"86th District," Western Theater

June 30th, Stellar Year 2146

The universe had a cruel sense of humor.

Or maybe it was just that the Republic did. They assigned him to Halberd Base.

Shiden's Squadron had left the place two days ago, and the freshness of their abandonment was clear in everything Shin saw. There were signs everywhere that people had been living here just a short time ago. It was like walking among ghosts.

The common room, which really wasn't so different from the one back in Aegis Hall with the exception of having no projector, held a well-worn guitar in the corner and a number of very well-read books, with cracked spines and dog-eared pages. One of them was still open on the table, a bookmark wedged between time-yellowed pages as if the reader had expected to come back to it.

He found some congealed stew at the bottom of a pot in the cafeteria. He wondered which it was: if the cooks had decided they would clean it after they got back, or if, in their resignation, they chose to shuffle off that minor chore onto whoever came after them.

He toured the empty halls and found names still hung up by the bedroom doors. Shiden's was on the west wing, the third room from the hallway's end.

After some hesitation, he tried the knob. It wasn't locked. He stepped into a small, messy room without much ornamentation. There was a single old poster on the wall for some metal band, peeling at one corner. It depicted five big men with white-and-black face paint brandishing their guitars like axes. Shin imagined that she probably chose it because she liked the design, rather than for the music or the band itself. Shiden preferred softer music than metal. She told him that once, and had been somewhat annoyed with him when he'd expressed, in his expressionless way, an honest shock.

"What, just 'cause I'm a badass bitch I can't like love songs?" she had said defensively.

And Shin had laughed a rare laugh and told her she could like whatever she wanted, and she could still be just as much a bitch as she preferred. And she had eased up at that, cracking a smile in return.

There was a gun on the nightstand. A long-barreled revolver with a polished nickel frame and wooden grips, and a scattering of .44 bullets all around it. About a box's worth. Some of the rounds had rolled off and fallen onto the carpet, gleaming like little brass bulbs in the sunlight streaming through the window. As powerful as the magnum was, it was a useless weapon against the Legion. Shiden probably just picked it up because she thought it was cool.

Without much thinking about it, Shin picked up the gun and stuck it in one of the gear-loops of his jacket, pocketing a fistful of bullets alongside. The nickel plating gleamed in sharp contrast to the desert tan fabric. It weighed down his left side considerably, and as he walked around the room it swung slightly with his every step, like a pendulum.

There wasn't much more to the place than that. It was a mostly bare room. The only other signs of habitation were the mess of unmade blankets on the bed and the scattering of clothes on all corners of the floor. Shiden, it seemed, was one of those people who arranged their laundry into clean and dirty piles. She probably considered baskets and dressers to be unmasculine or something, never mind that she was a woman.

Shin felt his heart ache. It wasn't ice or chill. Just pain. He put a hand over his chest and clenched the fabric of his jacket, gripping the skin beneath, and willed the ache to stop.

It didn't.

A boy named Rito had told them what happened. Young kid. Twelve or so, with big wide reddish-brown eyes and unkempt chestnut hair. Halberd had left shortly after Shin had made his report to Grethe, giving her a warning about a massive wave of incoming Legion, tens of thousands possibly, maybe even in the hundreds. The immense chorus of their voices had been enough to send a cold spike of pure agony through his temples.

And after Grethe shared the news, Halberd mobilized to stop them. They couldn't defeat a force that large of course. It was doubtful all the 86 in the Eastern Ward could even put a dent in that many Legion. But they could at least engage the first scouting party they sent out. If they could defeat it, they would manage to delay the main force for a time.

Rito said that the others wouldn't let him fight. He looked downright miserable because of it. He said he had to watch while everyone else made their way east toward the Greenway while he was left behind. Shin could understand the boy. He would have wanted the same. But even so, he was glad they'd kept Rito here. He was far too young to die. So were the rest of Halberd, of course, but to the 86 even the difference between fifteen and twelve was a profound one. Fifteen might as well have been adulthood to them. Twelve was still within the outer bounds of childhood. And nobody would let a child die if they could help it.

