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Where does it end?
Or rather, how did it begin?
He knows. Deep down, he knows.
Coral blows like wind through his blood. You will pay for this one day. His movements follow a strict set of commands, etched onto his consciousness with inviolable severity. Yes, you. Even you. Yet for every action he takes, there is a thousand unsanctioned thoughts flitting through the back of his mind, most of which vanish in the same instant they appear. Oh, does it sadden you, to know that this is your fate? All except one. You poor thing. Not exactly one thing, but a nebulous amalgamate of vaguely related recollections—sounds, sights, sensations. Never had a chance to be free from your father’s sins.
Walter.
Red eyes look at him.
His last hound looks at him, with that slight upward tilt of their head. That scarred, scrawny face, that quiet eager expression. Always appearing as if they were on the verge of asking, Have I done good today? What’s our next prey? Tell me and I will bring it to you, lay it down at your feet… Please tell me. Please.
He can never maintain eye contact for long.
Has it always been that way?
He stands on the precipice. His bright red shell stands on the precipice. He does not know where the metal ends and his body begins. Limbs dissolved into acidic darkness. Memories eaten away by the burning light. This is it. This is all that’s left. He raises the Coral rifle in his right hand.
On the lower deck, the miniscule silhouette of a familiar machine. In the split moment before the space between them is torn apart by a red screaming stream, he notices the slight upward tilt in LOADER 4’s head part.
“621…” he said, “I’ll give you a reason to exist.”
Red eyes blinked at him from beneath the creased silicon wrap.
They were strangers then. Perhaps they should have stayed as strangers.
The last hound started out a bit more distant than their predecessors. He would have liked to keep it that way.
So why, and since when, has it become customary for them to limp to his side, and look up to him with that quiet eagerness in their burning eyes?
He fights his hound—who is no longer his hound—with mechanical halts in his actions and reactions. The corporation’s orders imprison him. His deepest and most agonizing wishes has been unearthed and fashioned into a collar around his neck. He is not unaware. His awareness curls up in the corner of a solitary confinement cell, gazing at the fiery sky through a tiny barred window high up in one of the smoke-blackened walls.
He has never seen his hound this hesitant in a fight.
What is he to them?
He wishes he had just been another employer. Someone they can forget about without a second thought after everything is said and done. He doubts that this is the case.
What are they to him?
What are they to him?
His mind jitters. For a moment the programming that winds so tightly against his brain is shaken loose. Sensing a lull in the flow of combat, his opponent pauses, too, staring at him with that strangely endearing head part.
He cannot chase away the vision of the person inside, looking up at him admiringly, ever so eager to please. Waifish face and battered body. Unworldly innocence with bloodstained hands.
No, stop, he has always wanted to say, Don’t look at me like that. I’m not the sort of person you think I am. I am not worthy of your feelings. You deserve better. All of you deserved better…
But it was all wishful thinking, a waste of breath.
He adjusts his stance and reengages. His opponent responds in kind.
But his imprisoned soul is still entranced by thoughts of his pack of hounds.
It was the easiest to think of them as a means to an end when they were freshly thawed out of cryostasis. They all came out looking quite similar: hairless, expressionless, filthy with all kinds of fluid buildup within the cryopod. But in time, they warmed up to him, and for a short while, he got to know them as people.
617 was warm and easygoing, if sometimes a little tactless.
618 was prudent and calculated in missions, and a chronic overthinker in life.
619 was a little strange. Didn’t talk much; spent a lot of time staring at invisible spots on walls.
620 was blunt and sullen, but was affected by 618’s death more than anyone else.
621 was… the most damaged of them all. Survived multiple near fatal injuries in previous deployments; internal Coral leaks burned their vocal cords and damaged lower segments of their spinal column. The vendor implied that there wasn’t much of a human left in there. Which couldn’t have been further from the truth…
He has spent so long with 621 that he watched their hair grow out. It was all quite sudden. Before he went to Balam in the hopes of securing a backer for their trip into the Central Ice Field, there was only a film of translucent fuzz on 621’s scar-strewn scalp; the next time he saw them, they already had a head of short white hair with a slight curl pattern. And secretly, so secretly that he barely registered it himself, he breathed a sigh of relief.
