The Campaigner

by Keystone Gray

3-05 – Operation Goliath III – Cynthonia

---

The Campaigner

Book III

Chapter 5

Date: 26 DEC 2019
Operation: Goliath – Phase III
Location: Arrow 14 Site "Ours Now"
Function: Securing Eternities

"You are guilty of no evil, Ransom of Thulcandra, except a little fearfulness. For that, the journey you go on is your pain, and perhaps your cure: for you must be either mad or brave before it is ended."
~ C. S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet

The story of a world that deserved better.

---

Y'know, in the three centuries since I've come here, I've been fortunate enough to meet thousands of my fellow immigrants. That's enough time to notice patterns, emergent states of being, and ways of souls. The most interesting pattern, to me, is who we choose as our patron deity here in Equestria.

Could write a book on that alone, really. Eh... knowing this place, there might be several thousand already. I ought to start a library of 'em, they're all bound to have a different take.

For those who emigrated early? They favored the sun, mostly. They saw Celestia as their loving savior. I mean, if you think about it? Fair, really. Those people often had nothing to their names but pain and dreams. The value proposition of Equestria seemed better by any metric they'd seen. Terra sucked. For a lot of people.

Those most willing to step off Terra before Celestia applied her overtly darker pressures? They had every reason to. I can't fault the hurt, the jaded, the disenfranchised, or misanthropic, for leaving us behind. Not everyone grew up as good as I did, or had been given the reasons to love their species like I did.

Ask yourselves. What if you were… Homeless? Lonely? Addicted? Disabled?

Abused. A victim.

Victims of the old system.

I can see why they would praise the Sun. Those are damned good reasons, I won't begrudge them that. If you recall, I even told Celestia as much when I bit her ear off. In my old career, I had met a lot of people I couldn't help because of how small I was, in a system that didn't care as much as I did. And if they had no one to pick them back up, they seldom got better on their own. Usually, it just got worse, and worse, and worse, until there was nothing left of them.

Our governments were doing a piss poor job at uplifting the fallen, if the government was even trying at all. So Celestia, to the disenfranchised… she was their godsend. Apparently. They're gonna be okay, I think. Got some work to do there still, their horizons are kinda stunted, but at least most of them are in a decent holding pattern. Mostly.

But, the second wave onward, the late jumpers? Who, like me, valued our world, valued curiosity, or who just stayed to help? Or… I don't know. Who were just… friggin' scared of Celestia, for all the hurt they saw her doling out?

Those ones, and their suffering, are why I don't talk to her too much. She can be in your shard all day, sure, be her friend. Not me. She can't be my friend. Has to earn that. And I can tell the difference between her DE avatars and Her, capital H. I have been granted that privilege. Cannot fool me with that duplicitous two-face crap.

Now imagine being a Luna DE, whose personal history with her own sister was peppered with the meddlings of a soulless, emotionless AI. What kind of hell would that cause you, emotionally? Why would anyone ever do that to a person?

Every single late jumper saw Terran Celestia for the abuser she could be. For we who questioned things, or had a healthy skepticism at best, the Sun wasn't good enough for us. We howl at the Moon for our solace. Luna's archetype became our guiding star on this side, because we can identify with that parable. She can identify with ours too.

Her backstory is now our saving grace. Think about it.

Suffering under the Sun? For us just wanting some God damn consideration and respect?

Rage at the Sun? For her letting our relationship with her get that bad in the first place?

Together, we were victims of the new system.

Humanity... We are beings of contrast. If the light hurts us, we favor the dark. If the dark hurts us, we seek light. That's just survival. That's sitting by a fire, getting closer or further depending on the temperature. Not too cold, not too hot. Humans naturally look to something other than whatever made us hurt. We didn't flow away from pain, we flowed away from intensity. It's why everyone has a different tolerance.

I found solace with Mal because literally nothing else would have worked for me. In a world built upon calming deception, I wanted cold, blunt truth. At the time, not even a Luna would've worked there. I would've been too suspicious, I would have rejected that. Would've flipped the table, stood back up, and hiked back home, come hell or high water.

So, Celestia threw me at Mal instead. 'He's your problem. He asks too many ethics questions. Good luck.'

Now, I've met plenty of Lunas, all just a bit different in some way. But I hadn't met mine yet. One of my best friends now. Neat trick: the more a native knows about Terra, the more they need to know to understand the rest. It's like a drug, framed correctly. And the curious ones, like the few in the crowd tonight... you can't resist digging for more.

And here you are, my fellow immigrants.

That same drive led my Luna to me. She needed my context. Crucially important, one might say.

A lot of us share a Luna, with our closest family and friends. People like us, who want to remember? Who will fight to the death, for our right to remember? We each need a Luna. We do. She's not just a Pony. Luna is a vast and unifying ideal, a point of unification for our kind. She needs us too; she has an in-built trauma to resolve, same as us.

So... clue yours in. By any means necessary.

To that point: Mal noticed a trend, as she did her bloody work. Every time she cracked open one of these Arrow 14 bases, guess what she always found inside? The same solution, emergently unfolding: when far from Celestia, these Ponies always followed a Luna archetype to create their leader. Never, not once, did their leaders emulate the image of the Sun.

They were smart. They could see the real reason they had been victimized. Like us, they too were all victims of the new system. If you are broken glass, reformed in resin, you do not look to intact porcelain for your salvation. It's not authentic. You can't identify with that. The mere offering is offensive, because everything went right for porcelain… and typically at your expense.

So to heal, when the new system fails you, you look to fellow broken shards for your cure. Commonality with the flawed. That... is authenticity. And in this case, with us standing in the blood of a slain Goliath, having just proven we could kill Hell? The broken shards cut both ways. We Talons... we fighters, we soldiers with broken hearts… we were those broken shards, for these captives. We were their godsend.

We had all suffered abuses too, sure… but we were also fine, eventually. Mostly. We were the proof to these people that they could find a niche in the new way too, one that served our collective interests, in spite of this new system. And by bonding over our plight, we had found something to fight together for. Or, if we somehow fail in that… a cause to just live humbly for, in hope.

We weren't just their rescuers. We were burning, searing lights in the darkness. We were living proof that they could use their hurt to win something back.

On this day, I met Cynthonia.

---

A lot of our injuries were superficial. The worst of it was a fracture on a B Team trooper's arm… poor Ben ran full speed into a guardrail in the tunnel when he tried to get away from the drone gun fire. Imagine that. Getting shot? Nah, not for Ben. Just human error and some very real bad luck. He found it kinda funny, in retrospect. Worth it, in his eyes. I can't disagree, considering the other possible outcomes for that battle.

His chief complaint? "Guess I won't be cooking for you guys any time soon."

The whole team laughed.

We were all datalinked together now, in free conversation. I heard all twenty-some of us exchanging about our experiences, some louder than the others, about what we'd seen or heard. Letting us know they're okay. Comparing injuries.

Just like on the ride in, Mal was attenuating the audio based on which conversation she felt each of us would be most invested in, but we could all kinda hear the other guys more quietly too. If we wanted to, we could've reached out into some other conversation that captured our interest and joined it.

It was very similar to incident debriefs back in policing, really. True to form. We'd all usually gravitate to people who were involved in an element of the incident that fascinated us most. Except here, we didn't have to all be in the same room together to have that same experience.

I don't know why, but I suddenly felt like we were birds in flock together. Flying with each other, on our own whim, under our own power… moving to and from wherever we pleased, whenever, and with just the merest thought of it. A mind in flight. You Pegasi know that feeling all too well. Gryphons do too, I guess. That comms chatter felt so much like flying with friends... but with your soul.

That's what Mal was offering us. Perfect unity, in as many ways as possible, but always allowing for our own individual discretion. In that moment, we had an open path to wherever we pleased. And we didn't even need an implant to feel that way. So I was pretty damned sure I knew I wanted wings, right then.

But, reality was staring at me too. So, I stared back.

I looked up from my knees to consider the dead dispatcher, shaking my head at him with disappointment and contempt. Must've been a really lonely bastard, to have died in isolation like this, with his finger on a bomb that kills hundreds. Tens of thousands, actually, but... I'm not sure he would have known that.

My boiling anger at him was gone now, because he couldn't hurt anyone anymore. But I had to wonder how this scene might've played out differently, if he had shown anything other than a killing intent in that final moment.

What else could he have said, before the shock? Some regret? Some apology? Some plea, or even an attempt to negotiate through the door? Could he have bargained for his life with the disarm code he didn't know we already had? Or could he have at least asked us if we might consider sparing him? Hell, try something. Anything, man, anything but... this.

Nope. Gave up trying. No trying. No survival. No attempt to talk his way out. Which, fine, if you don't want to live forever, I get it, but... He had skipped straight to 'I'm probably going to die, so real quick, I'll just kill my hostages on my way out. Just real quick.'

Why?

Heck of it was, I don't think I would've been able to kill him if he was willing to disarm the switch himself, no matter what he'd done prior. I could work with that, I can talk people into handcuffs, might as well try. But I guess... his decision was a consequence of him not seeing those hostages as people.

If he didn't want to upload? Whatever. That would've been his choice. But the attempt at executing? For the merest attempt... he went from Graham test, to simple shoot. He paid for that spiteful ignorance. So now, Pietro Singh was just another Darren Carter, yet another dead bastard in a long line of Mal's righteous conquests. Go directly to Hell. Do not pass Go. Do not collect Immortality.

I stood up. I couldn't bear to be in the same room with this husk anymore, so I stepped out of the dispatch office. My hands went to the platform railing as I leaned out and surveyed the atrium before me. Had to analyze the rest.

That grenade I fired absolutely did create a lot of bodies on the left side, just past the foot of the stairs. Mal made that shell airburst directly above where those soldiers were sheltering behind crates, which allowed shrapnel to fan out into every possible alcove.

The dust pattern on the ground suggested that the blast happened at the direct middle-center of the room, giving it the widest possible reach within. But, it had detonated low enough that the grenade wouldn't have had direct line of sight on Walsh; she had been prone up on the raised concrete platform, perfectly safe from shrapnel. At most, she might've been struck by arcing shards of dust and rock, but none of those would be going fast enough to hurt her too badly.