How Shin had come to hate the word die. And how he hated his own name with just the same depth. Shinei. Wasn't there a word in Kaie's language that sounded exactly like that? A word that meant death.

She isn't dead, his thoughts whispered traitorously. She would have survived somehow. It's Shiden we're talking about. She's pure will personified.

But that was stupid, of course. With that many Legion on the horizon, even a scouting party had to be hundreds strong. At most, Halberd had put together maybe two dozen Processors to meet them. If they had somehow managed to beat the odds, they would have returned to their base by now. Nobody had.

But they must have won. The Legion hasn't swept over the entire Eastern Ward, and they would have by now if the scouting party made it through them.

The thought was deeply tempting. But Shin reminded himself of the fantasies he had entertained as a child. Those sweet, comforting thoughts telling him his mother was not dead. Nobody had found her body, after all. And maybe that meant she could have still been alive somewhere, somehow. And if she was still alive, she would come back for him. She would take him away from the Nouzen compound and their cold disdain, and she would hug him, and she would love him, and that bitter ice over his heart would melt.

But she did not come back for him. And in the end, when those sweet fantasies revealed themselves to be lies, it had been like a betrayal of its own. Another dagger driven through a heart that had already been pierced so many times before. Shin could not take another. He would not survive it. So he told himself the truth and he swallowed it down through gritted teeth.

Shiden was dead.

It hurt.

Goddamn it, it hurt. Shin thought he'd be above it by now. He'd lost so many already. Taken most of them with his own two hands. And he'd barely even known her by most standards. Three months. Not even that. Ernst sometimes said that at his age entire years could go by in the blink of an eye. He would celebrate a birthday and realize that three hundred and sixty five days had been there and gone, passing him by without holding anything of note.

But time never really mattered when it came to people, not per se. It wasn't a matter of months or weeks. It was a matter of connection. Some people you could talk to for years, and never understand them beyond their face and the words they chose to speak with. And some people you seemed to know even before the first word was said, as if, on the grand track of life, you had walked the same miles and passed the same places, and even at first glance you could see the dust caked on their boots and know that yours carried the same.

She would have understood, whispered the traitor. Now that it could not lead him into denial, it taunted him with regret instead. If you had told her the truth, she would have understood.

Like hell she would have. He could have told her half the truth maybe, and she might have understood that. He could have told her Kette's name and the kind of person she was, how much Shiden reminded him of her. But he could never tell her the whole of it. He could not tell her that Kette had loved him, not when the thought of that caused him so much pain. He could have told her she had died, but not that he had killed her, and omitting that much of the truth would be no better than a lie. Worse, even.

She would have understood, it said again. You should have told her.

Shin stood buried to the ankles of his boots in Shiden's discarded clothes. Desert-tan combat fatigues and tanktops and camouflaged pants. His hands had clenched into tight fists, fingernails pressing hard into the pads of his palms, digging white crescents in the skin. It didn't matter. She was dead now. No amount of regret would change that.

You should have-

"Shut up," he whispered furiously. "Shut up, shut up, shut-"

It didn't.

—

".:Werewolf, a dozen bogeys closing in from the east!:."

".:Roger that Handler-one. Gunslinger, get your platoon on it:."

".:Roger!:."

Shin watched the battle unfold on his viewscreens. He was perched in the center of a defensive formation. Raiden's Juggernaut, Werewolf, stood to a few meters to his right. Other members of his platoon, Walpurgis, Griffin, and Manticore, defended his front, rear, and left. He was the newbie, Raiden had said. It was their job to protect him until he had a chance to gain experience. Shin, not wanting to break cover, had agreed reluctantly.

The platoon held its place on the rooftop of a parking garage. It commanded an overlook of all the surrounding blocks and over the rest of Spearhead, whose five platoons were currently engaged in battle with another Legion scouting party. This one had penetrated deeper, past the Greenway and into the city itself, and had fanned out across the expanse of ruins. Other Squadrons had been deployed to other sectors. Glaive Squadron was engaged further up the road with another scouting party, and Longsword with them.

Spearhead, as the name suggested, formed the vanguard.

