Aren explained what happened in the battle. He described how he obtained the lightning blade — or rather, the fact that he realized he always had it — but he did not mention Priscilla or how he obtained it in the first place. No one even asked about it, either. They were simply happy that Aren finally obtained the most crucial component of their survival.

Fang in particular was the most impressed with both the outcome and the fact that Aren obtained his class weapon. Not only because it likely saved the group a lot of money, but also because this was likely the advantage they were looking for against the adventurers.

Even Ame and Estella seemed extremely interested in Aren’s story. Aren understood why Ame was interested, but he was not quite sure about Estella. Estella didn’t seem to pursue military or combat achievements — she just wanted to live a simple life that did not ruin anyone else’s.

After Aren concluded his story, the group told him what happened while he was fighting Eto. Aren was right in thinking that the howlers were not trying to kill them, but were rather running from the monster. Strangely enough, when it seemed like the sky would collapse on their heads, and lightning strike after lightning strike discharged into Cassandra’s firewall, adventurers and howlers dove for cover, one next to the other. Cassandra even described how she hugged a howler, not thinking clearly at the moment.

It turns out, Aren underestimated how loud and terrorizing the weapon was. It made even monsters cower and hide. Not that he felt that was a particularly useful thing. Actually, he felt that it was a bit of the opposite. With that kind of effect comes a lot of attention.

When it was all over, the howlers departed the area, and the group decided to move deeper and reached the first stratum of the Labyrinth. The only two reasons why they moved was because the resting point was not even recognizable anymore, and for some reason, they were getting sick while near it. Well, at least now they knew the reason.

The fact that Aren gave them radiation poisoning was taken as one might expect from something happening in a game. No one cared about the negatives. They were excited that he could do that, and, more importantly, that reality was simulated so well. They never heard of something like this happening before. Sure, world-ending techniques and things like that surely exist — entire cities were annihilated before with one technique — but radiation was an absurd idea.

After an hour of talking, they only got sicker and sicker while Cassandra assured them that they were actually getting better. In the end, Cassandra cast a healing spell that would repair their bodies even while they were offline, albeit very slowly, and they decided to log off.

___

This time, waking up, Arnel did not have any strange dreams. He had come to expect them by now. There always had to be something to remind him of what happened to him since that accident who-knows-how-many days ago. It all seemed like a bad dream — a real-life month melted together into a singular moment of agony, fear for his life, and desperation.

In hindsight, he realized that he acted a bit rashly, making many assumptions about things he did not understand. For example, Ermin Saltzer. Arnel had always imagined that the man had ulterior motives — at one point even suspecting him to have put Leviathan in his head on purpose. Ermin Saltzer had a strange presence to him — that of a mad scientist. But now, when Arnel thought about it, was that how things truly were, or just how Arnel wanted to see them?

And what happened to that army officer? What even was his name again? Voyrin? He came to express his apologies to Arnel, and Arnel had that strange premonition. Was any of that real, or was it the morphine?

Usually, Arnel would dream of Mars, and it is no wonder why. His room had many pictures of the red planet, including both early and modern photos of the surface of the planet — which was not red at all. Even a few diagrams of the Terraformer Seeds sent to the planet were on his wall, and the kind of settlements they would produce for the first Colonists, which were already on the planet.

Now that Arnel had friends, and felt what being social was like, he thought that being a Colonist was not such a great idea anymore. Colonists must be pretty lonely up there. All they do is research and excavate rocks and minerals, and who knows what else.

The video system blasted some news about the recent reactor failure as Arnel walked into the living room, with the help of his crutches.

“Hey, Thomas,” he greeted the man, and then the woman next to him. “Isobell.”

“Hey, bud,” Thomas responded, throwing an arm over the couch.

Isobell just nodded to Arnel.

Arnel joined them on the couch and looked at the panel on the wall that just then switched to the internal weather and climate report for the Arcology.

“You are up early,” Thomas said. “Bored of Singularity, yet?”

Arnel smiled. “Just taking a break, really. Ran into some problems.”

Thomas chuckled. “I bet. You must be keeping quite an exploit diary.”

“What do you mean?” Arnel asked.

“You know what I mean,” Thomas said, winking.

“I really do not, Mister Thomas.”

“You don’t tell girls that you are the first human in existence to have a Mind-Machine Interface?” Thomas asked.

Arnel blinked. “Of course not!”

Thomas shook his head. “You are missing out, bud. I bet you’d be really popular.”

“Would not.”

“Would too.” Thomas insisted. “Isobell, what do you think?”

“Hmm…” Isobell pondered. “Yeah, I’d divorce this prick instantly, if I was anywhere close to your age.”

“Hey…” Thomas complained.

Arnel laughed. “How’s your marriage going?”

“Pretty good,” Thomas said.

“Terrible,” Isobell said at the same time.

This was a good opportunity for Arnel. “So, who are you protecting me from?” he asked.

Thomas shrugged. “No idea. Big companies, probably.”

“What do you mean?” Arnel asked.

“Well, your implant went through a lot of research and design. Not all of it was done in Sector Nine. A lot of competitors probably want to kidnap you and, well, you know.”

“And what?” Arnel asked.

Isobell discretely tried to nudge Thomas in the ribs with her elbow, but Arnel noticed it.

Not that Thomas cared about what Isobell was trying to tell him. “Well, kill you and take it. Or something. I don’t know, bud, I am just a grunt, doing grunt work. Who cares what they want?” Thomas looked away from the vid sys panel, and directly at Arnel. “If they want you, they’ll have to go through me. Simple as that.”