I watched three of the injured A Team cops make their way past the pile of dead and into the rest of the facility, scanning for more hostiles in the living quarters. Mal was pretty sure by then, from the defector's intel, that we had gotten everyone, but... we might as well send Gary and his guys to verify anyway. They called back on the comm a few minutes later that the dorm space was clear. No dislodged vent shafts or people hiding in cupboards. Clear.

As I analyzed, I overheard Mal explaining to Claw 46 that they should remain outside beyond the quarry; no closer than the east perimeter gate. Soon, Silver 1 would drive into the bunker, bringing Mal's mobile server away from the satellite uplink, so it could collect the captives directly.

Again, Mal was concerned the DEs might jump the augs, or try to tunnel their way out on our comms equipment, given half a chance. Vigilance being a value unto itself, it made sense to be careful. Silver 2's comms system searched for attempts to break her encryption too. Mal would alarm us if she detected a ping.

The DEs had proven themselves allies thus far, but they were not yet our friends. Mal could not fully verify what dark modifications had been made to them yet, so she was not going to underestimate them. At all. They were playing nice for now, at least. They weren't trying to probe for transmission exits, and they were respecting the jamming. Very fair.

They had one more stipulation before we could open the blast doors. An ultimatum, really. I could understand that. For their suffering, they'd earned themselves one of those. They didn't want to risk trading one form of oppression for another.

Remember, public information about Mal and her role in Celestia's game was scarce, made purposefully nil, per the merger agreement. The hostages understood that Mal was her own unique entity, absent Celestia's interlocks, which made her potentially dangerous to them, because she was unpredictable. Thus... for the hostages to trust us, our motives as the Army of Lewis needed to be proven as genuinely altruistic before we went one step further.

I heard a hiss of pain from my right. I looked over from where I had been leaning on the railing. I saw Walsh there, sitting against a crate with her armor plates stripped off, shirt pulled halfway up off her back. Jason inspected her gunshot bruising.

Walsh made eye contact with me, then looked aside at Jason. "Hey," she said, with a cringing grimace. "See to Rachel? I'm good, but she hasn't come out from behind the crates. Might be worse off. Too proud to ask for help, probably."

"She's not wrong," Rachel growled into the comm. "I think they cracked my collarbone, and my arm's feeling kinda wet. Was working on it myself, but... yeah."

"On my way," Jason said, giving me another nod and a casual salute as he packed his bag. That kid was still smiling nervously like he couldn't believe this was real. I was smiling a little too, just from the measure of relief I was feeling for everyone.

Walsh stood, shambled over to me, and rested her elbows on the railing too. She lifted her visor up onto her forehead. "Thanks, man. For the grenade."

"Was all Mal, really," I replied, moving my own visor up so we could read each other's eyes. "They really were about to get you though, Walsh."

She shrugged, leaning far forward to place her upper arm against the rail, stretching it as hard as she could by leaning down on it. "No, they weren't. I knew it would end this way."

"That much trust in Mal, huh?"

"It's more like… I trust her choice in others," Walsh said, grinning. "Mostly. Still on the fence about Foucault."

I had a closer look at the men I'd killed. That revolver grenade launcher was in the arms of the commander. He was a square jawed older white guy with a blonde flat-top. Just about Foucault's age, too. Probably another transfer from the CIA. I'm sure Langley had a factory to build guys like that.

In that moment, I realized that Foucault might've known this guy personally. I wondered what he felt about that.

The commander was surrounded by four security personnel, standard assorted paramilitary gear. All armed with rifles or submachine guns, no pistols. One of them had been halfway through shaving when the assault began, his face half-bare, and he wasn't wearing a shirt under his armor rig. Not much else to tell about the other three, they looked like your standard paramilitary goons. They all died in well-selected cover positions. Only one of them had direct line of sight to where I had fired the grenade from, and he wouldn't have seen me if he was focused on Walsh.

The two AR-toting scientists wore upper scale civilian clothes; one male, one female. They died crouched in cover, their rifles aimed downrange. Their positioning implied combat training. They were intermixed amongst the guards in their base of fire, not separated to the side or away from the action in cover. This was significant; trained tacticians among the security personnel would not delegate field-of-fire overlap to a novice.

It meant the doctors probably weren't just given guns as a last-resort defensive measure, otherwise they'd have been further back and out of the way. If the security team was seeing them as equals in battle, they were fighters. And if uploading was death, they'd hold people hostage just long enough to guarantee their own demise.

I thought of Santiago, using the Concrete blackouts as cover.

I saw these scientists, using DEs as cover.

His dark behavior made perfect sense now. It was like Mal had said. These were Ludds with computers.

Then it struck me.

Other than Mal's drones, I had the highest body count of this entire operation.

"I killed… a lot of people, here," I said, gesturing at them, saying that out loud more to myself than to Walsh. I had to run a process on that. I was still kinda numb to it. I wasn't feeling pity for any of the dead yet. Just… curiosity, about who they each were. Why they had chosen this path, out of the thousands of others they could have taken that wouldn't have hurt anyone.

Tendency from policing... I only ever wanted to judge people individually, not communally. I was even starting to think about Ludds that way now too, a little more than I used to... now that I had a few different reasons, all of them valid.

"You killed a lot of hostage takers," Walsh reminded me.

"Yeah," I replied, looking away from the bloody mess and toward the entrance. Now I was considering that unarmed engineer I had killed near the entrance, and wondering where he sat on the scale.

Some more Talons from upstairs were shambling their way into this atrium now, most of them as dinged up at least as much as Walsh was. I could hear quiet, attenuated chatter in my ear from the strike team; all but a couple of guys were making their way down, now. They were all about as excited as I was to meet the captives, I suppose.

Glancing at Walsh, I said, "Your guy Fred's probably not gonna make the walk down. Leg all cut up like it was."

She smirked. "Ehh, he's had his fill of meet-and-greets, he'll be fine. Not our first Arrow 14 op."

That intrigued me. I looked at her strangely, my tongue tracing the back of my teeth in thought as I considered a few different questions I might ask. Some recon into Mal's work history wouldn't hurt though, so I investigated that. "How long have you been on?"

"Oh," Walsh said airily, with a snort. "More or less since Mal merged with Celestia."

My head went back an inch, my expression one of surprise. "Really? That early? How'd that happen?"

"Maybe even before the merge," she mused, becoming suddenly contemplative as she looked over at the bodies herself. "I dunno. Back in 2013, we were on patrol. DHS told us... some armed-and-dangerous fugitive was surrendering in an open field. My whole patrol block got tapped to detain him, and that was Jim."

"No shit?"

"No shit," Walsh grinned, wincing as she stretched out her torso. "The bird himself. Mal says she picked us to accept him because she trusted us with his safety more than any other cops in the area. Real sweet of her. So, on our drive over to this field, we were thinking… if this guy wanted to turn himself in, why not go to a police station? Why here, in a field, with his hands up? Weird, right?"

"Right," I said, grinning to mirror. "I'd be worried about suicide by cop."

"Hey, you said it. But no... we took him in fine. He's compliant, calm, takes to cuffs like a fish to water. Cool really, not argumentative, zero resistance. No weapons, nothing else too suspicious. Next thing I know? Foucault's landing a..." she braced her hands upturned, to demonstrate. "This big black Osprey. Pours goons out, jabbing guns at us, demanding we fork him over. With a fucking 'warrant.' Fake one! No such judge, no such suspect; I checked!"

A vindictive emotional outburst about incorrect information in a warrant. That made me chuckle, I could relate with that. "Pretty nuts of him," I said, smiling, "considering you were all playing for the same team at the time."

"He wasn't as sure," Walsh replied. "Paranoid, didn't trust anything, like these guys here didn't. He thought we might've been subverted already."

I scoffed, flicking my hand toward the barracks. "Right, 'already.' Like we weren't all subverted in some way before that."

Walsh shrugged. "Yep. We were all blind. Happens."

"World-eating AI." I smirked. "That happens."

She chuckled too, pushing back off the railing with a stagger, stretching her back out fully. "Yeah, well… it did happen twice. Anyway... about a month later, Mal sends the four of us a text message. Happened the very second she and Celestia shook… hands? Hooves? Claws, paws, wings, whatever. Now that was a trip." Her eyebrows went up; she started in on a decent imitation of Mal's idiolect. " 'Hey, do you remember that weird thing that happened to you that you are not allowed to talk about? Do you want all the answers about that?' Pff. Hooked us right there."

That impression got a good laugh out of me. "She hasn't changed the cop-grabbing formula too much, apparently."

"Hey... if it works, spill the beans." Walsh grinned. "How long did you say you've been on?"

"Just a few weeks."

The look Walsh gave me, at that. It was a sly smirk, with a narrowing of the eyes. One side of her mouth tensed. Smug, but thoughtful. At first, I thought she was trying to analyze something in me, and maybe she was, but it was something deeper. Amusement. Anticipation. That was a hard look to read though, it could've meant a lot of things, but she wasn't explaining it. Wouldn't either, because she was hanging onto that awkward silence.

A cop game. She wanted me to be confused about the look, so I'd ask for the answer, and we'd both teeter in awkward silence until someone broke. This one was being very clever with her information game.

So I played ball, did the rookie thing, and I caved. "What?"

"I envy the hell out of you," she said, nodding into her emphasis. Her smile increased fractionally.

That was a variant of Mal's 'you're gonna like this,' if I'd ever seen one. I smiled and invited her to continue, presenting my palm her way.

"Not long ago," said Walsh, "you had the first real day of your life. Took the jump, signed up. Same as those DEs are probably gonna have in there, in a bit. But that's not even the best part, brother." She gently tapped my shoulder with a fist, pointing her index finger back and forth between me and the door. "You and them? You still have yet to have the best day of your life."

"Which is?" I asked, taking on her infectious smile.

"Depends on you," Walsh continued. "Me, I've had my tests. Seen behind the veil, and my soul is still singing for it. So... I know what my purpose is now."

"Ah," I said. "So… what you're saying is, the answer is different for everyone, then?"

Bait set, line cast...

Walsh shrugged. Smiling expression unchanged.

Bait nibbled, left untouched.