"We've been fighting a long time, Will. We know how to handle threats like these. That means it's our job to take on the brunt of it. At least until the others have had a chance to learn how to do it themselves," Raiden had said, smiling confidently.

Evidently he protected other Squadrons the same way he protected Shin: letting them hide safely behind his back while he took on the enemy's fire. On a logical level, Shin could understand. It was the right thing to do. But sitting still made his nerves tingle uncomfortably. Made his hands itch.

And his head was buzzing with voices.

.:I love you:.

repeated one, over and over in a voice of mourning.

.:I hate this world:.

cried another, as if to deny the first.

".:I'm so tired:."

said a third, and this one Shin understood most of all.

Werewolf and Manticore peeled off of Shin's left and right. They scuttled to the lip of the parking garage's roof. They ignited their machine-guns in a leaden rain upon the Legion from above, shredding Ameise in sprays of sparks and silver blood. A five-strong platoon was led by Kujo in his Juggernaut, Sirius. They were locked in close-combat on the street below, fighting barrel-to-blade with the Legion despite their inferior Feldresses. It took the support of three other fire-support units, Raiden's, Kurena's, and Daiya's, to keep them from being overwhelmed.

But it wouldn't be enough. Kujo's platoon held the line now. They even won ground back in a slow but steady trickle, but the Legion was everywhere.

.:I'll kill you:.

Milize's shout of warning came a moment too late.

".:Werewolf! On the other side of the roof! They're climbing-!:."

Shin was already in motion. With a hard step left and a pivot on the back-foot, sparks grinding off the concrete, he whirled and three Grauwolves were there. Two had their blade-arms latched to the lip of the roof. Their hulls loomed over the ledge like ghastly faces. One had already clambered on, standing on its sharp legs, titanium shell gleaming in the sun. And with a burst of smoke it sent six rockets swirling in the air.

Death.

The Juggernaut's machineguns were not the rapid, precise rattle of an anti-air turret. Its volume of fire was closer to a stream than a torrent, and the rockets were too small and fast for the guns to follow. But Shin's marksmanship was more than just an act of aim. It was an act of martial fate. His guns had already been ablaze even before the rockets launched, and they were set on the place where the warheads would cross, as if Shin's instincts had glimpsed the future and guided his hands accordingly.

A .50 BMG bullet made impact with a 76mm warhead, striking the payload and detonating it in orange cloudflare. One warhead's explosion set off five others in a fireball, vaporizing the Grauwolf and its two allies before even a second's time had passed. A wave of blast pressure passed through Shin's Juggernaut like a wall of hard fluid, rattling the screws in his fuselage, blurring his viewscreens.

An incendiary cloud was all that remained where the dragoons had stood. The black smoke whirled with glowing embers.

".:Holy shit!:." someone exclaimed behind him. A high voice shaking with adrenaline. Belonging to a boy named Chise, Shin remembered. ".:Holy… shit!:." he said again, like the rest of his vocabulary had escaped him.

There was no time to waste. Shin shoved the drive-stick forward and floored the accelerator, and on his screen the black cloud of burning smoke loomed mountainously over him.

".:Will, where the hell are you going?!:." Raiden demanded, forgetting Shin's callsign in the chaos.

".:There's more of them inside the garage. They're trying to flank Kujo's platoon:."

Shin's face was pulled tight and blank, a perfect reflection of his inner workings. There was nothing but focus between his ears. No thoughts. Even the words he spoke seemed to be pulled not from his mind, but from another place entirely. He did not remember Shiden in that moment. The silence was euphoric.

".:I won't let them:." he said, and cut his Para-RAID as he plunged into the smoke.

The detonation had shattered a hole in the concrete just wide enough for his Juggernaut to fall through. He dropped down and impacted the roof of a black sedan. Crushed it beneath his Feldress' legs. And there he saw them, teeming like a hive of insects. This parking garage was a tighter structure once, built for cars, and small ones at that. But it was clear the Legion had been at work, demolishing entire floors so that their lighter drones could fit comfortably inside. And they had made good use of it. There were a dozen at least.

