible to see more than a couple of meters in any direction.

"Terra!" I cried desperately, struggling to be heard above the sounds of collapsing scenery and the ringing in my ears, "Terra! Where are you?"

In the dreadful silence that followed, a pair of smoking grey Sentinel boots fell out of the sky and landed perfectly side by side in front of me. The smoke shifted slightly in the middle distance, and parted to reveal the slightly dazed but mercifully unharmed figure of my sister.

"Are you okay?" Terra screamed, "What the hell is going on?"

"I...I..." I pointed at the boots, still standing to perfect attention, "I think somebody's bombed the aid station!"

"Why would they do that? I thought you said the Sentinels were neutral!"

"They are!" inwardly, I had my own suspicions, but there were more important things right now, "Come on! We have to help!"

Between us, it took only a small amount of magic to get the smoke to disperse. What it revealed, however, made pretty poor viewing; the Sentinel aid station had been reduced to a large pile of burning rubble, along with the shops on either side. Elsewhere, windows had been blown inward and enormous cracks criss-crossed buildings all along the seafront.

"Bloody hell," Terra said, quietly, surveying the destruction with a faintly awed look on her face, "If we'd been any closer..."

Despite the destruction, the scene was curiously quiet. The only sounds I could hear were the tinkle of falling masonry and the unpleasant crackle of the flames. Any moment now, however, people were going to come running to see what all the noise was about, and then all hell was going to break loose.

"C'mon," I said shortly, "There may still be some survivors."

"After that? But-" Terra's objection died on deaf ears as I stepped quickly across the rubble and glass towards the aid station. I had to admit that my sister was probably right; anyone who had been caught in that blast was probably beyond help, but I had to at least try...

Searching desperately, I spotted the head of a man poking out from underneath some rubble. The face was too badly burned to be identifiable, and any hopes of resuscitation were crushed when, a few moments later, I came across the rest of his charred corpse draped almost casually across a pile, cut to ribbons by razor sharp shards of glass.

There was a terrible grinding noise from a blazing house nearby, followed by the all-too-familiar sounds of destruction as it collapsed inwards, driving another cloud of smoke and dust out over the scene. With a sigh and a short prayer to Callista, I stepped over the dismembered body and continued my search.

It was Terra, in the end, who found a survivor. Following the yells, I found my sister standing anxiously over another battered body, this one a woman, covered in terrible burns and deep cuts from flying glass. It was clear that she was in terrible pain and probably only minutes from death.

"Can you do anything for her?" Terra said quietly, "I'm not sure, but I...think she was that girl who was wearing my dress."

My personal thoughts on the matter were that, traditionally, a person needed more actual skin to be positively identified, but I decided to keep that dark little comment to myself. Quickly, I knelt down beside her and gently laid my hands on the least burned area I could find. The skin felt hot and slick under my hands, and the poor woman whimpered at my touch.

"Tee," I said absently, as the full extent of the victim's injuries filled my mind, "Could you go and see if you can find some morphine? The drug safe may still be intact."

"Of course. I'll be right back," Terra said, and then I heard the crunch of her boots on the broken stone as she set off towards the still-burning aid station. The morphine would help, of course, but these injuries were too severe for me to do anything other than try to ease her passing. Carefully, I began to probe her nervous system with small pulses of electricity, looking to interrupt the synapses that were blazing white-hot pain across the grid. I managed to get one locked down, and felt her relax almost imperceptibly under my hands. Encouraged by this, I began to seek large nervous clusters, aiming to deaden her pain as much as possible before the end...

It was an exhausting, mentally draining task. While I had been given plenty of opportunities to practice my magic during my training, I had never tried my skills out on someone on the verge of death. Even as I worked, I could feel her broken organs enter their death throes, each crying for my attention before finally giving up and fading from my mind. Her breathing became laboured and erratic; her burned airways were now no longer delivering enough oxygen to keep her heart pumping...and then, finally, I felt a storm of activity in her barely conscious mind as the brain began collapsing in on itself. There was a fleeting sensation of something strange and oddly intangible streaming past me, and then, with a shuddering sigh, she relaxed and died.

The real world slowly came back into focus, and I became aware of the distant sound of approaching sirens. There were people now, too. Some of them were standing uncertainly in groups of twos or threes; others dug furiously through the wreckage using their hands or whatever else they could lay their hands on. Numbly, I leaned forward and closed the unseeing eyes of the girl, muttering a short prayer to Callista as I did so.

"I found some!" Terra's breathless cry caught my attention, and a moment later she was by my side, brandishing a syrette of morphine with a determined look on her face, "I...I..."

Her expression faded as she took in the scene in front of her, and she added in a small, defeated voice, "I'm too late, aren't I."

"It's not your fault, Tee," I said quickly, as tears began to well up in her eyes. To be frank, I felt like crying myself, "There wasn't anything we could do. There wasn't anything anyone could do."

For a long while we stood there while others picked over the piles of stones.

"This was the work of Imperial Intelligence, wasn't it," Terra said grimly, "While I was looking for this little thing-" she waved the syrette for emphasis, "-I smelt something that made me think 'high explosive'. Call it a hunch, if you want."

"I believe you."