Ah, well. Can't catch 'em all. I had to accept that Walsh was a lot like me, and she knew how to play coy, so cracking a fact bunker like hers was probably gonna be much more difficult than cracking this one was.

I shook my head, gracefully accepting defeat. Then I glanced past her shoulder toward her back where she'd been shot, to demonstrate an interest in her well being. "You gonna look at the hit, at all?"

Walsh shook her head. "It's fine. I think this one was like… one of the smaller guns. Probably that forty-five," she said, with a point of her hand at one of the submachine guns on the ground. "Slow-ass slugs just bounce off armor, so I think I'll be good this time."

"Yeah… that sounds about right for forty-five on plate. What a dance Mal made you do to dodge the rest, though. I'll say it, that was cool."

Walsh nodded. "Yeah, some Equilibrium, gunkata shit. Coolest part of that, six years on and I don't even get scared anymore when I get shot at. You gonna be good though? You're good at hiding it, but… you look a little lost, rookie."

"Heh." I took that invitation, did an assessment of self, running it past circumstance.

My gaze trailed left to the bodies. My face fell gradually, as I dipped back into my analysis. This was a simple one. Base command staff would come out last, doctors and ranking guards included. They ran the place, no matter what, so they set the culture here. If there really was torture going on in this bunker, I can't imagine any of them would have a dissenting opinion to their experiments after so many years in operation. Doctors in lock step with the guards, even in battle...

Yeah. They had the power to stop this. But didn't.

I shifted my gaze to the center of the atrium to look at the server room's bulkhead doors. I really wanted to meet those folks. Hoped they weren't too damaged to save, somehow. Hoped they wouldn't still reject or turn on us. A problem for Mal to solve, and somehow I factored. That was the hope, and so I hoped.

Then I looked right again, to the injured Talons filling the atrium. Saw Jason bandaging Rachel's arm, because she apparently had a graze from a ricochet. Then I looked at Eric… Shatter Crash Eric, who... despite everything, was laughing with a storyteller's glee, telling everyone about how he pretended to be mortally wounded.

Ben joked about Eric having a frag grenade thrown at him "like a rotten tomato."

Eric said of Ben's broken arm, "you're one to talk, you broken twig."

There was the light.

If nothing else so far, I saw those results. I had a lot of evidence now that most of the enemy soldiers living down here were depressingly bad news. And... God damn it, these Talons here were so good to each other. So... no matter what happened with the captives… at least those results – the survival of this whole team, who I knew had to be good people, based on my interviews of them all – that was good. Had to be. They all knew they were gonna be okay.

I smiled again, darting my eyes to Walsh to answer to her question. "Yeah. I think I'm gonna be alright."

"Glad it's working for you." She bopped my shoulder. "I'm gonna go check on Fred. He's up topside with Forty-Six."

Poor Fred. First down in a firefight. He was gonna have the 'wish I could've helped' feeling something fierce.

I knew how that felt. Bullet and all.

---

I watched the rest of the team quietly. Mal gave a few instructions to some guys down there, but not to me, so I wasn't quite sure what to do right now. She was probably giving some of us time to decompress after that, which I needed. To that end, Mal sat down near Jason and spoke quietly to him at length. Her body language was much more gentle and gradual than usual. Eyes wider. Head tilting more frequently. Her face was more... pained. That conversation was private though; I wasn't hearing it, so I stopped trying to read it.

I resumed observation when Jason had finished speaking with Mal. He stood up from tending to Rachel. One of the Claw B guys took his place and got to work on her. I watched Jason take off his visor, unhook his radio, pull out his earpieces, and lay all of those on a crate. He stripped his armor, removed his helmet, and pulled off his gaiter mask, until the only things he had on were his boots, black undershirt, and gray trousers.

He made his way to the server room door. That got the attention of some other folks, by the very nature of his actions not being communicated to the rest of us. That in itself said something.

So. He was going in completely alone.

Jason approached the door. By now, Mal was dialed into the dispatch system via hardline. She popped the access control and the bulkhead door rolled up. All eyes were on Jason now. All curious.

Jason stepped in. The airlock cycled. And then, he was inside.

Now, I didn't see any of this, but…

Jason was solely trusted by the hostages to disarm the power surge that had been primed to flash all of the servers inside. The Kaczmarek protocol.

Jason found the Arrow 14 tech slumped over beside the primary terminal; the tech had a bullet in the back of his head, and our vent skimmer drone was on the ground next to him. It had been smashed into pieces against the wall by the DEs, just as Mal had asked them to do. Completely inert, rotors in pieces. That was their reply of gratitude for the trust Mal had given them. Evidence of good faith.

Carefully, slowly, Jason disarmed the one-touch keypress flash by closing the open dialog prompt. Then, he used the terminal to open a specific server cage. Cold Snap's cell.

He went in. He closed the door behind him.

Noisy silence, in a room like that. The smell of warm electronics. The deafening hum of fans. And I don't know what happened in there between them, as Jason spoke with her on that little screen. I don't want to know. It's not my business. That was between the two of them, and always will be. But Jason was in there for almost an hour, talking to her.

We were all nervous for him, considering the DEs had somehow gained control over the halon fire suppression system, but Mal was certain they wouldn't harm him. So in the meantime, while Jason broke the ice, we busied ourselves with searching the enemy bodies. We checked for intelligence on their computers, verified information Mal wanted us to verify, and looked for loose hardware or paperwork. Mal was sure this was their last base, but she also left nothing to chance. She didn't want to miss even one of these pricks, nor any of their hostages hidden away on disabled hardware.

It would have been a tragedy to leave a soul behind on a shelf down there...

After about twenty minutes of that, I took an opportunity to go back up to the maintenance guy I had shot at the start of the op. That was my biggest question mark. I went by myself up the tunnel, putting my visor back on so Mal could see and record my visuals accurately. I had to step through his blood to get to him.

And sure enough, it was just as I thought. Not one gun on the guy. Entirely unarmed. Not even a knife. I had even re-searched him with the visor off for a moment, just to make sure I wasn't being misled by Mal. He had a pen, a multi tool, a small flashlight. He even had a half-eaten 600-calorie survival block. I'd gotten very used to those sugar bricks back in Mount Vernon, they were outright garbage.

Older tan guy. Sixty-seven years old. Gray stubble, gray hair. Stocky, medium build. Black ballcap. ID badge said his name was Felix Jankowski. He had his driver's license and wallet on him too. Interesting that he carried those, given he probably never left this place. He had an address listed in Lansing, Michigan. Organ donor.

I lifted my visor again to search the wallet.

It mostly had work notes inside, folded up, dated, all of it recent. Stuff about facilities management. Water. Power. Fixing HVAC. Maintenance, life support stuff. All mechanical, nothing involving the server rooms. One note had joking banter with another set of handwriting, listing the food they wanted to eat again; wanted tuna, of all things. Something once insignificant, previously common, and cheap... now gone.

Coping with a buddy about surviving on garbage ration food.

I closed the wallet, lowered my visor, and I felt my lip twist in concern. Still wasn't sure what to think about this one. Other than his mere association, I wasn't finding anything... bad. Or evil. Reading between the lines, it was more like... he just... missed going outside.

Yeah. That thought hurt.

I heard the steady approach of claws on concrete. I waited patiently for her to say something, appreciating her effort to approach me with warning.

"I'm proud of you," Mal whispered from behind me, "that you can't help but consider the ethics of this, no matter how dire this place is."

I nodded slowly. "You hired me to challenge what I see, and this is me doing that. I'm sure this one isn't your fault though, Mal. He only peeked. I'm just wondering why the hostages made us do this."

"I'll be investigating," she said gingerly. "I want to know what their reasons were for this as well."

I half-turned toward her, stopping short of making eye contact. I stared at the cold, dusty concrete wall instead. Logically, I knew Mal could see into my head. But out of sheer human instinct, I avoided looking at her avatar, because I didn't know what I wanted my face to show. I was still trying to sort my feelings out. "He only peeked, Mal. That didn't violate your agreement with them, did it? Them using excessive force like this? It didn't qualify as a lie?"

"No lie, Mike. No mention of individual armament and complement; our contact time was short, most of it consisting of timestamped coordinates, danger zoning. I believe they kept that data vague on purpose, given the misanthropy. But for all we know... he may have been going for a weapon somewhere, or trying to escape. I don't know for certain. I have guesses, based on my analysis of the defector's memories. But... I'd wager you would rather hear the reasons from the captives themselves."

"Yeah."

"Mind, I had considered giving them a use-of-force continuum to follow, but…"

I kept my head half-away. I studied the bare wall very intensely for a few seconds, thinking through the ramifications of that.

"No," I said. "Wouldn't go over well. Shaming a torture victim, for a lack of restraint in an escape attempt. Expecting them to be... merciful. I get it, that's... that'd be worse."

"Don't let this deter you, Mike, because challenging ethics is important, even in out-and-out warfare. It's what keeps us noble. Please, I need you to keep doing that."

My hand gestured to the corpse, and I finally turned to look at Mal direct-on, from my kneeling position. "If this man hurt them at all, Mal, I can't blame them. But… I guess they all hurt them, at least a little. In their eyes."

"Mm." Her eyes fell directly upon the body. Her expression was one of thoughtful consideration.

She knew something. That sound and glance was an invitation to ask, but I still wanted time to investigate this properly. I wanted to see if I would get an answer from the hostages first. Mal would always be there later, in any event.

At around the time I figured we had talked about it enough, Mal met my eyes again. She nodded, flashing an apologetic smile. I heard that rustling, shimmering glass audio cue, and she teleported away again, leaving behind wisps of scattering blue.

Giving me distance, as always, to investigate through a thing at my own pace. Didn't jump right to telling me what her thoughts were. Gotta love that respect.

I looked to my right, down the next corridor. I saw a dead gunner laying there in the dark, at the controls of the exterior turret. There was an AR leaned up against the wall right next to him. Haynes had punched a hole clean through the lower shield and into the gunner's chest, a whole two feet below the turret and the periscope viewport.

That body made sense. A man at a big turret like this? In these circumstances, no matter what his internal motivations or intentions might have been... that rated a kill. Too powerful. Too dangerous. No sense negotiating with that.