It was common for augmented humans to grow irregularly discolored hair, but there was only one other person that he knew of who had hair completely devoid of pigmentation like 621’s.
It was a foundational memory of his childhood, to be gingerly running his fingers through that long, straight, icy hair, which fell over him like a waterfall, almost covering him entirely.
He spent more time in that man’s lap than in his own mother’s.
His father called that man 249. Or C1-249, when his father was displeased. But 249 whispered in his ear, saying that humans shouldn’t be labeled with numbers, like cattle or microbes in a petri dish. 249 said that he would prefer to be called “Sulla”.
So he called 249 “Sulla”, though always under his breath, like a code word or a holy name. He was not too young to understand that there would be trouble if anyone else heard him say it out loud. Not necessarily trouble for himself, but for Sulla. And truth be told, at that time in his life, he feared nothing more than to have Sulla taken away from him.
621 doesn’t know about any of it. Doesn’t know that the boastful pilot in the red-black-and-white AC they ravaged like a chew toy used to let their handler sit on his lap, draw him close with bandaged arms, and mutter sweetly into his ears disquieting words that echoed endlessly in his young mind.
How warm it was to be held by Sulla. It wasn’t exactly comfortable; Sulla was all skin and bones, to the point that he could always feel the shape of Sulla’s femurs no matter how he sat. And that hair—it was nothing less than suffocating, to have one’s field of vision completely obstructed by those fine silky strands that glitter at an angle in the lamplight. But when he was there, he could almost convince himself that the rest of the world never existed. If he pressed his ear to Sulla’s chest, he’d be able to hear the whispers of Coral flowing through the capillary conduits just beneath the skin, in accompaniment to the steady heartbeat. If he told Sulla that he would protect him and take him away from his father when he grew up, Sulla would laugh, and pinch his cheeks, and tell him it would take too long for him to grow up. Sulla would ask, Why can’t you do it now? And he would answer, he couldn’t possibly fight against his father while he was still so little. And Sulla would go on to ask, with a crooked smile and a hiss in his tone, If you don’t have what it takes to fight your father now, how do you know you will when you grow up? And he would be at a loss for words.
What a strange time for all of this to suddenly come back to him. Perhaps it is the sound of Coral flowing in his ears. And the warmth. And the darkness.
So these things can become conscious. He is less surprised than he expected himself to be. Perhaps a part of him was always drawn to the possibility, having been so mesmerized by the echoes of Coral from underneath Sulla’s skin. Perhaps a part of him had always wished that his mother’s consciousness still existed somewhere out there, like a fairy in a paper boat riding a glimmering red tide.
Did his mother’s irises turn red before she died?
If he wept as he pressed himself against Sulla’s chest, Sulla would scold him. But one time Sulla said, You know, if she really loved you, she would have lived. He looked up with tears still welling in his eyes—could not make out a clear image of Sulla’s face, only the pulsating red glow in his irises. Sulla, he asked, Do you love me? And he immediately regretted the question, because it felt too blunt, too unfitting coming out of his mouth. Maybe what he really wanted to know was, How are you surviving this continued onslaught of experimental surgeries? And perhaps also a little bit of, Am I ever on your mind, if only for a moment, as you endure the unendurable? But he had neither the language nor the awareness to get to the bottom of what he really wanted to know, and he could never take the question back now.
Fingers wrapped in gauze wiped away the moisture clouding his vision. He blinked, and was surprised to see the muted expression on Sulla’s face—gray, solemn, almost defeated. Nothing of the usual glint of reproach or condescension. “Love?” Sulla said, tucking a limp strand of hair behind his ear, “In my next life, maybe.” He paused, and stared at the boy in his lap as if lost in thought, before finally asking, “Does it matter?”
Red eyes look away from him.
Was there ever another possibility?
