"How extensively are we compromised," Nunnally asked, her voice so melancholic and coarse it was a wonder you could hear her at all. She had been occasionally rubbing her temples. Angela had told Kallen that Nunnally had been suffering from migraines of late, undoubtedly stress causing the ailment to return. She'd had migraines not long after Lelouch's death. At the time her doctors said it was to be expected as a combination of the stress of the events at the time and her having suddenly regained her sight recently. Either way, rest was the best prescription right now, and she shot that down immediately. There was nothing more to do then but settle matters before her as quickly as possible so she couldn't use them as cause to evade that much needed rest. That task, however, was easier said than done. So, for the time being, she was being given medicine to ease the pain, for what little it seemed to do in that function.
"It's hard to say, your majesty," Lloyd replied to her question with cadenced care. "Given the level of access she had, and for how long, we don't know for certain what information was and wasn't given out."
"You must have some idea," Nunnally insisted.
"Well… it seems as though she was using Princess Euphemia's remote access bio-authorization to facilitate access to any systems she was otherwise locked out of," Cecile answered. "That would suggest she had nearly as much access to the private systems of the empire as you, your majesty."
"The Remote Authorization System? Why wasn't her data purged years ago?"
"It was… or rather, the instruction was given for it to be purged as part of the regular system maintenance six months after her death," Lloyd replied. "However, it appears as though Ms. Einstein likely made a copy of the data before it was purged, and copied it into the update revision so it would be reinstalled. Further checks were deemed unnecessary since the bio-authorization system was considered useless without the multi-factor authorization of the individual. They didn't believe a dead person could use the system, so purging old access credentials was viewed more as a matter of software efficiency than security."
"So, for almost a decade she's had almost complete access to everything that Britannia knew or did," Nunnally stated.
"It would appear so," Cecile answered. "Without knowing when she began to give away information, or what information specifically she was interested in giving out, we can't know the extent of exposure. But it is assumed that she would have given over anything at all related to our investigation of the Alters. We also know now that she was using her access to funnel money out of several accounts and into non-government accounts. The financial forensic teams are trying to unravel the string of routing destinations to…"
"Is it going to tell us where they're going?"
"We're hoping that if we can find out the end account, the one they're taking the money out of when they use that money for whatever they're buying, we can flag it so we'll know…"
"What are the chances they haven't already taken whatever they need or switched to some other account?"
"That is a possibility, but we won't know until…"
"And Marrybell? Was her authorization also still active?"
"No, your majesty. We found no evidence of her data in the system, so our belief is that she was successfully purged per the routine after her death and that no backup copy of her data was made."
"Fine. Then what about the attempts to track Shirley and the dragon after they took Nina?"
"The drone that was attempting to follow was attacked from behind. Telemetry suggests another dragon took it down. So, we don't know if they kept going West or if they diverted a different direction, let alone how far they kept going. As usual, no radar or observation outposts have reported seeing anything."
"For six years I've been nothing but a fraudulent empress," she said, rubbing her temples as she squinted down at the desk. "I've been empress in name only. All this time someone else has had the ability to say and do whatever they pleased about my own empire, spending its money as if it were their own bank, using important and classified information as if it were notes in their own private journal. My empire's been fueling its own terror and death and decay all this time, and I had no clue. It's so very pathetic.
"Please, leave me now. Do what you can to find them. And do what you must to find a way that I might stop them. If nothing else, I would like it if I could go to my grave with the knowledge that I at least cured this disastrously poor disease I failed to stop from rooting itself in my empire."
"She said that!?" C.C. reacted in frightened anguish. She'd jumped up so quickly she hadn't even realized she'd left her seat. It was about a half hour after Nunnally had dismissed the small council of Lloyd, Cecile, and a few other officials from her presence with her solemn request. Kallen was holding C.C.'s hand to keep her from flying out the door.
"I had Angela give her something so she could go to sleep. Her lack of sleep, the migraines, she's falling apart trying to handle all this," Kallen said.
As if she'd been killed once more, C.C.'s body fell limp and she dropped back down. She hung her head in despair. "Why can't… why can't she just live in peace? That's all Lelouch ever wanted for her; for his little sister to be happy. I should've never let her become empress. I should have talked her out of it," she said with a voice so coarse it had to be at the razor's edge of crying.