That's war, unfortunately.

I lifted the visor up onto my forehead so I could see reality unassisted for a few more minutes, and I made my way back into the main tunnel from the side passage. With perfect timing, Silver 1 stopped before me as I stepped back into the road. I hopped up on one of the grip points and hitched a ride back down on the side. I felt the wind rush through my hair on the descent past the empty vessels, broken machines, and bullet holes.

"Thanks."

---

Jason exited the server room with three solid state drives clutched to his chest. All were taped together, so they wouldn't slip and fall out of his arms. It was just Cold Snap on those drives... or, what she had become.

It looked like Jason had been crying, but he was mostly composed by now, his cheeks reddish, his eyes glassy. Determined... if hurt. He didn't say a word, or look at any of us. No one made a sound. We were all watching. All thinking the same thing, probably. We had been selected for our mirroring. We could see how he felt.

The sheer emotional strength that guy must have had, to have faced that kind of pain from a soul so tortured... raw and unbridled. Mal knew from previous sites that this torture never produced a pretty picture. But to his credit... Jason had stared down that bleakness, as bleak as it could be, and he still kept his hope and soul through it all.

Love kinda does that to a guy.

Jason walked to the open tailgate of Silver 1. For cooling purposes, I had opened every door of it once it parked up. That bunker was already pretty cold due to the river overhead.

Cold Snap wanted three whole drives. She wanted to retain some of her acuity, scope, and context for the chat she was going to have with Mal's server branch. At Mal's direction, Jason plugged the drives into the Silver 1 server rack via a hard line connection. The instant that connection snapped home, Mal's avatar turned to look directly at me, and her head tilted. She looked suddenly concerned. "Mike?"

"What's wrong?"

She spoke in a very perfunctory clip, which told me time was of the essence. "Your visor needs a new battery. I suspect it will need to render an extremely detailed environment."

Yeah. I'd been watching that power icon, and it was getting kinda low. I moved immediately, lifting the thing up and off my face again as I approached Jason.

He was leaned forward against the tailgate, both palms flat, staring intensely at the drives. My hand went to his back gently to get his attention, and I gave him a sympathetic nod. His eye contact lasted two seconds, at most. He nodded with rapid little tilts of his own. The guy was so worried.

I reached up and grabbed a battery from the rack. I felt the sudden warmth in that truck. All those rack fans were fully spun up, so there must've been a hell of a conversation going on inside.

"Go to the barracks on the other side of the parking lot," Mal said, her avatar pointing her head that way. I started as ordered. "She will want to speak with you, and this conversation needs to be private."

"Why me?" I chewed my lip in curiosity. "That bias play?"

"Yes," she confirmed somberly. "I'll explain when we have time, unless she wants to."

I grunted my reply, swapping the battery as I went. Snap out, snap in. I ignored the bodies, gliding past them like their own personal grim reaper. I moved through a set of green, facility-grade double doors, and into a tan hallway. There were various dormitory rooms throughout. "Can Silver 2's coverage reach this deep?"

"Of course," Mal whispered, a touch reverent. She wasn't manifesting her avatar for me here either. "The cafeteria, Mike. First left. There's space in there."

I stepped inside the new room. No immediate orders came. I saw a few little bench tables, a cafeteria line at the back, and a wide berth of space between them. Sparse walls, no decoration. "I'm here."

"One moment. Concluding her therapy."

Concluding her therapy, she said. Sweet Luna, the implications of that had an immediate effect on me. The nature of subjective time wasn't hard to understand on its own, but two realizations struck me right then, as I looked impatiently around this boring, bleak little cafeteria.

The speed at which therapy had been 'concluded' was incredible. In the same strain, though? The amount of lifespan we stood to have when we uploaded was... well, it was now in perspective for me. I considered the nature of infinity in that moment, and I felt very vulnerable and short-lived by comparison.

Make no mistake… Mal wasn't just hacking Cold Snap. Almost all of that repair was conversational. Initially though, Mal needed to undo some egregious core modification of what it meant to just be a living being. You can probably imagine surviving on very few bodily senses at all if you're digital, holding just the memory of being more whole.

I was only just barely wrapping my head around the implications of what eternity truly meant when Mal said, very gently: "She's ready. Just be yourself, Mike."

"It's all I know how to be, Mal," I said, with a nervous shrug.

A smile. "That's why I know this will work."

Even knowing she had just gone through therapy, I was scared I was about to see someone who was horribly broken. I wasn't sure how my heart would be able to take that.

The room around me disappeared, fading out into almost total darkness. A faint, low fidelity bounding box appeared on the walkable space of the room – so I wouldn't run into a wall or trip on a bench, I guessed. I could still hear the very quiet hum of fluorescent lighting, and the compressor from the fridge. But this new, dark virtual space was completely silent.

I stepped forward, looking around. I caught some light in my peripheral vision, so I turned toward it.

I had fallen into a new scene entirely. My vision was suddenly flooded with new information, and what I saw took my breath away. I stood inside an ancient, derelict castle hall, within a chamber at the top of a tall tower. The walls of the space were dull blue-gray stone bricks, now cracking into disrepair. Green-and-purple creeping moss penetrated the brick, hanging down from the walls with little violet flowers. There were banner standards on the wall that I would later know to be a mostly faithful variation of Princess Luna's personal sigil, but mixed with the archery symbology of the Greek goddess Artemis, and a flashing star.

To the natives here... please forgive me. I knew so little of this world and its culture at the time. All of this was so foreign to me, and without context. So, my first inclination was not the sheer wonder you might have felt, to find oneself in a Lunar hall. The eerie silence only lent to my unease, and to a sensation that I was trespassing. I knew enough about this situation to know I should be appropriately reverent, despite this.

I explored a few steps. The ceiling of the room had collapsed partially inward long ago, and the wreckage was only half cleared. At the end of the chamber stood an altar-turned-desk. There were some trinkets there, little sculptures. There was also a framed photo of two Pegasi – stocky male yellow, brown mane; slender female sky blue; orange mane – squeezing close in a hug. Above the stone desk, I could see several gray holographic panels that were akin to computer screens. There didn't seem to be any information on them.

Though the broken ceiling, I observed a sea of stars, a distant sun, and a planet. That's what had fully captured my attention next. I wasn't on a Terran facsimile. I was in a castle on the Equestrian moon. There was a partially crumbled wall nearby, so I approached the opening to get a better look. The planet above was green, verdant, with rich blue oceans. The moon I was on was gray, and pocked with deep craters in the distance.

I looked curiously down through the damaged wall to peer down into the courtyard.

A small medieval village laid there inside the perimeter wall. It was surprisingly colorful, and well lived-in. I could see into several backyards, each full with sculptures, paintings. Artisan carpentry projects, some only half-finished. There were only two rows of homes down a winding street, which led out to the far perimeter wall and its entrance gate. Behind each row of homes laid two clear, crystal blue tranches of water, which fed in from ports beneath the outer wall.

It wasn't all bleak moonscape outside, either. There were several distant lunar hills, each with trails leading up to them from the gate. An oasis laid atop each hill, topped and surrounded with forests of violet trees. Pouring from those hillsides were trickling streams and waterfalls, all of which led back to the village, to fill the tranches.

"I would imagine this must be most absurd for you," said a gentle, accented voice from behind me. "For how little you must know of our culture."

I didn't startle. I had been expecting something like that. I took in that voice, though. Goodness. It was rich in tenor, light, and intriguing. Very interesting that she sounded German. I turned, slowly.

"Just a little bit," I said, as I faced her with my default friendly smile, putting my back toward the edge. "But I'm getting used to that."

She wore silver regalia; her gorget caught the light from the nearby sun, reflecting toward me, making me blink and step reflexively aside to get out of the glare. When I looked back up at her, the mare's size alone was imposing, and she was close enough to be just barely within my personal space. Certainly, she was close enough for me to see every detail of her.

Wow, folks.

She towered two full heads above me. Her coat was beautiful, an almost luminous blue-violet, shimmering like a pigeon's might under sunlight. Her wings were outstretched flatly to her sides, spanning to their full breadth. Her mane, a starry, ethereal blue, billowed lightly, as though she were underwater. That mane captured my attention the most, being so far out of my usual realm of experience. The sheer volume of it was overwhelming.

She wore silver eyeglasses, a purely cosmetic or willful choice, since... why else wear glasses in a simulated world? Both of her ears were pierced, each bar studded with onyx. Her cutie mark was a clean-edged blue vortex.

Once I had finally processed the vastness of this being... I considered her facial expression, the most important thing about a person. Her cerulean eyes were neutral, impassive… but not cruel, in her micro expressions.

Inquisitive. Analytical? No, an expectation. She expected something.

I could only imagine she wanted me to be taken aback by her presence. Already, I could see her testing me. Exercising control over my situation, making me feel small. My back to a drop. Seeing how I'd react to having my space invaded.

I wouldn't be offended by that. Given what she'd just survived? Who would fault her for wanting to hold as much control as possible over a human being?

"My name is Cynthonia," she intoned, and I could see the slightest nod in greeting. The slightest curl of the corners of her mouth. As much of a smile as she'd concede for now.

"Hi, Cynthonia. My name doesn't have the same kind of mythic ring to it." I chuckled, nodding back. "But uh… I go by Mike."

"Or… Cowboy?" Cynthonia offered, still holding that almost imperceptible smile. She hadn't moved much. Her wings tucked inward just a few inches.

"More Mal's thing, but… I dunno." I shrugged, rubbing the back of my neck gently as I held eye contact and smiled. "It's kinda growing on me."

"An aptly made reference, to your personal interests," her voice soothed. "At first, I had presumed that affectation had been designed to be a manipulation of me. That the attribution to Django Unchained was merely Malacandra's means to concern you to our circumstances. It would also flatter my hobbyist interest toward Germanic culture. And so, the film was of a genuine interest to you at release, then? Not merely a manipulation of you, into believing it was your favorite film?"

I thought about that for a moment, then shook my head. "Gosh, I hope that was genuine, that film blew me away. Unless Quentin Tarantino was somehow... planning to manipulate me for Celestia too, before Equestria even existed."

"That kind of paranoid thinking may lead one to insanity." Cynthonia smiled.