And they had all seen him.

Shin squeezed the trigger. He raked fire from left to right, piercing three Ameise in their unarmored flanks before they could turn to him. He fired his cannon at another, and in the enclosed space the pressure of recoil rebounded off the walls, twisted the bearings in his machine. The joints whined unhappily. And the Grauwolves were on him.

His Feldress was no Reginleif. The dragoon-types easily possessed twice his speed, and in the narrow space their blades reigned supreme. Shin's reactions were lightning-quick, but that meant nothing to the Juggernaut. No matter how quick his hands, Spearhead-Eleven could not keep up. So he could not react - he had to predict.

The first of two Grauwolves lunged toward him, but he was moving well in advance by then. When it swung its resonant blade and skimmed the paint off his cockpit he had already twisted toward the drone's side, legs dropped low, guns angled up. He pulsed fire into its belly. The drone skittered up. Its legs tapdanced madly at the air as it collapsed onto its side, and died.

The second was just behind the first, leaping through the air toward him. Its blades were crossed in a pincer and coming down, both aimed unerringly for Shin's neck. But his cannon was already in place. He snapped the trigger, and the drone was flung backward in a spraying tumble of shrapnel and silver blood.

And he was already moving, ducking left as a lead wave of return fire rippled down around him. Bullets pocked the concrete and scattered gray dust into the air. A haze of cordite smoke arose like fog, and the smell of it sunk into his machine and stung his nose. Bullets ripped through the aluminum plating over the cockpit. Dim morning light filtered through the bullet holes and filled the coffin-like space. A painless wet warmth spread across the left side of his chest, just below the armpit. The warmth of blood. Shin, without looking down, realized he had been shot. Grazed most likely. Otherwise he'd already be dead.

Shin squeezed off another burst of gunfire, retreated, fired again, then looped around the corner of a descending ramp, putting a wall between him and the remaining Ameise. He floored the accelerator. The Juggernaut's legs jackhammered up and down in furious motion. The engine whined and rattled, and still it wasn't enough. He had not even reached the bottom of the ramp before the Ameise were on him again, looming on his rearview monitor. Their blue sensors were like icy eyes glaring from above. He had not been fast enough.

Their guns roared.

The engine block saved him.

The bullets struck like tiny hammers of God. Each impact was a crushing force pounding at his spine through the bakelite chair, but the engine survived for another few seconds. It heaved with a rattling, grinding respiration, and then gave a final deep cough. A cloud of black smoke spewed out, occluding his right and left viewscreens, and he had a single moment to stare out at it, to look back through his rearview, and the smoke had obscured that screen too. Only the Ameise's blue optical sensors glared back at him, bright through the veil.

Shin pushed the drive-stick again. He slammed the accelerator, but only a dull, broken whine emerged from the engine. The Ameise were no longer shooting at him. They seemed to sense his lack of resistance. That Spearhead Eleven had fallen, and its pilot sat ripe for the taking.

He breathed heavily. His chest stung now. The pain set in quick and hard, a bright, continuous electricity baking in his skin. His ribs throbbed. That grazing shot must have struck bone. The Ameise simply waited at the top of the ramp. They were waiting for a Grauwolf, of course. They must have known he was still alive somehow - thermal or infra-red sensors picking up his heat signature, maybe heartbeat detectors. They wouldn't risk destroying his brain tissue with further gunfire. They'd wait for a headhunter.

And so they did, and in the yawning silence that fell, which was not broken but enhanced somehow by the rattle of gun- and cannon-fire from beyond the shell of his cockpit, the traitorous thoughts returned.

You should have told her, they taunted yet again. She would have understood.

How many times would it take for the message through - that it didn't fucking matter if someone understood. What difference would it make? Fuck all. Kette would still be dead, Shin would still be a murderer, and the sun would keep on turning. More than that, understanding wasn't meant for people like him.

And she wouldn't have. He knew that beyond doubt.

From behind the three blue glows in the black smoke, a larger light appeared, piercing the haze. His headhunter had come. And with it, the end of everything.