"She seems the sort who'd do whatever she set her mind to. I'm sure she'd have heard you out, but you probably know better than I do that she wouldn't have refused the throne back then. The battles over succession, the fighting with the rest of the world over what to do with what was left… she'd have been miserable sitting on the sidelines with all that going on if she thought for even a moment it could've been avoided by her sitting on that throne. That's just how she is. If she weren't, she wouldn't be like this now over this whole thing with the Alters."
"When she wakes up, we have to go talk to her," C.C. insisted forcefully.
"Look, I don't think she's suicidal…"
"That's not it. There's something I haven't told anyone… something I think she'll be upset that I'm even telling you without asking her first."
"What are you saying? Is it about the Alters?"
"I… don't think so. I can't be completely sure yet. But… Nunnally has a Geass."
Kallen's expression quickly morphed from sympathy to confusion to anger. "What did you…"
"I'm not the one who gave it to her," C.C. cut in, knowing that was the thought on Kallen's mind. "In fact, she doesn't remember receiving it, so she doesn't even know when she got it or who gave it to her."
Kallen did her best to contain her anger and frustration as she asked, "Since when?"
"I just told you, she doesn't…" C.C started to answer, her tone sounding like a child feigning bravado in the face of a scolding.
"I mean since when did you know about this!" Kallen snapped.
C.C. hesitated a moment. It was rare for her to be admonished for something she felt genuine guilt over. "She told me after I got back from my first encounter with Euphemia, right before the Memorial Day address."
Kallen took a couple deep breaths to calm herself down. "I suppose she asked you not to tell anyone?"
"We agreed that it was better not to. I convinced her that it would only make things more difficult if she revealed her Geass to anyone else."
"Why? Can't you just take it away?"
"It doesn't work like that. Once a Geass is established, the power is with that person until they die or obtain a Code. If she had never used it, that would be one thing, but it was already too late for that."
"Too late?"
"Like I said, she doesn't know anything about when she got it or who gave it to her, but based on what she's told me about it, she likely had it since she was a child, meaning she probably received it from V.V."
"That doesn't make any sense! You're saying she's had a Geass longer than Lelouch did? And you never happened to notice this?"
C.C. sighed, understanding as best she could Kallen's anger. "A Code Bearer has a connection to the ones they've given a Geass to. The further away from them we are, the weaker that link is. But, if we are near to them, we can sense it. That feeling is much, much, fainter with those who have a Geass that we haven't given to them, and that feeling is even weaker if they aren't actively using it, or it hasn't evolved much yet."
"But Nunnally thought she was blind…" Kallen said, piecing it together herself.
"Geass originates from the eyes, so if you don't open your eyes, it won't take effect. If it doesn't get used, it doesn't grow and evolve. There was nothing to sense. Even now I can tell that Nunnally hasn't been using it because I can't sense her Geass at all, even though I can sense Leila's just fine."
"But if she hasn't been using it, then why can't you take it away. You said if she doesn't use it you could."
"Only if it's never been used. When we form a contract, the Geass user isn't fully obligated to bear that burden until they've used the power at least once. Leila's contract with me remained dormant for years because she never used its power. I don't know for sure the first time Nunnally used it, but I'm almost certain she did the day Lelouch died."
"What even is her Geass?"
"It might be a form of clairvoyance."
"She can see the future?"
"It's most likely the opposite."
"So, she can see the past?"
"She said that when she touched Lelouch that day, she saw a vision in her head of all the things that happened in Lelouch's life until that point. The day she told me about it, she said she'd also seen my encounter with Euphemia Alter."
"She's been keeping this for six years then…"
"If she saw Lelouch's memories, the things he did, then…"
"The attack on the Syndicate…" Kallen thought with a grimace, herself only vaguely aware of the horrors others reported of that incident.
"Her Geass isn't very developed yet, but I don't fully understand its power either. I should be immune to the effects of all Geass, yet she could use hers to see me."
Kallen thought on it with mild astonishment as she was gaming it out in her head as she spoke, "If it's really that powerful, there's no way she wouldn't be able to see Euphemia, or Nina."
"I'm sure that's what she's been thinking. But we can't let her use her Geass."
"You think it'll destroy her?" she asked, though she already knew her own answer.
"Geass is a power that feeds temptation. Every time you use it, it makes way for you to use it again. Hers in particular is very dangerous. Even when it comes to the most mundane, humans can't help wanting to know secrets they don't already know. That applies even more so for those with authority over others."