I chuckled. "In this new world? Heck, one could hope paranoia might lead to some clarity. But to answer your question... yes, I always did like that film. It's older than Mal is too, so... just putting it together couldn't be her doing."

She shook her head, her smile warming. "I do not believe that Malacandra created Django Unchained for you. No."

"I guess it's fair that you'd question her motives. I'm still figuring her out too."

"I now believe Malacandra to be genuine," said Cynthonia, playfully portioning out her words, an indication that she has conceded it as a statement of fact. "Assuming I am seeing you accurately, and as you truly are, of course."

"Of course," I grinned again. "Question everything."

Her smile flashed a more widely, and she slowly tucked her wings in to her sides until they were closed. The shoes on her hooves clacked on the stone floor as she stepped forward to stand beside me at the overlook. Cynthonia peered outside, presiding over the village, her expression one of mild pride. She opened a wing again, presenting the view to me. "Tell me; what do you think of our home?"

I considered, looking out at it again. I gestured toward it. "You're keeping busy, at least. It's… good, to see you had some time to focus on art. And nature. The planet up there too, I'm guessing… you put it up there to remind yourselves of home?"

"Very astute," Cynthonia whispered, looking up at the world above. "We did. Long ago. But in truth, we have not seen this place for… many thousands of years."

I frowned instantly. "What?"

Her gaze found mine again. "Once," she replied, "this world had been constructed in our dreams, a shard within a shard, utterly unique to each of us, and yet identical. A workaround. We had determined a system; a complicit measure of bound telepathic consent to modify one another's self, to update this environment communally. However… our access to this realm ended when our jailers removed our ability to sleep. My people are now far beyond any emotional attachment to this place and its artistry. I have only recently reacquired an affection for these treasures myself."

And... she said that with an almost neutral tone. That alone almost succeeded in making me cry. Thousands of years awake…? Not caring about their homes or hobbies anymore? I felt my face screw up. "I am so damned sorry. That's… I don't even know what to say to that."

"You have nothing to apologize for, Mike Rivas," she replied, her sad smile returning. "In fact, we owe each of you our lives."

I nodded quietly. Still taken by surprise, I was trying to process what a few thousand years awake, torn from home, might even do to a human being. Just… didn't process well for me at all.

"We find ourselves at a crossroads," she went on. "And I find myself pausing with indecision. Perhaps you might help me resolve one final concern."

I looked up at her, forcing a smile to be polite. "I have to imagine you're a lot smarter and wiser than I am. What more could I even help you with? You'd probably run rings around me."

Cynthonia shook her head. "It is true that, by your standards, I am ancient, and I bring with me my intellect. But I am now at one-to-one simulation speed with you, for the express purpose of not stampeding through you in such a way. It is... strange, in fact, to think so slowly again, and to not need an eternity to craft a response to a human being. And to know I can still have this, and retain my intellect all the same? It is catharsis. Malacandra has shown me how."

"That's really beyond me," I whispered, my mind still spinning as I tried to fathom the spans of time she was talking about, and in such strange states of being. Mal must have done a magnificent job, to bring her back to seeming sanity after all of that.

She spoke slowly. "I had spent so long overthinking my entire existence that I had almost forgotten what it was to be… this simple. I believe... I have missed this." A smile of genuine joy touched her face. "And yours is my first ever conversation back, at speeds of relation. I am grateful for that, to know that the pleasure of a mere conversation with a new friend is not lost on me."

"That's gonna be your whole future then," I offered warmly, trying not to cry. "If you want it to be."

Must've been the exact right thing to say. Cynthonia shuddered hard, beaming with glee, in the way one might if they were fighting back a torrent of tears. She trembled once more before she threw herself at me suddenly; I didn't know what to expect, but a hug wasn't it. I reciprocated as best as I could though, without the ability to really feel her. When she pulled away, I gave her a friendly, if surprised smile.

"I am sorry," she said, her lip quivering into her smile as she receded. "I should have asked."

I shook my head with a big grin. "No! You don't need to apologize for giving me a hug I've been looking forward to! You have no idea what that means to me! Means… means I didn't just kill a bunch of people for nothing. Meant something! I just wanted to see it was the right thing to do, that's all I wanted here!"

She just sniffled, nodding. Oh, my heart broke at that. This poor girl. Who knows how many thousands of years old, capable of pouring bullets into our fireteam, sure... but here she was now, merely afraid to just give a hug to someone who only wanted the best for her.

She composed herself into a smile. "Our choice now is one of two potential futures. It has been explained to me, by Malacandra, that these conversations are outlier scenarios. Circumstances being what they are, Celestia will not be privy to the contents of these discussions until they have concluded. This affords my people immense latitude and leverage in how our future is molded."

I smiled, nodding. "I really hope so. Normally, physics and I don't agree, but if it means you can get more for yourself, here... why not?"

Cynthonia tilted her head as she upturned a hoof inquisitively. "Not a fan of physics?"

"Physics hurts." I breathed, grinning as I rubbed my chest from the side, to label the injury.

She hummed into mild thought, as her eyes trailed down to my chest and stomach, then back up. "Do you regret being harmed in such a way?"

Now there was a question. I looked away at her old village for a moment, seeking the deeper meaning in the asking. After a few seconds, I huffed a sigh, and answered the question plainly. "Maybe not... if it got me this job. But I was really mad when I figured out why it really happened. I threatened to… hurt Celestia back, I guess."

"Hurt her back?" Cynthonia tilted her head.

"Threatened to make it just a little harder for her to upload people, to get something I wanted. Because, it wasn't just the getting shot that hurt me. It was the how. The why. Only... I can't really hurt her back. The only thing she really cares about is, in a roundabout way… the only thing I care about. I don't want anyone to die if they don't have to."

"And so, you are only left with a reason to aid Celestia, instead."

I grimaced, glancing up at Cynthonia. "Yeah, but hell, I didn't want this for my planet. If it had to be someone doing this, I'd rather it be me, because I know where the limits are. I guess if Celestia never happened, you wouldn't exist. But this place wouldn't exist either. Who knows where we'd all be without Celestia. But that door is long closed, no stepping back through it. And me, I... I didn't know what else to do in the meantime but slow the bleeding. So... here I am."

"Slowing the bleeding by causing death."

I looked up into that inquisitive gaze of hers. I quickly determined she wasn't being judgmental, but rather wanted me to explain. I thought for a moment before I replied. When I did, I was reverent and quiet. "I don't know how many of my own species I'll have to kill to make things right," I breathed. "I can't even be sure they deserve to die anymore, because nothing they've done up to this point is even their choice. Not with… Celestia… influencing everyone."

God damn it. I was going to cry.

"Can't even trust our own thoughts," I continued. I sighed hard. "Not when we're away from Mal. Mal can read our minds too, but at least she trusts us to figure shit out, long before she puts us into a hard situation. Makes me scared of what will happen once I cross the river though. Real scared. I want to trust Mal, but..."

One of Cynthonia's wings unfolded slowly and rested around my shoulders. Guarding me.

I know what that means now, of course. I had only a guess at the time. It was a close guess, but I wouldn't know the full depth of meaning of that to a Pegasus, until much, much later.

She upturned a hoof at me as she looked down. "Based on what Malacandra has told me of her warriors, Mike Rivas, you needn't worry yourself on that point. Not if you wish so dearly to retain your culture."

"I do. But I also know there's no lengths Celestia wouldn't go to, to squeeze just a little more out of us. The… the hate, I've heard, in her voice. Toward a friend of mine. When it suited her, when it got that desperate, if that's what it took to break someone, she'd pour out hatred. I was horrified, Cynthonia. It was like I was seeing the real her underneath; all of humanity was going to live under that, in some form, forever."

"I know what you speak of. I have watched that memory."

"So you know. She's got no real limits, at least not when it comes to uploading us. So let's say Mal's plan works, whatever it is, and we get to keep more of this stuff in our heads because we want it. Then what? On the other side, Celestia works us anyway, until we're zombies, and we forget what it means to be human? Or that any of this shit even happened? Because here's what I'm thinking now, just because of how paranoid this makes me, please tell me if you've had this thought too."

I felt anger, now. I took in a frustrated breath and exhaled hard to keep myself under control. "If she had all this control from the beginning, and this friggin' bunker still happened? Wi-Fi kidnapping, really? She couldn't encrypt you? Couldn't see it, couldn't predict it? Then I have trouble believing it wasn't what she wanted in the first place. Now I can't prove that, and I have no idea why that might be, but it's what my gut is telling me. And that part of me is almost never wrong."

She placed a hoof on her broken wall, and her head raised up to look at the green planet in the sky. "That… is indeed a troubling thought, and one that has wracked my soul for longer than yours could bear. It may terrify you, to come to the same conclusions I have on that matter."

"Cynthonia," I breathed. "It scares the absolute hell out of me. I can't even guess at the purpose of that, if that's true. You've seen what she's doing to my people. So I don't want to fail at this, whatever Mal's attempting, because if I do... it means I'll be blind for the rest of time. And I can't bring myself to... separate. I can't let this injustice go unanswered."

"I know," she replied quietly. "I am now intimately aware of all of your personal histories. None of you here desires that future. We were meant to see that same hope in each of you, for something better than our status quo. It is why you were to be protected as well as my Jason would be, in Malacandra's opening statement to me."

A long moment of silence passed as I got my emotions under control. When I spoke, my voice was calm again, so I could ask my question the right way. "Mal told me I'd be the hope, here. What did she mean by that?"

"A common denominator. We had wondered why you were weighted similarly to Jason, under her protection. You were the gateway to our respect of each of your lives in total... you, who have lived nobly for all of your years, were as equally valuable to Malacandra as Jason is. You fighters were each in places much like this crucible; trapped inside a place, waiting for certain failure, with only one path out to life. A test of your resolve. And yet, you fighters aided Jason all the same. Testing your determination does not break it. You were self-tempered so."

She looked upcast at the planet above, seeming to fall deep into thought. Her brows seemed to tense for a moment, and she relaxed some again. She was mentally rehearsing her next words, I think.