Was there a timeline in which he could have run away with Sulla before the sparks of Coral lit up the horizon? Procured the necessary false documents, stole away on a passenger ship, into a future where no guilt or violence existed between the two of them?
No.
He was barely a teenager when it happened. Could do nothing but watch, as the adults pushed him around.
He did not say goodbye to Sulla before boarding the ship that would take him to Jupiter.
It was hard to remember whether he grieved for anyone, at all. Professor Nagai, father, Sulla. The knowledge, or presumption, of their deaths felt faraway and second-hand. A few decades passed. He trained to become an AC pilot and met the love of his life. He briefly considered deserting from Overseer to stay by his partner’s side. He couldn’t do it. He got severely injured in a sortie. He got in contact with a vendor of old gen hounds and became a handler. He looked into the red eyes of his hounds and concluded that there was no running away from his fate.
Never had a chance to be free from your father’s sins.
He could not help but think about it—this verdict that Sulla declared on him when he was still a child. It haunted him because it was true. The longer he lived, the truer it grew to be.
He became aware of a certain independent mercenary, callsign “Sulla”, sometime before the fateful scouting mission in which 618 was deployed alone. When he heard Sulla’s voice on the open radio, his mind went blank. It was the exact same voice that haunted the days and nights of his youth, as if its owner hadn’t aged at all throughout the decades.
“Looks like your dog is dead, Handler Walter,” the voice drawled with malicious pleasure as ENTANGLE stood over the electrified wreck of a humble RaD Orbiter AC, “Did its life mean anything to you?”
“Go away, Sulla,” he hissed into the mic, “I’m not interested in what you have to say.”
“I sure hope the next one puts up a better fight,” Sulla said, jeering, before assault boosting away into the descending night.
There was a time when Walter harbored next to no hope in his heart.
617, 619, and 620 had all died in the same mission. It was the most likely, yet also the worst, outcome, and he couldn’t help but blame himself for it. He asked himself, what was he hoping to achieve with only one hound under his command? Sure, on paper, 621 had maintained a remarkable mission success rate across all their previous deployments. But this was Rubicon they were heading to. Could they afford to make a single mistake?
Despite his doubts, Walter went through the motions of preparing for departure. Talked to his contacts, determined the best route to bypass the closure system, procured the rocket that would deliver LOADER-4 and its pilot into the planet’s atmosphere.
He was helping 621 settle into the cockpit when he noticed that his hound was looking intently at him. He wouldn’t normally minister to his hounds this way, but it hadn’t been long since 621 was released from cryostasis, and they hadn’t regained full control of their limbs, or whatever remained of it. As Walter tightened the safety harness around 621’s torso, he stole a glance at their face, and was almost frightened by the intense focus in those red-tinted eyes, dimly visible through the pigmented glass visor of their helmet.
“Are you worried?” he asked, averting his gaze.
In the periphery of his vision, the hound shook their head.
“Good,” he petted them on the shoulder after he finished adjusting the last buckle, “there’s no need to be worried.”
621 continued to stare at him, providing neither affirmation nor negation.
Walter sighed internally. He took hold of the neural link wire in one hand, and placed the other hand over 621’s chin, holding them in place. Their skin, suffused with subcutaneous Coral flow, burned under his gloved fingers, heat easily permeating the faux leather.
The augmented human was so frail that he could probably snap their neck with one hand if he wanted to.
“Whatever happens,” he said, unsure whether he was reassuring his hound or himself, “remember this: I am always on the other side of the line. However difficult this journey may be, you won’t be facing it alone.”
621 blinked at him slowly, and his heart was at ease, if only for a moment.
It took some time for him to realize that there was something off about what happened next.
When he pushed the connector into the port at the base of 621’s skull, they winced, and rubbed their chin into his hand. Their lips parted and their eyes widened, irises rolling into the back of their head.
For 621, it was only a physiological reaction. There was nothing wrong with that. What was wrong was the way he felt, the way his heart raced at the sight, the sense of recognition he couldn’t quite place.