"Do you honestly think Nunnally would do something like that?"
Kallen was hopeful, pleading, that wasn't the case. It was so tempting, so potentially gratifying, to everyone involved she thought, if it were possible that Nunnally could in a brief moment or two use that power to stop figure out what they needed to do about the Alters. Was there really such a potentially high threat of that power to Nunnally herself that they couldn't risk it?
But C.C had been wise to that sort of thinking. In her long years of being alive, of granting and seeing others granted the power of Geass, she had often seen those who would entreat thought about the risks, and so casually and certainly sweep them away as controllable and manageable or diminutive in the face of their desires. No matter how noble the cause, she knew…
"When I was gone, how many times did she wonder about where I was? Or wonder what was really going through the mind of one of her military officers or knights when they brought her their plans for attacking Euphemia? It won't stop at just one time. It will begin innocently enough with small things. And even if she doesn't intend it, she'll eventually reach the point where that Geass will grow to be uncontrollable, and it will show her things even if she doesn't want it to. You know about Mao, right? Feeding her Geass is like pushing her towards that same future."
"N-no, you're right," Kallen agreed. "Nunnally probably couldn't help wanting to use a power like that if she thought it was to help someone else. I bet she's been thinking about it all this time. I bet you're worried about how they'd react to her."
"Cornelia hates Geass so much, she'd be beside herself if she knew. And Suzaku's sense of reason isn't as sound as it used to be. He's being impatient and trying to rush things too much. He probably would hate the idea that she'd have a Geass too, but he'd probably end up wanting her to use that power to try to end things faster. You can call me stubborn or stupid or whatever. But I don't want to believe we're at the point where I have to choose to risk Nunnally's future that way."
"Ok. I'll help you protect this secret. Anything else?"
She understood the insinuation but didn't let it bother her. "When I told you I thought there was a spy, Nina was the one I suspected. I didn't want to tell you anything because I didn't want to accuse her without proof. But I don't think Nina did anything as terrible as everyone is imagining."
"You're not saying she's innocent, are you? She confessed herself that she was helping Euphemia!"
"Yes, but we never got her to fully describe that help. She told us the obvious stuff – telling Euphemia after the fact the sort of stuff Euphemia would have known anyway. It's not really news to anyone that we'd analyze any video of the encounters with her. And it's never appeared that Euphemia showed up anywhere with any particular care about whether we would be there. In fact, she's been attacking military bases all this time, and all of Britannia's bases have been on high alert for an attack. It wasn't until that last operation that any one base was picked out for Britannia to concentrate its forces, and even then Euphemia walked right into that battle anyway."
"That… that is true," Kallen began to think about it. C.C. did have a point. If Euphemia did have any advanced knowledge about what they were doing, she certainly wasn't using it for much. "Then what was she doing?"
"We know from the house we looked at that they've been receiving food and clothes pretty much whenever they want, even though Nina's rarely left the capital in the last several months. She was probably making sure they had enough only to live on comfortably.
"More importantly, I think there's some specific information that Euphemia has been trying to find. I think Nina was trying to get us to help find it."
"Searching for information… something related to Geass that she thinks Charles probably had hidden away at one of the bases."
"I think so. Charles' wars were all about securing the Thought Elevators and any other sites he thought had a deep connection to Geass. Euphemia seems to be looking for something different from that, but I don't know what it is. I think they believed I don't at least, since neither of them ever made any attempt to ask me anything."
"It must be something they're confident Britannia had, but that Charles didn't know the real value of."
"Yes."
"It would probably have to do with magic, since if it were directly related to Geass I doubt Nina wouldn't have figured it out before now."
"It's something that must be hiding in plain sight. If we knew why she was goading these attacks we'd probably be closer to figuring it all out."
"So, it's true," Kallen mournfully sighed. "I should probably be relieved, but instead it just makes me a little depressed."
"What do you mean?"
"I heard from Angela that no one in the castle died the night of the first attack. At first I thought she might've been confused or mistaken about something, but knowing her that didn't make any sense. I started looking into the death records and hospital records. Not only didn't anyone die in that attack on the castle, the worst injury I could find even connected to the castle from that night was a sprained wrist of someone who fell while trying to escape. Once I looked into it more, I found out that in almost every case no one knew what was going on until after it was almost over. They were told they had to hurry and evacuate by some other member of the staff several moments before the fires started. It could only mean they were warned to leave first."