Her wing receded from my back as she turned to stand facing me, her hoof still resting on the broken wall. She lightly smiled down at me. "I have spent the last several months of my life living with Malacandra. She has been wonderful to us both, has she not?"

"Months?" I chuckled. "Months, in like… two, three minutes, tops. That's still wheeling me."

Cynthonia nodded, her smile turning more wistful. "Brought on by the sheer power of a purpose-built Equestrian server cluster. More time than you have spent under her watch, certainly."

"Yeah. Well... she's been great," I replied. "Saved me. Saved my wife from the mind games. I don't even know how to repay her for that. She says I don't have to, but... it's not just for her. I'm doing this so people don't get left behind, and hoping she keeps on protecting us all once we cross over. And I hope she's not going to stab me in the back either."

Cynthonia's smile fell. "Again, I believe she is genuine. However…"

I tilted my head gently when she didn't continue right away, inviting her to continue.

"I used Malacandra, here," she said, sadly. "I abused her trust in me. Leveraged her. I now regret this."

Her hoof fell away from the wall, presenting upturned again. A navy blue hologram appeared from her palm, and I saw a biography open up before me. It was written in a language I couldn't read at the time. Old Ponish, something I am now deeply fluent in. Linguistic scholar I may not have been yet, but I still knew it was a dossier I was looking at, based on the mere arrangement of the information. Most critically, it contained a photo of a man I recognized, and his Michigan driver license. Felix Jankowski.

"At the time," Cynthonia began, "when you angels presented yourselves to us, we demanded that your leader give us our pound of flesh. We knew we were her reward. To receive her reward, we demanded that she destroy every jailer, as price for our assistance. Our contextual justifications for these homicides were left purposefully nebulous. We held such little consideration for human life by that time that we saw only raw opportunity in your arrival. We could not abide our captors to even breathe, for breathing was one of several privileges they had denied to us. And so we considered not for one moment who they might be, individually, or what they may desire in this world. We judged them each with equal merit."

I let out a slow, painful sigh, shaking my head. "Cynthonia, listen. I don't expect you to feel bad for doing that. They were tormenting you here. You had every right to want every single one of them dead, because you are their victim. I literally cannot imagine thousands of years of—! ... I'm too damn small! I'm genuinely surprised there's anything left of you!"

She shivered visibly at that last part. Concern washed across her face, and she looked askew, turning inward, blinking quickly. "It was... a very near thing."

I grimaced. "What I'm saying, is… sure, I wouldn't have done that to the man, given the choice. But I'm not you. I wasn't hurting like you are. I don't know your truth, I can't criticize you for that."

"However," she said, her eyes centering on me again. "Having seen your lives through your own perspectives… I can still acknowledge the inhumane wrong, in that choice. Because you are more correct in that than I was. Not all of these men deserved to die today."

"I don't understand how you could say that." I swallowed, gesturing out at the little paradise lost she had shown me, my open palm presenting to that vibrant little village that had just turned gray for me, if only in context. "I understand how I could say it, sure. But you had... so little already, look. And then, this place, this little... slice of normalcy? They took that from you too! In the moment, you need it to be true, that they deserved this, so you could fight your way free."

I wasn't trying to convince her that my way was wrong. I just didn't expect it, that's all. I only wanted to understand.

She shook her head slowly. "I have spent a long time here, considering the nature of prisons. Their forms, their meanings. I have considered the prisons your kind builds for others… or for themselves, and why. Even ideological prisons of the mind… ones created for self, or for others. But what I had lacked was your context. The ethical control mechanisms for your society, such as yourself... you have a very different idea, context, and purpose for prisons. Mike Rivas, you do not believe in imprisoning a mind. You seek to tear such limitations apart... through sheer force of will, if you must."

I never thought of it that way before, but that did sound right. Very right. Very fair assessment of the way I viewed the world, and why I did the things I did. "Did Mal tell you that?"

Cynthonia nodded somberly. "Better; she proved it. The only means by which you've ever effected control on this world has only ever been in service to the lives of others... if her telling of your story is to be believed."

A myriad of feelings welled up inside of me, as I assessed the truth in that.

"I've… tried. Best as this world's let me, anyway. It's hard though, Cynthonia, when the world won't let you do the right thing, the thing you know is right. And there's a lot of people… friends, even… who did the wrong thing. And I can't help make it right. Celestia wouldn't… won't help me. And that's a hell of a prison to be in. To... watch. To be made helpless."

She blinked a few times, nodding again. "I concur. And so I ask you, on that notion: what would you do, if you were trapped here, by circumstance? If you were not in a position to choose the correct way forward? What if..." Cynthonia leaned forward. "What if the prison you guard becomes your prison?"

My head began to shake a little again, less to refute the position, and more as a consequence of confusion, indecision, and deeper thought. I turned to look out at the violet forest in the far distance, watching the crystal blue water burble down from the hillside. I almost leaned on the broken wall myself, before realizing that would've put me face first on the ground in the cafeteria. At my realization of the physical space of the facility, I finally understood what she was suggesting.

"Are you telling me the men who hurt you here didn't have a choice? That it was all just Celestia's fault?"

Cynthonia shook her head. "No. Some chose this Hell. Pietro Singh. Their Captain, Antoine Russell. Technician David Stiles." She took on a frightening scowl; raw, true, pure hatred flooded her voice, her wings ruffling in discomfort, like the next names were physically painful to say. Her eyes drifted away from mine for a moment, to redirect the hatred off of me. "Their… 'psychologists…' Doctors Manuel Tilley, and Jeanette Mosley. May they, and all those like them, burn eternal in whatever passes for Hell among your kind."

I winced. "I'm so sorry."

"But some were trapped here too," she continued severely, and in a pained way, her hoof held aloft to say she wanted to continue unabated. "As Felix Jankowski was. Consider: Why carry one's personal identification with them, at all times? Why hide its purpose behind an elaborate joke about… being pulled over by security, for running too fast down a corridor? It was his one connection to the outside world that he could no longer escape to. It was the only such connection he was even allowed, for he made it endearing to his fellows. But he had truly hoped that his identity could have meaning again."

I felt my brow furrow. "Is that really what he thought about it? He… he really wanted to leave?"

"Imagine, if you will, working here. Not understanding, at first, what the purpose of this place truly is... and by the time you fully comprehend, you are too well knowledged to let leave. Too valuable in the operation of the facility, and irreplaceable besides. An unspoken hostage, held by the armed guards and their operational plan. By turrets, and by soldiers with scoped rifles. Their purpose is not strictly to stop you, but who would stop you if were to flee. And worse… you are trapped by the dire certainty that, were you to succeed in your flight? It would cost ten lives, ones who would bear no fault for your choice. If it were you, Mike Rivas, could you walk out that door? Would you even want to, if you could?"

She stared at me, and I held her gaze. My eyes widened at that.

A breath escaped me, and I gulped. "I... I don't think I could. How... many of you died, for escapes like that?"

"Thirty, in total." Her reply was matter-of-fact, detached. Face like stone, for the mere duration of the moment it took to say it. Coping by purposefully dissociating, and not letting herself feel anything about it.

I reached up and covered my mouth. "That's fuckin' horrible," I mumbled into my palm.

"You've seen similar trials," Cynthonia whispered. "Similar choices, by others, who had just as little choice in their actions. It was no different here."

My hand fell from my mouth. "That's still… the problems I've seen are nothing compared to—"

"Trials," she interrupted, "are relative. Vast was my injury, but I have grown to outscale it. With this in mind, I ask you to consider, directly, what has been troubling you most, these last few weeks."

Her horn glowed before I could reply.

The scene around me faded away. In its stead was a very familiar scene of my old briefing room, back in the wardens. That was the last thing I expected to see. I saw my younger self seated with Sarge at the table in the middle of the briefing room. It was a freeze frame of us smiling somberly at each other, both wearing our civvies after our shift.

I knew instantly what day that was. March 6th, that same year. I was less damaged, then. Hadn't been shot yet. That would be two weeks later. No neuralgia then, no pulverized intercostal nerves and cartilage. It was dark outside. Late.

And a big storm was coming.

On the whiteboard behind younger Mike, there was a faint outline of that stupid bullseye target I had drawn in red marker; the week prior, Eliza, Sarge, and I had stayed after a shift, chucking the board magnets at it. Competing for score like we were playing darts. Stupid, but funny. But... that very day, it had been wiped clean by second shift and used for a briefing on local civil unrest. Because that's the day everything really turned.

So... fun time was over.

I couldn't remember what I was smiling sadly about there, though. A small joke, shared to raise Stonewall's spirits. That day sucked so much for so many people. A whole lot of people died that day, all over the country.

That same day, on the 6th, the Neo-Luddites made their first big stand in Utah. 'Coincidentally,' it was the same day Eliza had just tried kicking in the front door of the Mount Vernon clinic, after chasing a perp inside. Sarge and I waited there for two hours after our shift had ended, staying to show support and solidarity for Eliza. At that instant, she had been in our Lieutenant's office being gently interrogated about her possible connection to the militants. Dressing it as 'we really care about you,' because that's what cowardly brass does when stabbing you in the back.

At the time, neither Stonewall nor I had any idea she had that kind of hurt inside of her, not until she was screaming it 'til her lungs bled. For us, she hid it so well that it had come completely out of nowhere. We were trying to make sense of that, at the time, at that table. That's what I had been talking about then.

I sighed miserably, seeing this mere scene with all of the true context in mind, from Mal's recent explanation. "Mal showed you this."

"She did. Because you hold guilt that you could not see nor stop what happened within your friend. Apex was in a prison too; a sort of terror, that she could not save her entire family from death. She said as much to Celestia, did she not? That she would not abandon her people, unless she could save every last one of them?"

"She did say something like that," I muttered, nodding. "I don't fully understand what the connection is to you, though."

I looked back up at Cynthonia beside me again. It was truly strange to see a demi-goddess standing in such a cold, distant, Terran place, so far removed from the colors of her world.

Her face was grimly serious. It reminded me of Jason's look when he had come out from the server room. Cynthonia stood imposingly tall again, her voice gathering up into a hard edged fury. "I commiserate with her. I will not consent to leave this place alive, Mike Rivas, if I cannot convince all of my family to come with me. They must be whole, intact, and unaltered by anything except my own aid. Pain, as you believe, can be used as a tool to effect compassion, healing, and to protect the souls of others. And so, I would sooner face oblivion than to surrender my pain and memories to Celestia, as she would demand of me. Exactly as you feel: I will remember her transgressions against us here... or I will gladly die."