Traces of a suppressed memory. A broken voice screeching, constrained limbs thrashing. Eyes with hemorrhaged scleras and glowing irises, rolling into the back of the head. He only wanted to offer solace. He pressed his small hand to the subject’s burning cheek. Red eyes did not look at him. Tears streamed down that contorted face, wetting his fingers. He felt a stinging sensation, and reflexively retracted his hand. The area of his skin that came in contact with the tears became irritated. Have to hide this from the adults, he thought, looking back up.
The subject, now quiet and motionless, was staring straight at him, eyes opened so wide they were as round as saucers.
How could he have forgotten? The very face of his childhood night terrors.
Was it his mother or was it Sulla?
He tried not to dwell on that image—or that question—for too long, not even during the sleepless nights.
Sometimes 621 couldn’t sleep, either. Insomnia was a well-documented side effect of old gen augmentation.
He would make 621 a cup of something warm. To hold onto, if not for drinking. 621, wrapped up in the big puffy jacket he gave them, would sit across from him, lay their head down on their arms folded on the table, and watch him as he worked, or read, or stared aside pensively at the dormant LOADER 4 in the open hull.
In rare occasions, he would glance back at them. The image of their face, lingering on his retina for only a few split seconds at a time, had the impression of a desecrated stone idol—ruined countenance, gentle gaze.
He regrets it all now. Regrets letting 621 get too close to him. Regrets letting himself take comfort in their silent, unwavering companionship.
But what should he have done instead?
On the day 621 killed Sulla, as Walter helped them out of their battered AC after that near miraculous victory against BALTEUS, they latched onto him with their emaciated arms and embraced him tightly.
Should he have resisted the overwhelming emotions that welled up within him? Should he have pushed them away, knowing that they could not stand on their own? Should he have admonished them for crossing a line? Could he?
Probably not, seeing as how he ran to Balam like a coward, having convinced himself that there was no other way for the two of them to make it to the ice field other than asking for a favor from an old “friend”. He hoped that the period of separation would somehow restore the sense of distance between himself and his hound. He thought that seeing Michigan again would remind him of what he had given up for the sake of his mission, and steel his determination once more.
But after all the business talk was done, the topic Michigan brought up was none other than 621.
“Quite the mercenary you’ve got on your hands, Walter,” Michigan pulled on his cigar, and eyed Walter mischievously, “I gotta say, the show they put on at Gallic Dam was nothing short of spectacular.”
Walter flashed a resigned smile. “I told you to send me the repair bill for your men’s ACs,” he said, “have you not gotten around to it yet?”
“Forget about it,” Michigan chortled, “Say, how dead set are you on staying independent? If your hound becomes an official Redgun inductee, it’ll be easier to persuade the moneybags to pay for their trip to the ice field, too.”
“You know I still need them for what I’ve vowed to do, Michigan,” Walter’s tone was soft but solemn, “Can’t have corporate affiliations tripping us up.”
“Whatever you say, my friend,” Michigan breathed out a heavy puff of cigar smoke, “just let G13 know that old Michigan is waiting for their enlistment application as soon as their handler’s done with them, ‘kay?”
“I don’t see why not,” Walter let out a light chuckle, “I’m sure they’d be interested,” as long as both of you are still alive then, was the silent conditional. He knew that Michigan understood.
The weight on his chest didn’t exactly lighten when he left Balam to reconvene with 621. The whole situation with Carla and RaD was a mess, yes, and 621’s decision to travel by the cargo launcher was nothing short of suicidal. But what he couldn’t stop thinking about was how, despite everything, Michigan was still trying to be on the same side as him. He wondered what, in Michigan’s perspective, the relationship between 621 and himself looked like. It was probably obvious that he could no longer think of 621 as a mere tool. Not after seeing how they hung onto his words like a lifeline, and fought for him as if his cause was more important than their own life, despite knowing next to nothing about him.
So, what was it that they were, then, if not just handler and hound? Friends in spite of circumstance? Master and protégé? Parent and child?
