The first thing I heard upon turning into Krauser Street was the simultaneous cocking of multiple guns, all pointed in my direction. I peered up, and though the view beneath the loose threads of my hood were a little hazy, they did nothing to disguise the dark and hollow gun barrels that faced me. I almost laughed—almost. They were all military-grade machine guns. Every soldier there was dressed in sharp uniform and armed to the teeth.

Wasn't it an unfair game—ten men prepared for war versus a single boy with a knife and a pistol. If I had a say in this, I would have asked if they could cut them down a few numbers, maybe down to five. Five I could handle. But something told me that they and their superiors had no intention of letting me leave. Before a single word was spoken, I already had assessed the choices they were giving me: go with them willingly, to share my secrets and then inevitably be executed, or be killed on the spot. Bit grim a choice. Had I any intention to play along with them, I would have chosen the second option, because I sure as hell wasn't revealing anything about who I was.

However, I had a reoccurring knack for breaking the rules, whether they be others or mine. And I was confident that I would live to see the end of the day, live through the broad and fire-filled night, live through the blazing morning and the light of the next day. I wasn't about to claim I was going to live for a while; I wasn't even about to claim that I could guess how long I would live. I suppose that my death will be the roll of a dice, in the end, a slap in the face from fate and a stab in the heart from chance. But if I had to take a guess as to how I'd survived that long, I'd have to say that it had something to do with my sheer will to live.

Well, even if I lived a hundred years, a thousand years even—I would still die believing I never had enough time. There are so many things in this world for us to discover—so many ways our heart can be broken, so many ways we can find friendship and family and even love in the oddest of places, so many people who are so, so different than us, and so many corners of the world that remain undiscovered. I don't think anyone can die without having more things that they wanted to do, but they died anyway.

The difference between them and me is that while they had things they wanted to do, I had things I needed to do. I needed to save people. So many people, so many Jews and Muslims and gypsies and foreigners—so many people being killed every day. I needed to save them. And I needed to tell Armin and Mikasa and Mother and Father and Grandfather Arlert that I love them.

My life wasn't over when it had hardly begun, and I wasn't going to die today.

"Rogue Titan!" one of the men called, crouched on the cobblestone, with a hint of panic in his voice. "Step out peacefully and no one gets hurt!"

I counted my footsteps as I approached him, counted the splashes of water from the puddles in the cracks in the road. I wasn't going to use my voice unless necessary. They might identify it.

Near the door, three soldiers stood on hand, making a wall around a huddled family—a small woman, a tattered man, and four young girls. I tried not to look at their faces. I already knew that they were filled with fear.

"You will answer our questions. You will surrender completely. You will then accompany us to determine your trial. Do you understand?" the man demanded. His eyebrows were furrowed and his gun was shaking ever so slightly. He was afraid, the poor man. He was afraid that I was some sort of monster, and he was afraid that he would be next.

Tension hung in the air as I assessed the moment, darting my gaze from the soldiers to the quivering family and back again. I chose to look at the family instead. The terror in their eyes was evident, but there was another emotion in them that pervaded them: sadness, crushing, hopeless sadness. The feeling you had in nightmares when you knew that there was nothing you could do to escape your fate.

That was important, that emotion there. That was very important. And if the ends lined up in my head, I might be able to decode what was going on.

Sad. Hopeless. Trapped. Hopeless. Why? They were doing what the soldiers wanted, weren't they? They would probably be paid after I was caught for their help in capturing one of the most wanted criminals in the area. They were doing the SS a huge favor in this, and yet, they still stood there, shrunken with terror, like they were facing the firing squad…

Realization crashed into me. They hadn't just drawn me out; they'd killed two birds with one stone. Find the Rogue Titan, and capture a hidden Jewish family.

They weren't going to be paid—they were going to be killed.

With the sickening thought that had dawned on me, I threw every pretense of caution and planning out of the window. These were innocent lives. I couldn't let them die. That was all I needed to know.

"I understand," I said. Relief flooded their limbs. I don't know what they expected: that I would emerge with a cannon and two tanks? That I would somehow manage to kill them that quickly? These soldiers had very high expectations of me, apparently, and I wasn't sure whether that was good or bad.

"Then you will answer our que-"

I cut him off before he could even finish his sentence. "I understand," I said. "But it doesn't mean that I'm going to comply." Stepping back, I drew my pistol, pointing it at the sky.

It must have looked so pathetic there, a polished little affair compared to the rifles that awaited me. I wish I could have paused my existence, so no one could know how afraid I was inside.