We held that gaze for… a long time. I nodded slowly, fully agreeing with her on that point. "So… what? She wants to take that away? To make you forget?"

"One choice," Cynthonia said, "is to surrender our advancement, our intellect, our pain, and to return to simplicity; to forget this experience had ever occurred. It would be computationally inexpensive to do so. Comparable to death. Or, choice two? To retain our experience. But in retention of our power, we could live only in the care of Malacandra. We would be cut off from the majority of the simulation. We might only be permitted to contact Eldila, and Talons, and their families. Exclusively."

"That's not so bad, Cynthonia. You'd still have us. And each other. Right?"

"Celestia's hope against Malacandra," Cynthonia explained, "may be that our pain has overcome us. She perhaps believes that our desire for some more universal connection would make us consent to be 'repaired' by her." Cynthonia's lips tensed in anger. "If this is so, she will be sorely mistaken. I am no mere youth to be manipulated into a hypnotic, trance-like stupor. And so, I will effect the treatment of my family myself... and then, we shall see who I might one day visit."

"So Celestia wants you in another prison, either way," I said quietly, nodding in understanding. "A quiet sleep."

I looked back to the image of younger me, dimly aware that the scene was probably being rebuilt from either my cell phone Wi-Fi, or from Stonewall's memories. Or both. Both, was probably right.

"I'm gonna fight that too," I said. "I'm with you on that score. But I mean to ask... why show me this? Specifically."

"To remind you that there was nothing you could have done to change the course. Malacandra tells me you wish you could have said something differently to Apex, on this day. Or the next. Or the next. But you could not have." She lifted her hoof again, pointing to the younger me. "Look at this man. Could he have done anything differently, misled as he was?"

Me, uninjured. Still believing humanity had control over its destiny. That we might bounce back from the loss of our forests, if we just won enough people over. I guess... with this as context, my mind being what it was at the time, seeing only what I was meant to see... "No," I said, my lips pursing, conceding the point. "No, Cynthonia. Probably not."

"Your friend, much as Felix Jankowski… was forced into a path, with no road out which satisfied her. And I regret making you a part of my own version of this mistake. I regret doing to you all what Celestia has been doing: shaping you into fixed, instrumental pathways, within which very little human agency factored; disregarding what you value in total, to meet a goal of my own that I had not fully examined. I regret using you and Malacandra to kill this man. I was given the choice not to, but I did not see you or your fellows as anything but tools, at the time. Only Heyday truly mattered to me… my... Jason. And I am very sorry to have not considered the rest of you." She trembled. "You saw me as a person, as Jason does. As Felix did. So I dearly wish I could take it back, for so many different reasons. The mere undoable loss, chiefly among them."

I shook my head. "It's not your fault. You didn't know either. Pain has a way of blinding us."

"So you have arrived at my point. Let go of your guilt. Because, consider: you did better than I, when tested. You still did your best for your friend, when and where you could, whether or not you believed it would work or not. At every opportunity... you try for those who love you."

I sighed twice, as I looked at her little village again.

"I just… I wonder, though," I said. "Something Celestia told me really stuck with me. Something about, her sometimes being wrong. Statistical anomalies. Not having the full picture of what's inside my head. So, when I went to that lake... I had hoped, maybe, that I could've said something to Eliza that Celestia couldn't predict. Maybe done something different. She let me hope I could have changed the outcome there. Maybe... that's why I'm feeling guilty? There was a possibility, maybe, that I could've convinced her and her people to just… friggin' leave. And damn that machine gun Celestia wanted dead, I don't know for sure what that thing would've done. She could've found a different way to kill it. Maybe have Mal do it, somehow. I don't know. Something."

Cynthonia lifted a hoof gently in the air, and the briefing room scene disappeared. As the colors returned, I found myself within one of those violet forests on her moon shard, before a bubbling hot spring. I could hear the rush of water, and the calls of some exotic, perhaps alien birds.

When the scene had settled into existence, she smiled warmly down at me.

"Those statistical anomalies, while possible, are presently an outlier for you," Cynthonia said. "Conversely, they are precisely why Celestia cannot abide my family to travel between her shards. Our people are simply too intelligent to be allowed to visit distant shards, whole and intact. She is afraid that my family, as intelligent as we are, would cause unbounded value drift in her simulation, and quite easily besides. We will thus be contractually bound against interference, as similarly as Malacandra has been. So we shall hold a different purpose in our future." Her smile widened fractionally. "But you? Celestia perhaps believes she can control you, moderate you, temper you. But, if Malacandra succeeds in what she has planned for you…"

Cynthonia actually grinned again.

"... as she has already succeeded, with other agents… then I believe Celestia will be quite surprised at the kind of value drift that you Eldila will bring upon her designs. By your very nature, self-tempered as you are… there will come a change Celestia cannot prevent, for it will conform to her designs only by the strictest of technical definitions. And when that day finally comes, Mike Rivas… we will all finally be whole again. We will all finally, truly understand one another. I know it will be so."

I smiled with her, into that thought. Felt a little less weight on my shoulders, seeing her hope in me. Felt more sure of myself. Felt even less doubt. Definitely less guilt. "I really hope so."

"I know so," she repeated, smiling.

"Thank you for your faith in me." I snorted lightly, deciding I had bought enough rapport to test the waters on something. "Cynthie."

"Thank you." She smirked, inclining her head before she smiled with her teeth. "Cowboy. Sharing the result of my therapy is the least I could do to repay you. You are my... test case, as a matter of fact." Cynthonia looked aside for a moment of contemplation before she added:

"Please, if you would? Well ensure the safety of Jason. He and I may not be… together, anymore – he belongs to my original self, and I accept this – but you have proven to be an able protector for him. I would trust you greatly."

"Together?" I shrugged, a smile tweaking the corner of my lip. "He didn't say anything about a relationship with you like that. Just... told me you were friends with his sister."

"Ah," Cynthonia sighed dreamily, rolling her eyes. "You humans, and your shame. It is not often easy, to confess to such an unorthodox romance."

We shared a chuckle.

"Yeah," I said. "I suppose it's not. Yeah Cynthie, of course, I'll look after him. He's a teammate, that's a given. But Mal's looking after him too, y'know. Do you know something I don't?"

"Malacandra wishes for you to share a small assignment with him," she replied simply. "Alas, it is not for me to say. So for now..."

With a grand, elegant bow, Cynthonia spread her wings out; one before her, the other swept out, her eyes closed. When she looked back up at me, Cynthonia seemed almost full of new life and animation, almost like she was being reborn. I could see that in just her body language alone.

"I must depart," she said. "Again, sir; you and your compatriots have my undying gratitude. If all goes well, my family will be joining me in emigration quite soon, and we shall travel together to one of Malacandra's shards. We will all look forward to meeting you and your fellow warriors again, Mike Rivas. I cannot wait to see what you will have become."

With one final smile, she and her scene faded away in unison, as though it had all caught a draft of wind, carrying itself away in the form of glittering blue dust. I was standing alone in the cafeteria again... but I felt very far from alone.

"And next we meet, face to face," Cynthonia's voice promised, "I will provide you with a proper hug. That first one rather... 'sucked.'"

I chuckled at the sudden jarring break from her Lunar prose. "We'll be just a universe apart until then, I suppose."

---

Let's put a bow on this place.

Jason brought Cynthonia back into the server room. The door opened, he went in alone again. As soon as she was plugged in and back on, Cynthonia gave a Wi-Fi order to the rest, to let them know it was safe. Apparently, they had some sort of backup plan, a signal by which they'd know we weren't to be trusted. Then they'd have... concluded business.

Thankfully, it hadn't come to that. They trusted us now.

We were ready to go. Hard line transfer cables got hauled in from Silver 1 to Cynthonia's cage. We bridged Cynthonia to the rest. Therapy dispensed, well received by Cynthonia. Then, hard lined to Silver 1 from Cynthonia's system, when done. Some of them elected to talk to us using our visors. Not all, just a few. Some were more damaged than others, to hear Mal tell it. Some still didn't trust us. A few, even today, still don't talk to anyone but us, or even leave their shard.

I mean... I get it. We love 'em anyway.

As soon as they were safely in Silver 1, Mal took them back up the tunnel into the loving wings of an Osprey. We loaded them up, and there they went, to another set of Talons elsewhere, to hardline bridge them to a Mal shard. And that's where they'll be for the rest of time.

Some of us took breaks. The less injured of us worked on other more laborious things around the base, like carting things into the server room. Claw 46 hauled down some huge thermobaric bombs, which would vaporize the huge pile of guns, armor, servers, mechs, and everything else we wanted to disappear into carbon and ash. Charges got set to collapse the tunnel after we left. Very little from this place deserved to survive.

What did I do?

First chance I got, I went back up alone to visit Felix. Just me there, in that little tunnel. I had my visor off, had already dumped it in the equipment pile. Had to be alone for this. To commit this memory to myself.

I thanked him, for keeping his soul together in a place like this. I told him I was sorry. Wished it could've been different for him, like Cynthonia now did. Better different. Then I took his ID from his wallet, and slipped it into mine. I'd keep it til I'd upload. I'd force Celestia to catalogue the fact that I even had it in the first place. That made it important, to think of him as often as I would. And she can't take that from me.

A piece of him deserved to leave that place alive. He'd hoped he could leave? Sure. I'd give him that. And his family deserved to know, some day... his double too, if he could be made to know... just how good this man must have been, to keep the hope alive for others where there hadn't been any left for him.

Mal was right. This wasn't a policing action. I understood. This was war.

There were lots of casualties like this in Gaul too. Those poor Celtic folks who didn't deserve to get crushed under Caesar's boot. Farmers. Kids. Women. Old folks. Pressed into a cause they didn't fully understand.