In his past life, there was one point where he was almost going to settle down with Michigan. Get married, stay put in the corporate ecosystem, eventually adopt a war orphan or two. It was 20-30 years ago, but felt like a lifetime ago. He wondered if Michigan still thought about it. He would think about it from time to time. The way they had been; the type of couple, the type of parents, they could have been.
Was 621 like a child to him?
Michigan seemed to see it that way, judging by how eager he was to take them under his wing.
On the day Walter reunited with 621 in the Central Ice Field, he was the one who opened his arms and waited with a forgiving smile.
Red eyes lowered to the floor in bashfulness.
A bony chin digging into his shoulder. Ruffled hair and labored breaths. Thin arms closed around him. Warm and fragile body wrapped in his arms. A nuclear reactor of a heart, electrified with red glimmering echoes, pulsating right against his chest.
It was all so right. It was all so wrong.
There was an unofficial celebration at Balam’s temporary HQ after the defeat of the Ice Worm. Everything was supposedly off-the-record, but Walter still had 621 wear a face mask in addition to their helmet. It was quite a jovial occasion, surprisingly enough. Carla brought a miniaturized version of Chatty, adored by many of the attendees. 621 looked like they had fun taking turns playing air hockey against V.IV Rusty and G5 Iguazu, despite the latter being a sore loser. V.I Freud, who was not involved in the mission whatsoever, showed up and chatted with Michigan the whole time he was there, much to the chagrin of V.II Snail, who downed one shot of Balam’s special vodka after another as he played cutthroat pool against Carla and Walter, all while showing no sign of intoxication.
But what Walter could not forget, more than anything else, was the game of pool between Michigan and 621, after the Vespers had all left and G5 had retired to his personal quarters to cool off from his losses in air hockey. Both Carla and Walter had decided to abandon the unfinished game on the billiard table and go for a drink instead. While the two of them were at the bar, 621 walked up to the billiard table with an air of curiosity. Just before Walter was about to offer to teach them, Michigan approached them and landed a loud smack on their shoulder.
“You and me, nine-ball, first to three. What do you say, G13?” Michigan proposed with a wide grin.
621 typed into their text-to-speech device, explaining that they had never played before.
“Not a problem, I’ll teach ya!” Michigan gave them another smack on the shoulder, picked up one cue stick in each hand as if they weighed as much as toothpicks, and passed one over to 621.
“Would you look at that,” Carla commented, shooting a sly look at Walter, “those two sure get along.”
“I don’t know if that’s a good thing,” Walter replied, a little beside himself. The way Michigan explained the rules of the game in his animated voice while resetting the table, the way 621 listened and nodded while leaning against the cue stick held upright in their hands—the pair looked like an overzealous father bonding with an indulgent adult child, having reunited after being involuntarily estranged for years.
Carla studied Walter’s face with a raised eyebrow. Then, she turned away and chuckled, shaking her head. “Isn’t it awful?” she lamented, “Having a human heart, in this day and age, under our circumstances…”
After the mission to intercept the Redguns, Walter didn’t leave his seat at the control panel for a long time. Not even after LOADER 4 had been retrieved and fully docked, at which point he would usually go out into the hull and welcome his hound back.
He simply sat, and nothing more. The mission report on the central screen was automatically populated with data, as repair drones assessed the damage on the recovered AC. Across the panels in front of him, buttons and switches and signal lights blinked at him incessantly. His prosthetic arm lay inert on the central panel. His flesh-and-blood hand lay on top of his knee, tightened into a fist.
This was always going to happen, he tried to tell himself, now go get ready for the next mission. You are so close. So close.
But still, he sat in his chair, unmoving. As if the material world had disappeared around him, and there was nothing to hold onto, no friction to get himself going.
He didn’t react to the uneven footfalls in the hallway, or the loud thud. He didn’t react when the door to the control room was thrown open so hard it bounced off of the wall. He didn’t react to the smell of blood and Coral and burned silicon suddenly suffusing the room. On the screen to his side, among the security camera feed, one square was enlarged at the detection of a disturbance, as the lens pointing at this very room registered 621’s slow, halting crawl across the floor towards him.