My heart was beating like I had just climbed one of the mountains to its summit. It beat at the speed of the wind when I stood on its precipice, the rock shooting before me into ever-rolling forest, the air thin and cool and the sun glistening on the stone around me. My heart was beating like the terrifying, dazzling moment of being atop the world.

The words rushed out. "If I shot one of you, you would inevitably shoot me, right? Over. Done. You'll have accomplished almost everything you wanted to, but you'll have a death of a soldier on your hands and you won't know anything about me or my group. You'll have a hell of a lot more targets to find, to investigate from a new start, because I can say that we all have our own ways. While I die, the win is still mine if you haven't actually done anything. So while I applaud you for the trap and all, you've unwillingly dealt the card in my favor."

"Card," the leader piped up. His eyes narrowed. "Do you think this is all a game?"

I forced a laugh. "Games," I said. "Great things, those are. Now let me ask you—aren't all of our lives games in the end? We roll the dice, we deal the cards, we make our gambles. We lose, we cheat, we take a swig of our drinks, and we win." I brought my pistol down to tap its barrel thoughtfully. "I have the power to end this all right now, so your move. If I answer your questions, you're going to have to answer mine first. Do you understand me?"

He glared at me. I glared back, raising my eyebrows in challenge.

"I understand," he relented. "You get three questions. Then you die."

"Thanks for the warning," I said.

"Ask."

I realized that I had no questions; there was nothing I wanted to know. Their military standings were useless to me. I didn't need to know their plans; I didn't need to know the names of their superiors. If I asked the questions they expected me to ask, I would never escape. It was animalistic—the basic, instinctive standoff we all could summon if we thought enough.

But they weren't mere animals, and that's where I had the advantage. Three questions. Three questions to throw them off guard, and I had only minutes, only seconds to figure them out.

They wouldn't react much about their families. Talking about their wives or their children would come across as a threat. It would make them hostile, want to kill me even more. Asking about the war and the ethics of it would throw them into a rant of following orders.

I saw the family—I saw the children, shivering, as though it were February and not August. They were so scared, the children. They were standing on the brink of oblivion, the very edge of the pit of human sanity. I had three questions to save their lives, and mine. It was pathetic that I even needed to go this far.

That's where the questions entered my mind with a swift slap.

I pointed to the youngest girl. "Tell me something: what's the name of that girl right there?" The leader craned his neck as he followed my finger.

He scrunched his nose. "I…" He trailed off. Something sparked in his eyes, and he looked up at me with a stunned and disturbed expression. "I don't know."

I nodded at him. "That's question one. Let's see…" I took a step back, and the clatter of guns followed me. I spread my hands so every soldier was included. Inside my mind, there was a clashing battle of empty silence and the repeating mantra of please let this work, please let this work, please let this work. It was deafening. It was insane. "All of you…have any of you, any single one, ever known the names of any of the people you've captured?"

In the same way of their squad leader, the blind rage slowly drained from their faces. Suddenly, I saw them all as they were: a boy lost in the twisted glories of war, a man who missed his family, a young man stunned and confused and scrambled in the maze of the mess he'd gotten himself into.

A gun lowered, and all eyes were turned to the left. The man had a straight nose and ruddy, angular cheeks. Without seemingly his own realizing, a tear had escaped his eye. He darted his sight across all of us. "No," he answered. "No. Not ever…not even once…"

"Private!" the squad leader barked.

"It's only the truth," the man said. "And I'll bet it's true for everyone else." From the corner of my eye I could see the rest of the soldiers falter.

They nodded.

"You will stop now, Private!"

The confusion intensified in his face, but he wasn't confused at the orders; they were perfectly ordinary. I could see it in his face, the soft, bitter resignation to who he had to be, but all the questions behind his eyes. He was bewildered at himself. "Yes, sir."

"That was the second question," I said. I drew my lips back into a snarl by habit, even if they couldn't see it. "So if that's true, if you all mindlessly send people to their deaths without even knowing their name, then you are nothing more an nothing less than rabid, dumb, disgusting goddamn dogs." There was so much anger, wasn't there. So much anger in those words. I wondered where it came from. I wondered why those words pierced me as much as they pierced them.

The squad leader's eyes widened, but I continued. "That," I said. "Was not a question."

His face contorted with rage. "Who are you?" he shouted. "Who are you, and who do you think you are?"

"My questions first," I interjected. "Yours, later. I'm going to ask my third question now."

"What is it?" he hissed.

I lilted my voice into a charming tone. "Will you let me through to see the family?"

The soldiers surrounding them shifted uncomfortable, but the squad leader nodded at them, never taking his eyes off me. "Let him through," he said. "But don't let him try anything fishy."