"I had my suspicions too. She hadn't attacked Nunnally when she was defenseless that night. When I met her in the forest, when she was found by the police in the city… I thought that might be the case with the attacks on the bases as well. She retaliates, she doesn't start these fights."
"I don't get it. Why go through the trouble of doing all this?"
"That's who Euphemia always was. She's like Nunnally that way. She may have been gentle, but she's not naïve. It may not have been her strongest skill, but she could pilot a Knightmare Frame. Like all of the royal children, she was taught all about combat and war. She didn't like to kill, but she also understood the inevitability of casualties in a battle, of having to kill in a war. Killing for purely selfish reasons, killing for fun, killing without cause; these were the things she didn't agree to. She seemed at odds with her family not because she didn't appreciate the rationale for war itself, just the way her father was using it to achieve his ends."
"So rather than kill a bunch of otherwise innocent people working in the castle, she made them leave first and then burned it down. She ran from the police in the city first, and only called on her dragons when she was cornered instead of fighting back herself where she could have easily killed them all."
"When I met her in the forest, she never once attacked me. She wasn't even hostile. And I'm sure we'll find in every case that she appeared at the base first at the gates, was attacked, and she retaliated. Unlike Marrybell who earned her title of Massacre Princess for her own deliberate deeds, Euphemia was given that title because no one knew the truth of what happened."
"You're not trying to say she's innocent, are you?"
"No," C.C. paused, almost as if having to remind herself that wasn't the case. "She had to have known what burning the castle would do, and she clearly antagonized Nunnally afterwards when they met that night. I'm sure she instructed Shirley to attack the Black Knights base. The shooting at the memorial, I'm pretty sure she used her power on the woman who started shooting. My point is that she hasn't been taking a direct path to whatever she's trying to do. She's using others as an excuse for her actions."
Kallen pondered this assessment for a moment. "We should go over the bases she's fought at again. If she's not being direct about her attacks, then she might not be direct about her targets either. There might be some pattern hidden behind bases she showed up to, maybe going there for no real reason other than to throw us off.
"Although, none of it really explains why. It's the part I've never been able to understand in all of this. She can pretty much do whatever she wants, and we can't stop her. So what's the point? Why play these games, take such roundabout methods?"
"Because she can't do whatever she wants. I don't know anything about her power. I don't know how she survived. I don't know how Shirley or Marrybell came back. But I think that whatever powers she has right now, they're not enough for what she's trying to do."
"To bring back Lelocuh…"
"That seems to be her goal. I'm not sure if that's the entire goal, or just a part of her plan, but she's made it clear to me she wants to try to bring Lelouch back. I think she thought that if she told me, I'd agree to help her. And she was almost right.
"You asked me a while back why I didn't get angry at Suzaku and Cornelia for what they did to me. Part of the reason was that I really was close to betraying everyone. I've missed him so much, more than I've ever missed anyone. Nunnally… she likes when I come to see her because we share stories and memories about Lelouch. I've been using Nunnally to help me not miss him as much. Seeing this woman, who looks exactly like Euphemia, and talks exactly like Euphemia, I believed it was possible she could really bring back Lelouch. Even if I didn't know how it could possibly be done, and even if turned out to be nothing more than a convincing fake, I was almost ready to agree to help her for that chance to have Lelouch back. I told everyone that there was no way for Geass to bring someone back, but I knew there had to be some power out there that did it, otherwise we wouldn't have Euphemia, and Shirley, and Marrybell, like we do now. For a moment I let myself imagine taking Nunnally away from here, reuniting her with Lelouch, and then us disappearing somewhere to live a quiet and happy life away from worries about Geass, or nations fighting one another…"
"But you didn't. Why?"
"Lelouch died believing that he could take with him some of the evil that fills the world. He wanted to make himself the target of the anger and hatred, all the terrible things ever said about his sisters, his family, and have it all buried with him. Lelouch's dream wasn't so easy as letting him and Nunnally live in ignorance of the world. He wanted Nunnally to be a part of this world. It might sound arrogant, but Lelouch imagined he could bend the world just a little bit to suit his ideal. It's a very human wish, don't you think? Do I let him continue to stay dead, believing like he did that his death outweighed the chance of him living, or do I try to bring him back?