Shin realized he was grateful for it. Kiriya would be heartbroken. Grethe would resent herself all her life for putting him behind the wall. Frederika, when she found out, would be inconsolable. These thoughts coincided with the gratitude, even fought at it, but they could not erase it. Shin was glad to die. In a very short time, life had seemed to become a greater burden than he could carry.

Then, a different thought.

They'll advance on Kujo next.

Shin's eyes widened. It wouldn't end with him. Those four drones would move to flank the vanguard on the street. Maybe Kujo and the rest could take them down - but what if they didn't? What if they didn't see it coming? What if they died too?

You're the only one who can hear them.

The Legion had not entered this parking garage by chance. They had to demolish every second floor just to fit inside. Even for the Legion, that would have taken hours. This place was part of a plan. A carefully chosen ambush point where the drones could hide in hibernation, and awake when an enemy unit came close enough. And then they would strike from behind.

There were probably dozens, hundreds of such places scattered all throughout the ruins. Shin could not hear the drone's voices when they were sleeping, but he could damn well hear them when they woke up. And that was something no one else, not even Milize with all her commander's tools, could accomplish.

You're the only one who can protect them.

Shin glanced again at the blue light coming through the smoke. The Grauwolf advanced slowly, saunteringly, like it was savoring the kill. Maybe it was. Maybe this one had come from a harvested brain, and possessed a shred of some malignant personality.

".:If you ask me, these are the key to survival:." Theo had said, and fired his wire anchors.

Shin heard the boy's voice crisp and clear, speaking resonant in his head. But he had turned his Para-RAID off, hadn't he? He didn't stop to think about it. It didn't matter. It had shown him what to do.

The engine was broken, but it wasn't dead. His screens were still on. His guns still worked. Maybe the power to the legs was shot, but how about the anchors?

Only one way to find out.

He rotated the gun-stick, switching armaments. He took aim and fired, and the anchors wrapped around the corner of the wall at the end of the ramp. Shin reeled them in.

With a screech of grinding metal and a flood of sparks along the floor, Spearhead Eleven ground its way down the ramp. The Grauwolf accelerated immediately toward him. The bright blue glow of its optical sensor became searing and huge. And then the rest of its body followed.

Shin purged the left anchor, retracted the right, and the twisting force of the line spun his Juggernaut around, facing the enemy. His guns were already firing. The dragoon broke through the smoke and was inches from him, and then it was thrown back by the blast of Shin's cannon. And then it was jumping, jittering, tumbling beneath a hail of bullets.

The Ameise began to fire again. A round ripped through the cockpit and buried itself an inch from his cheek. One of his viewscreens shattered, flinging sparks and shards of glass against his face. And the Juggernaut was still grinding its way down the ramp with brutal speed. But Shin only aimed with unshaken accuracy. With the last fifty rounds in his machineguns he swept left to right, right to left, and the last drone died just as the guns clicked dry.

Spearhead Eleven crashed violently into the concrete barrier at the end of the ramp. The already-battered engine screamed out one last time before it crumpled in a wail of twisting steel. Pain lanced through his wounded chest. The wet warmth there doubled over as some jagged tissue ruptured further. The screens, what remained of them, went black. The controls locked up. Silence once again.

Shin didn't know how long he waited. He didn't turn on his Para-RAID. With Spearhead Eleven's back to the wall and his front facing only the darkness of the garage's depths, very little light filtered through the bullet holes. He broke open the first aid kit under his seat and patched his wound with steady hands. He wondered if there was even a point to it. If there were any Legion left in the garage, or if any came in from outside, he was dead, and one bandage over his bleeding wound would change nothing.

But there were no Legion left, and none entered the building either. A long time passed. It could have been five minutes or thirty. Shin found it hard to tell in the silent dark. But eventually the sound of gunfire winnowed out. Still more time passed before he heard the slow step of heavy mechanical legs approaching him, and he realized he had been found.

"[You alive in there, Will?]" asked the voice of a very tired man. Raiden, sounding tinny through his Juggernaut's external speakers.

Shin wondered what would happen if he didn't say anything at all.