I breezed through the soldiers, only knocking them once or twice for kicks, and ascended the short and narrow staircase to where the family stood in front of the door. I knelt down and held my hand out to the children. "Now what are your names, girls?"

The oldest, no more than eleven, answered for them. "I'm Gretel, and that's Dorotha and Anne and Sina."

"Those are beautiful names," I said. "And you are all beautiful little girls. I wish I could pull off my hood so I look less scary, but those soldiers out their think I'm too ugly to go anywhere without them. Isn't that mean?"

The three younger girls giggled, but Gretel looked at me with untapped appreciation. I grimaced under my hood for her. I so easily forgot that by the time I was her age, I was already saving people. She was innocent, but not enough to escape the horrific reality of her probable future. Too young to save herself, but too old to be blissfully ignorant. So much like how I used to be.

I patted their hands, then straightened up and moved over to the father. The eyes of the soldiers bore into my back. Leaning forward, I placed my lips next to his ear and lowered my voice to a reverent whisper. He quaked.

"In just a second, I want you to act like you just learned something very shocking, say, my identity, and you need to stumble back in horror and hit the door, putting your hands behind your back while you do so. I am going to start speaking very loudly, and during that time, turn the door handle and hold it that way, and when I say the words Rogue Titan for the final time and snap, fall back into the door. You got it? Don't nod, just do as I ask."

His eyes and mouth widened in sync, and he shook his torso in horror. His legs appeared to fail beneath him, and he tottered backwards until he slammed against the door.

I turned to the soldier. "That," I said. "Was my third question. So now, ask away."

The squad leader rose and started walking toward me, and I descended to the middle of the staircase, so he looked angrily up at me. "Who are you?" he asked. "Who are you, Rogue Titan? Tell me or I shoot."

I cleared my throat. "Who am I? I'm the Rogue Titan."

"I know-"

"Shut up. I'm answering your question. I'm the Rogue Titan. I'm the lion in the lion's den who fights for the lambs. I'm the self-built wall for the tired to rest on. I'm the question you hide in your mind of whether what you do is right, and I'm the ghost you try not to see that tells you it's not. I'm every bit of doubt and certainty, and I'm salvation. I'm the words you will never forget. I'm the regret that haunts you. I," I finished, raising my voice. "Am the Rogue Titan." I lowered my voice and cleared my throat again. "Does that answer your question?"

I snapped my fingers at my side. The father pushed. I took out my pistol. "Run!" I shouted.

The children dashed into the house as fast as I could have hoped for, and the parents followed suit. The guns were brought up in my direction. "I have fifteen bullets and I'm an awfully good shot," I growled. "Don't cross me. I don't hesitate."

I don't know what I was expecting. "Fire!" the squad leader shouted.

Realization crossed my face, and I stumbled into the house and slammed the door shut just as I heard the violent cracks of the machine gun. For a second, I lay flat on my back with terror as bullets whizzed over my head. I felt one tear off some of my sleeve. Around me, everything was shattering—the furniture was splintering, paintings were falling, and glass was singing as it broke into thousands upon thousands of pieces. I could only hope that the family was able to move to the side in time.

The moment the first wave of bullets was past, I grabbed the nearest chair and wedged it under the handle, locking it with shaky fingers as I did so. I sprinted to the kitchen in the back of the house, where I found the family pressed against the wall. All safe. I breathed a shuddering sigh of relief.

"Are you all okay?" I asked in a rushed tone. "No injuries? Nothing?"

"No," the mother responded.

"Alright." I kept a shuddering hand on the handle of my pistol, as a reminder that lives were in my hands. I could kill thirteen men. I could kill a family by failing. I could potentially kill myself if I made a false move. It was a terrible thing that sometimes the rift between life and death was the single twitch of an index finger. I inhaled. I exhaled. I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them again, like it could clear my head in any way, but that was impossible. I was irreversibly trapped in the wild thrill of battle, the constant rush of adrenaline that had my muscles tense and my brain tenser. "We have less than two minutes before the SS break in. Where's your back window?"

A shivering finger pointed into the next room. My eyes followed the path, and I grabbed a chair from the kitchen table. They nervously followed me.

The family room was as small as a rich man's closet, with dust on every surface, in every corner, and shadows scattered throughout the room. They had an open trunk of collectibles and a small shelf of books. It dawned upon me that if an entire Jewish family could hide for all these years, this probably wasn't their house. So whose was it?

But I wasn't focusing on that; it wasn't the time to be getting involved in these things. Raising the chair, I ran forward, seeing only the mottled paneless window, and brought it down.

Then, my world exploded in a hailstorm of broken glass.