“Simple as that,” Arnel agreed. He idly wondered what kind of ordinance and weapons the two had in their room — which was a strange thing to think about. Why did Arnel suddenly wonder about such a thing? It seemed so unnatural to him.

“I want to ask you something if you don’t mind?” Arnel said, with a querying tone.

“Go for it,” Thomas said.

“I am trying to put together a sort of, hmm… facts about the Consolidation War thing,” Arnel said. “I am interested about a Battalion Nineteen.”

Thomas’s eyebrows shot up, and he regarded Arnel with a strange glint in his eyes. “Nineteen? Who told you about that?”

Even Isobell seemed intrigued.

Arnel shrugged. “I just overheard it. Why?”

“In the hospital?” Thomas smacked his lips and rolled his eyes. “Listen, it doesn’t exist. Forget what you heard. It’s all bullshit anyway.”

“What is?” Arnel asked, playing dumb.

“The whole thing is made up,” Thomas said. “I don’t know who filled your head with that crap, but forget about it. Kids did not win the Consolidation War, end of story.”

“Kids? Nineteen was full of kids?” Arnel asked.

“Legal adults. But if you are barely old enough to shave, you are a kid in my book,” Thomas said. “Also, a Battalion led by an AGMI in a time when even the Alpha AGI was just a line of code on some student’s computer is absurd.”

“An AGMI led the Battalion?” Arnel asked.

Thomas’s eyes widened in disbelief. “Stop, please. Don’t tell me you are buying all this? Please, don’t do this to me.”

“I am not believing or disbelieving. I am just trying to learn facts,” Arnel said.

“Here is a fact, my young protege. Every damn ground pounder that comes into the Peacekeepers makes up a new fact about the Lost Battalion, all right?” Thomas said. “Did Nineteen exist? Yes. Absolutely. They all got slaughtered. Does anyone care about truth? No. Everyone wants a fantastical story. Something outrageous and fundamentally and categorically untrue.”

Isobell frowned. “I heard from a friend, who heard from a friend, that he actually met a soldier from Nineteen.”

Thomas looked at Isobell. “What? A survivor?” Then he sighed. “Here we go…”

Isobell smirked. “I wouldn’t say living. He met the survivor in Singularity. He was still looking for the Major. Came right up to him and went like “Can you find this and this person, and tell them: Here we stood, and here we died. For the Commonwealth of Mankind. For the glory of Nineteen.”

Thomas facepalmed. “See, Arnel? That is exactly what I am talking about.”

“Yeah, that is a bit, hmm, hard to believe,” Arnel said. “Wouldn’t the survivor be a hundred years old then?”

Thomas nodded. “Exactly. What kind of hundred-year-old person would log into Singularity?”

Isobell shook her head. “It’s the ghost. It lives on. It is born again and again. In Singularity. Pretty cool, huh?”

Arnel stared at Isobell.

“I may have made some of that up,” Isobell said and chuckled. “Ah, Nineteen. I loved finding new facts about it back in the day. Thomas is serious when he says that it is an obsession we all shared at some point. It’s just the way it works in the military.” She even put air quotes around the word finding.

“So which AGMI was leading Nineteen, in this fictional, bogus story?” Arnel asked.

“No one really knows what its true designation is,” Thomas said, now fully surrendering to the idea that Arnel’s curiosity cannot be sated. “They say if you learn it, you would die. They call it the Lost Battalion because the AGMI was Lost.”

“Lost?” Arnel asked.

Thomas shrugged. “Lost, Forgotten, Who Cares.”

Isobell smiled. “I heard it was called Leviathan.”

Arnel shook to his very core when Isobell spoke the name. He went pale.

“I heard it was Bael,” Thomas said, glancing at Arnel. Surprised to see the boy’s expression, he added, “Are you all right?”

Arnel nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “Wake up sickness, I guess. I think I’ll go lie down for a bit.”

Thomas nodded.

“What do you want for dinner?” Isobell asked.

Arnel got to his feet and shrugged. “Whatever you want, Bell,” he said, using her nickname. “I am sure it will be amazing, as always.”

Isobell chuckled. “Okay.”

Arnel quickly — which was still pretty slow — retreated to his room and flopped onto his bed, staring at the ceiling.

The Lost Battalion, Leviathan, the Consolidation War. He felt like there were so many things that he had taken for granted, but were slowly turning out to be untrue and fabricated. What happened in the history of the Commonwealth? What really happened? He somehow felt that the answer to why Leviathan was with him was hiding in the real facts and history of that age.

Why would the Commonwealth — the AGMI — be lying about the past? It seemed incredulous. It seemed almost like one of those terrible, old movies with convoluted plots. It just didn’t seem right. There had to be more to it.

He wanted to find out what really happened, but who — other than AGMI — would know?

Ermin Saltzer came to mind again. In one of Arnel’s dreams, Ermin Saltzer told him that only the Directorate of Sector-9 knew about the Lost — the four missing AGMI.

Arnel glanced to the bedside table with the cybersphere lead — a tiny plastic patch meant to interface with the chip in the nape of his neck.

It was risky, and probably stupid, but strangely enough, Arnel did not feel any fear or even apprehension. It was actually the lack of these things that made him hesitate. It seemed almost natural to reach out to Ermin Saltzer and ask him about what was no doubt either a military or a national secret. What was the expected outcome? Ermin Saltzer telling him everything? No way.

If Arnel really wanted to know, then he either had to ask AGMI or he would have to get a higher citizen rank.

With a sigh, he rolled over and closed his eyes, attempting to go to sleep.