Maybe Raiden would assume he was dead. He might shrug his shoulders and move on, leaving the ruined Feldress behind, and Shin inside it. He was surprised by how much the thought disturbed him. Not just because he would be abandoned, although that stung at him too with unexpected force. Mostly, though, it was the thought of what might happen to the rest of the Squadron if he wasn't there to protect them.

What would have happened to Spearhead today, if Shin had not been here? The Legion inside the garage, fresh out of hibernation, would have climbed first onto the roof of the building, blown Raiden and his platoon to kingdom come, then swarmed onto the street to strike Kujo's platoon from behind. Ten casualties at a minimum, cutting the Squadron almost in half. The balance of the battle would have turned and become a slaughter.

Shin didn't want them to die. The strength of the realization was like a vice-grip clamped around his mind, shocking in its intensity.

"[Look, dude, if you don't want to turn on the Para-RAID and listen to everyone calling you an idiot, then whatever, but right now I'm the only one in front of you. The only one who's gonna make fun of ya. Give me a sign at least. You're starting to freak me out.]" Raiden tried to sound nonchalant and failed. His voice carried a tremor.

Shin made his decision.

He rapped his knuckles against the cockpit's aluminum plating. A deep, resonant gong-like sound rang out.

Raiden gave a very long sigh. Through the external speakers, it sounded more like a rumble of raw bass than any sound a person would make.

"[Don't scare me like that, asshole,]" he said at the end of it.

Eventually Raiden found the emergency canopy override on the outside of Spearhead Eleven's frame. The switch on the inside had been shot to uselessness. Raiden flipped it, and the cockpit popped open with a hiss of air. He climbed up onto the fuselage. He loomed over Shin, who sat back in his chair, and his face was a hard, unsmiling mask.

"You wanna tell me what the fuck that was all about, Will?"

"They were going to flank Kujo's platoon."

"Yeah, I can see that. And Kujo says thank you for the save. Me too, for that matter. But why go off on your own? This is your first fucking battle for God's sake! You're good. I know that, I've seen you on the training field, but that doesn't make you invincible. Look at you! You got fucking shot!"

A thought seemed to occur to Raiden, just then. Some of the anger bled out from his face, and was replaced by a look of long, deep questioning.

"How did you even know they were down here in the first place?"

Shin met the hardness in the green of his eyes. He glanced down a moment after. He tried to speak, but the words would not come.

"I know you have secrets, Will. A baby two hours out of the womb could see that. But if you know something that could help us…" His voice trailed.

You should have told-

"I can hear their voices," Shin said, as much to answer him as to shut up the thought.

Raiden had the look of a man who had asked a very important question without expecting to receive an answer, and then got one anyway.

"The Legion," Shin continued. "It's… complicated. It would take a long time to explain. But they speak. And I can hear them. I can track them."

Raiden looked at him for a very long time after that. Seconds turned almost to a full minute. A space filled only by the hollow ambiance of the garage. Water dripping from a pipe somewhere far below them, sparks still bleeding off of ruined Legion corpses. All the sounds from outside, trundling Juggernauts with Scavengers in tow, seemed to come from very far away.

Without another word, Raiden stuck out his hand. Shin looked at it. Then he took it, and the taller boy pulled him out of the cockpit. They climbed out together onto the ground. Shin's ribs throbbed painfully with every movement.

"How?" Raiden asked simply.

Shin thought for awhile about how best to explain it. He thought about Grethe's mission. He thought about Shiden. For a time, his thoughts ran parallel with that small, traitorous voice which had never once shut up since it first began to speak, and this time Shin did not protest against it.

Shin put his fingers to his eyeball, and pulled out one contact lens.

"I'm half-Pyrope," he said dully. Raiden just stared at him, eyes fixed on Shin's as if he were searching intently for signs of a lie. Or perhaps, more accurately, for where the lie had been all this time.

The intensity of that gaze made Shin hesitate. He thought again, and longer, before he made his decision with grim determination. He pulled out the other lens.

"And…" he said, voice trailing.

"And my name isn't William Lowell. It's Shinei Nouzen, and I am a soldier of the Federacy of Giad."