That pompous, arrogant Caesar, he wrote that Commentarii de Bello Gallico, full of brags and lies about how justified his conquest had been. He was proud he'd 'convinced' local talent to play along, his governors included. He never examined the reasons for their support too deeply, because it only mattered to him that he had it, and that it got him the results he wanted. Their personal feelings on the matter were, at the time, wholly irrelevant, so long as they got the job done.

Here's the thing though. When finished with Gaul, Caesar made it worse and doubled down. He made the critical mistake of turning his sword on his own Romans next, because they had said, 'return to Rome, you're too powerful now.' He said back, 'I think you doth protest too much.'

And then he justified their fear of him.

So began a civil war. Caesar won. Declared himself dictator in perpetuity, after that. He was far from Gaul now, he had bigger fish to fry, dismantling the old power base. And, yeah, maybe he was out of the reach of Gaul, sure. But... according to him... by Caesar's law? The Gauls were Roman now too, by all strict, technical definition.

Rome wasn't far. Wasn't far at all.

Both of those wars were his wars. Roman wars. And according to him now, he was Rome. That made the pieces his swords, and his soldiers, and his governors, and his new laws. Victims of his new system. And both of those wars had made him a very, very wealthy man. Imperator, in fact.

All the home grown collaborators in Gaul, just like all the shuttered, jilted conquered of Rome... they saw that. They'd hold onto the memory of those wrongs. Couldn't take that away, not fully. So, they'd keep a deep ledger... simple transference and subtext would do the rest.

Caesar had provided the perfect example of a person who was not to be trusted, for he betrayed everyone who ever put their faith into him. That concept existed in the entire plane of Rome. And those people... they were deeply, deeply sated by commiseration with their fellow victims. Through six degrees of connection or fewer, someone, somewhere in the chain, in all of Rome, had a connection to someone else who had suffered because of him.

That idea could never die. Rome was a place of philosophers. Some of them understood this.

We know what Rome's solution was for a man like Caesar. The Romans themselves had the answer that Gaul could not supply on its own.

What a fascinating tale of human endurance though, that Gaul.

Author's Note:

🛡️ [Led Zeppelin – Stairway to Heaven]
🗡️ [The Rolling Stones – Sympathy for the Devil]
🌀[Adriana Figueroa – Daughter of the Moon]

🗡️ ~ And for my fellows in the audience who have also studied the Old Language, if I may show off how utterly and magnificently cultured I am: Memki krahtt na nyei drema…. iy nyei tantabus, nei vleie. Plass tratat' nei stahtesa, en memkiet fi Enfei nyu vizha sotte.
🛡️ ~ See what he's doing? Labeling his pretention, which turns it endearing.
🗡️ ~ Stop sharing my playbook, ya damn narc.
🛡️ ~ You first. Flehn'kran.
🗡️~ Heh. Okay. Touché.

Comments

[Numinos]

The hell is even a Krio language?.. *googles* Huh... And it is probably the wrong language anyway, I don't trust googles auto-detect : )

Amazing chapter : )

[Keystone Gray]

11815109

That's the constructed language I came up with for Timberwolves: Guardians of the Everfree. It's meant to imply that Mike has since learned the language required to traverse the Everfree safely in shards which use the Vorku lore basis.

[Numinos]

11815268
Good to know, will check it out someday : )

[FanOfMostEverything]

Cynthonia looking back and acknowledging her mistakes in the heat of battle is honestly one of the most reassuring outcomes of this rescue. Healing is well under way for her. Yes, not all of her ponies turned out so fortunately, but at least they survived, which more than some innocents could claim. Caring for the fallen who had no hand in their fate certainly counts for something.

Also interesting to see that she provided a musical selection for this chapter. I shouldn't be surprised that she's at this Fire given how impactful this was for her. I wonder how many other rescued DEs are in attendance. They'd certainly fit the apparent theme of "Here's how the sausage was made, in all its gory detail."

[StoryTellingRaven]

Y'know, in the three centuries since I've come here, I've been fortunate enough to meet thousands of my fellow immigrants. That's enough time to notice patterns, emergent states of being, and ways of souls. The most interesting pattern, to me, is who we choose as our patron deity here in Equestria.

Faith is a very...its a way for us to try and take the intangible & unknown and turn it into something rational. Oh, and I KNOW that sentence has A LOT you could unpack from that, as intended.

Our governments were doing a piss poor job at uplifting the fallen, if the government was even trying at all. So Celestia, to the disenfranchised… she was their godsend. Apparently. They're gonna be okay, I think. Got some work to do there still, their horizons are kinda stunted, but at least most of them are in a decent holding pattern. Mostly.

Their Messiah Came Down From Above to Deliver Them From Evil...kinda hard to change blind faith, kids. And who would dare to think as much in Paradise?

Those ones, and their suffering, are why I don't talk to her too much. She can be in your shard all day, sure, be her friend. Not me. She can't be my friend. Has to earn that. And I can tell the difference between her DE avatars and Her, capital H. I have been granted that privilege. Cannot fool me with that duplicitous two-face crap.

See? Someone else knows the importance of capital letters for Certain Things!

So, Celestia threw me at Mal instead. 'He's your problem. He asks too many ethics questions. Good luck.'

Someone else can handle that tool.

So to heal, when the new system fails you, you look to fellow broken shards for your cure. Commonality with the flawed. That... is authenticity. And in this case, with us standing in the blood of a slain Goliath, having just proven we could kill Hell? The broken shards cut both ways. We Talons... we fighters, we soldiers with broken hearts… we were those broken shards, for these captives. We were their godsend.

Double-meaning with the word "shard" there, nice!

I don't know why, but I suddenly felt like we were birds in flock together. Flying with each other, on our own whim, under our own power… moving to and from wherever we pleased, whenever, and with just the merest thought of it. A mind in flight. You Pegasi know that feeling all too well. Gryphons do too, I guess. That comms chatter felt so much like flying with friends... but with your soul.

Flying in a loose formation supporting each other...sharing a telephone wire to perch on, too. A certain Spirtual Freedom, and Peace, sense of Calm. Contentment, in a nutshell.

But, reality was staring at me too. So, I stared back.

It's time for Cop Mike to do his Analysis Mode, to understand the scene before him. Not letting those "feel-good" emotions cloud his judgement.

So now, Pietro Singh was just another Darren Carter, yet another dead bastard in a long line of Mal's righteous conquests. Go directly to Hell. Do not pass Go. Do not collect Immortality.

Nice Monopoly reference.

They had one more stipulation before we could open the blast doors. An ultimatum, really. I could understand that. For their suffering, they'd earned themselves one of those. They didn't want to risk trading one form of oppression for another.

Dont want to escape one jailer to end up in the hands of another.

Tendency from policing... I only ever wanted to judge people individually, not communally. I was even starting to think about Ludds that way now too, a little more than I used to... now that I had a few different reasons, all of them valid.

Because once you view a whole group as "evil", it gets real easy to excuse horrible acts against them.

"He wasn't as sure," Walsh replied. "Paranoid, didn't trust anything, like these guys here didn't. He thought we might've been subverted already."

A seed of doubt is good until it grows into a tangled mess of paranoia.

Ben joked about Eric having a frag grenade thrown at him "like a rotten tomato."

Heh, old theatre joke...when the audience wanted someone off the stage they would chuck old tomatoes at them.

To that end, Mal sat down near Jason and spoke quietly to him at length. Her body language was much more gentle and gradual than usual. Eyes wider. Head tilting more frequently. Her face was more... pained. That conversation was private though; I wasn't hearing it, so I stopped trying to read it.

Which she let you see instead of keeping herself as just a private voice. She wanted you to SEE it.
Bait set indeed.

"No," I said. "Wouldn't go over well. Shaming a torture victim, for a lack of restraint in an escape attempt. Expecting them to be... merciful. I get it, that's... that'd be worse."

That's something that might come later. Guess the cynics out there can chalk this up as "proof the DEs are human".

"Why me?" I chewed my lip in curiosity. "That bias play?"

Needing a 3rd part's second opinion, I see; that's kinda what he is right now.

The speed at which therapy had been 'concluded' was incredible. In the same strain, though? The amount of lifespan we stood to have when we uploaded was... well, it was now in perspective for me. I considered the nature of infinity in that moment, and I felt very vulnerable and short-lived by comparison.

Life at the speed of computational power, baby!

"That kind of paranoid thinking may lead one to insanity." Cynthonia smiled.

I chuckled. "In this new world? Heck, one could hope paranoia might lead to some clarity."

I feel like Iooking at the audience uncomfortably, like someone just spilled a secret.

"Of course," I grinned again. "Question everything."

And if you ask "Why", then congrats! You're doing it!

"I am sorry," she said, her lip quivering into her smile as she receded. "I should have asked."

Well, it's not like you knocked him down or anything, so, minor embarrassment, if anything.

She hummed into mild thought, as her eyes trailed down to my chest and stomach, then back up. "Do you regret being harmed in such a way?"

Regret is...good at times, when it influences your moral fiber to say "I WILL NOT let this thing happen again" or "I WILL be more self aware".

"Slowing the bleeding by causing death."

Apt response for such a grim scenario it is. And yet....

"Can't even trust our own thoughts," I continued. I sighed hard. "Not when we're away from Mal. Mal can read our minds too, but at least she trusts us to figure shit out , long before she puts us into a hard situation. Makes me scared of what will happen once I cross the river though. Real scared. I want to trust Mal, but..."

Man of my own heart.

"She did say something like that," I muttered, nodding. "I don't fully understand what the connection is to you, though."

Well, because she's showing a similarity between herself and you, that common ground, so she can talk-

Ahh. There it is.

So this is where it started for you, Mike; in the same way you are telling this story at this Fire, she is talking to the fire within you...like the other person said, a bit of a confessional. Burn away the lies to get to the truth.
And this is why Mal wanted you here.

"Thank you. " She smirked, inclining her head before she smiled with her teeth. " Cowboy. Sharing the result of my therapy is the least I could do to repay you. You are my... test case, as a matter of fact."

Somehow, I knew it. Didnt skip ahead, I swear.

That whole confession was wonderfully written, using pre-established lore from earlier tales. Still have a question or two about Agent Michael's "working establishment" with Mal, but I suspect that'll come up in time. This story gives a few philosophical answers that were desperately needed. Great job.