"I felt like I was betraying Lelouch no matter what choice I made, so I decided I would keep my word to Nunnally. I thought about what he would do if he faced such a difficult choice. I told her I was her witch, and so I will continue to be her witch for all eternity. No matter if we end up in some strange wonderland with dragons and magic and all sorts of unimaginable things; I'll stay by Nunnally's side and go even further down the rabbit hole, wherever that leads."
Kallen felt she knew that would be C.C's answer from the start. It was the obvious answer. Even so, she couldn't bring herself to trust it, because she herself had the same answer and didn't trust herself.
It was too hard to deny that that the temptation at least existed. The rationalization said it wasn't even right to call it temptation. After all, to do so would be to squarely come down on the idea that it was right, proper, a good thing, that Lelouch died as he did. Kallen over these years may have come to accept that he was gone, accept that it was a choice he made, but it never sat with her as a right, proper, or good thing.
That alone muddied the question of the limits of effort to return him to the world of the living. That Euphemia was being scapegoated, even a little, to make sure that Lelouch stayed dead just further muddied her feelings.
Much like how she came to terms with Lelouch's death, but to a much lesser degree of cognizant debate, Kallen had forgiven Euphemia for the SAZ Massacre. It, after all, wasn't actually her fault. It wasn't something Euphemia wanted to do, and in fact was anathema to who she seemed to truly be. Naïve a princess she may have been, she wasn't a despot.
The attack on the castle, the unrelenting string of attacks after that, seemed to upend that sentiment. Was Lelouch's untimely Geass activation a mistake that warped a pure heart, or had it merely been the convenient cover for a plan already mulled and in the works? Was she a kind soul, or a homicidal princess who lucked into a convenient excuse to cover her real will?
To know now that someone warned the castle to evacuate before it was put to dragon fire, that she had been asking permission to enter these bases before retaliating against aggressive refusals, just made it all very confusing. Who was the real Euphemia? Was she a cruel despot or a naïve but well-meaning princess?
Surely C.C was correct – it was a bridge too far to claim she hadn't been antagonizing much of the reaction to her. No marginally intelligent person walks up to a military base and asks to get in expecting to be let through. And what purpose could there be to burning the castle if not to instill fear and terror?
But then what of the exaggerations? Why the need to heap more bitterness towards her name than already present? The world already lacked the knowledge of the truth of her being no Massacre Princess. As far as most of the world knew, she was a butcher. Why the need to suggest that she further butchered a castle full of innocents, seemingly deliberately obfuscate the fact that she hadn't initiated any of the attacks at the bases? Even looking to the event at the Memorial, while it was too easy to say it was all her fault because she might have used a power to drive one woman insane, it was yet again an incident she hadn't seemed to directly cause at all. As provocative as it may have been, the whole incident began because she was sitting in an empty, stone, chair. Had that woman never approached her and made a scene about it, would that massacre have occurred?
It felt like she was quietly sneering at them. It was like she was whispering in a tittering laugh, "I told you so" as she watched them flounder. "You knew this kingdom was rotten, and now look at you. You're a knight – not any knight, but the Empress' own personal knight – protecting all its lies, fighting to keep up those lies."
"But there's no other choice," Kallen cried out in her mind. "Nunnally isn't wrong! Lelouch wasn't wrong! If you're going to undo all the good that they've done, you have to be…"
"But all I want is to bring back Lelouch. Why is that wrong?"
And thus Kallen's thoughts circled again. If it was just so Lelouch was with them all again, was it really worth it to resist Euphemia so staunchly? If they just ordered the military to stop getting in her way, wouldn't she just stop fighting them? Then there'd be no need to have so many killed. For all their supposed love of Lelouch, wasn't it Euphemia who was seemingly moving heaven and earth to see him brought back, while they'd never even started trying and just moved on?
It felt like a rabbit hole. Kallen felt herself getting more and more lost in a maze. The competing urge that told her Nunnally was right, and that Euphemia might also be right, made it a mess of her own thoughts to figure out if her own thoughts were themselves wrong. That had to be the case, didn't it? If you are in the position of thinking two things that cannot both be right, in fact are, then there must be a flaw in your own thinking preventing you from realizing what is wrong with one of the two opposing sides.
"No, if I know anything at all, I know Nunnally doesn't want any of this death and bloodshed," Kallen told herself. "I already made that call when I agreed to be her knight. I'll support her, and, if she's making a mistake, I'll correct her. That's exactly how it should be."