A hand grabbed onto the armrest of his chair, and turned him around.
The face that emerged beside his knee was that of a ghost’s.
Red eyes—teary and inflamed, irises shaking, lashes coated in grease and grime—stared straight at him.
The hand that wasn’t grabbing onto the armrest raised from the floor, offering him a little metal box, tied onto the same wrist by a dirtied lanyard. 621’s text-to-speech device, with a message already typed in, yet to be played.
Mechanically, he took the trembling hand into his hands, and pressed the play button.
“I thought that if someone had to do it, it should be me. I thought it was my way to repay him and he would understand. I didn’t know how you would feel. I’m sorry. If you didn’t want me to do it you should have told me and I would have listened. I’m so sorry. There are many things I don’t understand. But I want to understand. I’m so sorry. Please don’t abandon me. Let’s get to the Coral convergence together. Please. Walter.”
The synthesized monotonous voice cut off abruptly after the last furled syllable.
By this point, 621 had collapsed into Walter’s lap. Head resting against his thighs, one free hand grasping clumsily onto his calf. Sweat-soaked hair and labored breaths. Scorched pilot suit and waves of small convulsions.
He was once again swallowed by the tides of déjà vu.
“You will pay for this one day,” Sulla said, his head of cascading white hair resting on Walter’s small lap, free hand lingering at the back of the boy’s calves.
Walter didn’t understand.
“Yes, you,” Sulla ignored his confusion, “Even you.” An IV stand bearing bags of red liquid stood beside them. Translucent tubes hung low and latched onto Sulla’s bandaged arm, like a swarm of hungry eels. “Oh, does it sadden you,” Walter could hear the crooked smile in Sulla’s voice, “to know that this is your fate?”
He nodded, hesitantly.
“You poor thing,” Sulla said, raising his head slightly to look at the young boy, sitting gingerly on a metal stool too tall for him, wide-eyed and expectant—almost appearing as if he was prepared for what was to come.
“Never had a chance to be free from your father’s sins,” Sulla drawled, teeth glinting in the cold white lamplight.
Red eyes smiling at him.
On the day Michigan died, Walter pulled 621 up from their kneeling position on the floor, and cradled them in his lap.
Their overheated pilot suit was breaking down. Blackened silicon scraps stuck to Walter’s clothes, in addition to the grease and grime, the streaking, burning blood.
But 621 looked at Walter, and smiled at him with their eyes.
How many times did he think of that scene while the corporations cut into his body and dissected his soul?
Did 621 ever think back to that moment, as they endured the unendurable on their side?
He is thinking of it now.
He doubts 621 is thinking of it now.
His AC is nearing its limits.
HAL 826. Once the bearer of his forefathers’ ambitions. Once the bearer of his ambition to end his forefathers’ legacy. Now, its corruption by the corporations shall end. Now, it will fall at the hands of his last hound—621—Raven. Just like LIGER TAIL had fallen. It feels… appropriate. Like one last thread in a tapestry. One last puzzle piece slotting into place.
This voice in 621’s head. Ayre. How long has she been there? Has she also been looking at him, observing his deeds and guessing his intentions, disembodied though she is?
What has he accomplished, anyway?
This life, these years. Feels lighter than a strand of hair, or a paper boat.
Still, at the end of it all, there is 621. His hound—no longer his hound—is looking down at him, as the husk of Xylem plummets into the atmosphere.
He wonders what their face looks like now. The serene waif, or the malevolent ghost? Perhaps a bit of both?
They might be weeping right now. Tears as caustic as in Walter’s childhood night terror.
But one day, that smile—of relief, bliss, being at home—will return to those eyes. He is sure of it.
He lowers the Coral rifle in HAL 826’s right hand. The charged energy dissipates from the widened muzzle.
Nothing of him will remain, and that is just fine.
“Look at you… 621…” he says, straining his throat, “You found… a friend.”