"This isn't right," she went on, dashing her tears from her eyes with the back of her hand, "Fighting Golems in the desert? Terrifying, sure, but at least there wasn't anyone around to end up as collateral. She-" she nodded at the corpse in front of her, "-was just having a cigarette and gets blown to bits! How dare they? How dare they? If they want to pick a fight with us, why don't they just come to us instead of hiding bombs in clinics?"

"Because you'd unceremoniously cremate them?"
"Well, yes, but at least it'd be fair!"

The sirens were getting quite close now, "Maybe...maybe we should go, Tee."

Terra gave me a sympathetic look, "Do you want to wait for the emergency services, Firma? Would that make you feel better?"

To be honest, I really, really did. While there was a fairly limited amount that we and the industrious diggers around us could do, if our magical abilities were combined with a full team of fully-equipped Sentinels maybe nobody else would have to die. On the other hand, that would mean sitting around for an extended period of time in one place, possibly inviting further attack from Imperial Intelligence on us and innocent bystanders. Besides, we had an appointment to keep.

"I...well..." I said, torn between the two possibilities, "I want to, but...the only way we're going to stop any further attacks like this is by stopping the Empire in its tracks. We...can't afford to get bogged down by the details. It's a really horrible thing to say, but-"

"It's okay. You've done your bit for now," Terra said, and clasped her hand on my shoulder, "We'll catch the bastards who did this, don't worry."

A ragged cheer went up from a nearby house, where a man was being gently removed from the rubble with a makeshift stretcher. While he was definitely bloodied, he was also clearly alive and, from the looks of things, likely to stay that way.

"Here you go," my sister said, and pressed the syrette into my hand, "Go and have a victory, at least. We've got time."

Honestly? I can't really tell you how grateful I am to Terra for that. As some of you may know (specifically, any Sentinels reading this), it's a bit of a flaw in our training program that we don't really expose Trainee Sentinels to patients who are literally at death's door until the last possible moment. Due to the high-stress, macabre environment that most of us poor underpaid idiots work in, there's a strange coming-of-age ritual where a newly-minted Sentinel isn't really considered a 'real' Sentinel until they've had a patient die on them. Despite that, it's still a relatively intimate event (normally between said Sentinel and a handy mentor) and recording it here seems more unnerving than any other detail I've mentioned to date.

I do, of course, fully expect my favourite right-wing newspaper to run the headline 'Sentinel Hazing Bizarre Death Cult' just before complaints of immigrants defacing the countryside, the deadly link between photocopiers and cancer, and further whinging about the capital gains tax increase. On the other hand, I did promise to be as honest as possible, even if that means including things that I'd rather not. I hope you appreciate that.

After the death of that poor woman, the relieved smiles on the faces of the bystanders and the injured man did a lot to lift my spirits. Immediately, they formed a small ring around us, and stood looking on with the look of people who really wanted to help, but who had no real idea how to actually go about it.

The elderly gentleman had been lucky. Through a series of gestures and (on my part, at least) broken Figaran, I managed to work out that he had taken cover in his wardrobe when the blast hit and had hidden there while the roof caved in. For my part, I reassured him that no, he wasn't going to die, and yes, better-equipped Sentinels were soon going to be on the scene. This seemed to satisfy him and so I quickly administered the syrette, adding to it a small burst of magic to aid his recovery.

"You," I grabbed the most-alert looking man in my crowd of onlookers, and handed him the now-empty syrette, "Take this. Tell the Sentinels I gave it to him, okay?"

"You're not staying?"

"I...I...oh, bugger, what's the correct word...can't," I finished lamely, my rather limited Figaran unable to fully convey the urgency of the situation, "Tell them, okay?"

Without waiting for a response, I pushed quickly back out through the crowd and made my way over to Terra, who seemed to be staring off into the middle distance with a look of some concern on her face.

"Tee, we'd better go," I said quietly, "I've just told that crowd over there that I can't stick around, so they may lynch me if all I do is stand over here."

"Umm...sure," Terra said eventually, "I...there was a man in that alleyway over there."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah. I'm pretty sure he was watching me, but he vanished when you arrived," she shivered, "I think he wanted me to see him."

"Really?" I gave her a sharp look, "Are you certain?"

"Yes," she nodded, "Should we go and check it out?"

I took a look at the alleyway in question. It was pretty unremarkable, as alleys went, but something about it made my skin crawl and my hackles rise. Certain death lurked somewhere in that alleyway, of that I was certain.

"No," I said firmly, "You know how you were looking for something that was 'too quiet'?"

"Billhooks?"

"Worse, probably."

"I felt something odd about him, too," Terra added, "You know...magic odd."

"Well, that settles it," I said, "The last time I felt someone who was that kind of odd, they tried to neutralise my magic with some kind of grenade. Nearly succeeded, too."

"Yeah, you told me about that," Terra said distantly, "What do we do, then?"

"Nothing," I said. The sirens were very close now, "Look, we'd better go. We've got better things to do than be stabbed to death in an alleyway. I think we can probably get some basic medical supplies at the general store, anyway."

"It'll have to do, I suppose," Terra turned away, and missed the subtle, but chilling glint of steel from one of the darker shadows in the alley, "Do you think that he was from Imperial Intelligence?"

"I'm not sure," I said, finally, "It's likely, though."

"Do you think they bombed the aid station?"

"Maybe, but I'm pretty sure we'll have the opportunity to ask them at some point, Tee," I looked over my shoulder towards the dark, deadly alleyway, "In fact, I'm absolutely certain."