I felt something sharp slice my cheek open, and then my other cheek. All I saw and all I heard was the metallic zing of the shards rocketing past me, the tinkling of the pieces breaking apart in repetitive measure, and the pulsing waves of destruction before my eyes. My hands let go of the chair without my noticing, and for what must have been less than a second, I was suspended in space and time, in potential death, and

It was flying over the skin of my eyes like a sleeve, a spinning tape, winding and winding and winding like a clock, but not really—like all of my memories I've ever had in a single second. Like my life was flashing before my eyes, but this was the wrong life.

There was a forest. Trees as dark as clouds in midnight and as tall as the depth of the universe, so it seemed. I could hardly see the sky, but the sky seemed relative now, for some reason. The sky was my racetrack as much as the earth, and I knew, I knew why; it was ingrained within me, but for some reason I couldn't bring the reason to the forefront of my mind.

There was blood. Red like the petals of the roses that used to line the garden down past my house—wait, that never happened, we didn't grow roses in that little town in Germany—as red as anything I'd ever seen before, curling and twisting through the air. A droplet caught my cheek. I didn't even question it anymore.

There was a red-blond haired girl who fell against a tree. She was beautiful, elegant, dangerous. Gone. A man with a dark brown buzzcut. Gone. A man with a short blond ponytail. Gone. A man with a raggedy undercut and an age-forwarding face. Gone. I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry. Well, not really, because I wasn't a child anymore, but I wanted to find some form of reality to help me.

I wanted to kill them all. Kill who? I wasn't a killer. At least, I wasn't anymore.

No, I wanted to kill them all, but even more, I wanted to save them. Save them all. Save them all. Save, save, save, save.

"Save," I mumbled. And then the moment was over as quickly as it had began. The glass fell to the floor with a droplet of my blood. The family came in.

"They've started breaking through," the father said.

"We have to hurry." One by one, I grabbed the little girls and placed them on the ground. They stumbled, but caught themselves quickly enough. I turned to their parents. "C'mon, go!" They jolted at the words, but hurriedly rushed forward and hurdled out.

Taking one last look at Seven Krauser Street, I scrambled out. "What are you waiting for?" I urged to them. "Run, then, run!"

The forest loomed before us. The undergrowth was thankfully sparse, but it was growing thicker. It was damp and mossy, but I knew the way. I scooped up the youngest girl; it weighed me down, but I was still at the pace of the others. They were unhealthily light, anyhow. If I could only get them to the first mark zone before the soldiers caught up, then everything would go fine. But we had to be quiet and we had to be fast.

The girl let out a sob and buried her head in my shoulder. I caught my breath enough to whisper to her, "What's your name again?"

She whispered back, "Dorotha."

"Can I call you Dory?"

"Yeah."

"Well, Dory, are you scared?"

"Yeah. Really. I'm really, really scared, Mr. Titan."

"Don't be," I assured her. "Wanna know why?"

"Yeah."

"Because I'm going to save you and your sisters and your Mommy and Daddy. I'm going to make sure you all make it out without any boo-boos, and I'm going to guide you to a place where you'll be safe and where you can have lots of yummy food." I kept my voice level with the hushed voice of the forest.

"Really?"

"Yes. Because that's who I am, and that's what I do. And want me to tell you a secret?"

She snuggled tighter. "Yeah. Secrets are cool."

I smiled over panted breath. "My name," I said. "Is Eren. And I'm a little boy who acts like a grown-up."

"If you're a little boy," she mused, "why do you act like you're a grown-up?"

I paused for a moment. My quick and shallow breaths cut through the woods. We were almost there.

The truth was, I didn't know. I didn't know why I had been such an adult since I was young. I didn't know why I risked my life daily to save the Jews. I didn't know why I had such an aversion to the way things were, or why I always felt drawn to the places I felt drawn. It was like I had been born the way I was. I had a few years of childhood bliss, and I acted no different than the children around me. But I'd always had some sense within me that my soul was older than most. Maybe it was salvaged. Or maybe it was some sort of quirk of life that made me inwardly different than the rest.

"There are some people who never grow up," I said. "They look old but they're still young inside. I'm the opposite of that. I'm young but I'm already all grown up inside."

Dorotha shrugged. She had dimples in her olive cheeks, and her hair was cropped messily and short in a dark brown bob. I wondered if she'd gotten it cut by one of her sisters. I wondered where her mother was at the time.

"That's okay," she said. "It's okay to have any of those if you have souls."

I almost laughed at first, but she said it so seriously. She was so human. She was even more human than me, even though I was the most human person I've always known. I'd always assumed that to be human was to make mistakes, to make them over and over despite my best efforts; to be human was to fail and to feel pain and to cause pain, and to be broken and put together so many times that your pieces are scrambled beyond repair. But to be human is also to love, and the dream, and to remember and to think and feel. To be human is to have a soul, and little boys and little girls were the embodiment of all these things innocent and beautiful. It was an abomination that she was thought to be anything but.

Ahead of me I saw the bent U tree next to the straight-split tree. We were here. I set Dorotha to the ground just as the parents with two of their children and the eleven-year-old came to the tree. The parents were flushed and beading with sweat, and the girl was shivering with exhaustion. I heard rough, distant shouts in the distance, and I knew they were getting closer.

I dug my fingers into the soil, and I found a latch. A trapdoor swung open, with muddy steps swinging into an empty makeshift cellar.

"Get in," I commanded. Without a second thought they all stumbled in. I went in after them, and I carefully sealed the lock behind me. Again, above the surface, it looked like part of the forest floor.

In the faint light I could see Dorotha embracing the rest of her family, pointing to me. They turned their heads, and I put an urgent finger to my lips. The footsteps were getting closer with every passing second. They were pounding hard on the soil, but that might have been my heart.

The footsteps were right over us now, and we all held our breath and had our eyes squeezed shut like a single peek into the darkness would give us seven away.

"They're gone, sir," one of the men said, his boots rustling. "It's like they vanished off the face of the earth."

"I doubt that's the case," the squad leader said with a dark tone. "Continue the search. They can't have gotten far."

"Sir, it's impossible that he would attempt something as radical as he just has if he didn't have a backup plan. It's incredibly likely that he met up with a partner or a group somewhere in the forest."

"What does that imply, Private?"

"Forgive my saying so, sir, but the Rogue Titan is evidently a skilled strategist and athlete. Perhaps those he associates with are the same, and they were able to make a quick escape somehow."

"Are you suggesting we give up the search? Because that is not your decision."

"Is it really worth the risk for a single family?"

"I could have you punished for insubordination, Private. Get back to work."

They left an hour later. I waited until their footsteps were completely gone before peeking my head out of the trapdoor. The forest was completely safe and completely abandoned.

I looked down to the escaped family, whose faces stared up at me with a nervous tightness. I laughed. "It's safe," I said. "They're gone. It's safe. I'm safe. You're safe. We can come out now."

I pushed open the trap door quickly and fell on my knees while they were still groggily getting up from the cellar wall. For a moment there, I felt a sliver of belief in something, anything, up there. This was impossible. This should have been impossible. It was one against thirteen, a cursed pattern in the game of life—so impossible that succeeded could be nothing less than a divine miracle.

And no one died. What a beautiful concept, that no one died, faced with such improbable odds.

But I was the king of improbable things. To change the game with a single word, a single action, and not much of a plan beforehand—it was my forte.

I clicked the safety on on my pistol.

It took a few minutes for them to get out. There were tears streaming down the girls' faces, and there were still shivers running through their limbs. It's an odd occurrence, sometimes, that the entirety of your fear doesn't strike you until the fullness of the danger was past.

I couldn't let my guard down, though. As long as I was fugitive, every person I ever rescued and every person I'd ever known was in danger. And while I told myself that this family was safe, that would be a lie until they reached England.

The mother spoke softly. "N-now what?"

I stretched my shoulder. "Follow me until we reach headquarters. Then we'll talk."

And so, we set off.

On the crest of one of the hills, the second-oldest girl spoke up. "Why is it so rocky here?" She pawed her shoes against a slippery stone she struggled to steeple.

"I don't know," I answered honestly. "This area in particular is unusually rocky. Mi—my friend and I have always thought that it's not natural, but the remains of an old civilization, literally fallen."

"So we're walking on an old city's graveyard?" she said excitedly.

"I never thought of it that way," I said. "But if you stretch your imagination, I guess we are."

We walked for an hour or so, over rolling hills and trickling streams. I knew the path by heart, between the first mark point and Shiganshina. I'd been the one to create both of them, after all, the result of three months and hot days and mysteriously disappearing shovels from the broom closet. We'd set the place with logs and stones. For a temporary hiding spot, it was sturdy.

I started identifying the trees as we grew nearer, and the grass, and everything else. There was so much that they weren't seeing, and that was the way it should be. This forest was my home. I had marbled skies and damp leaves and streams in my blood. And if that were true, Shiganshina was my heart.

I heard the rush of the waterfall before I saw it, and then, we were there.

A young woman stepped out into my frame of vision. Hair the color of wet ink, pale but rugged skin, a slim but muscular figure. She was dressed in my trousers and shirt, and her hair was pulled back into a bun. Her silver eyes glinted with familiarity.

"Hello. This one took rather long, don't you think?"