Initializing...

Reaper-type God Gier, Mark II, Unit 11, re-activating...

Error.

B.Block integrations failure.

Caution.

Foreign nanoparticles identified within blood stream.

Activating counter measures...

11 squints at the hazy halo of light above her. She thinks she’s looking through a hole in a faraway ceiling but can’t be sure. She isn’t sure of anything other than the fact that she is lying on a mountain of rubble, unable to move or recall why.

Turning her head, 11 sees vast wakes of pulverized stone and broken timber. Her immediate surroundings are illuminated by the cone of dusty light streaming down from the hole above. The light is weak, so beyond it 11 can only make out dark shapes outlining the shadows.

Unable to activate crucial systems, Gier 11.

Suggested course of action: Retreat and regroup.

Otherwise, permission to self-destruct has been granted.

“What… the hell are you talking about.” 11 sits up, breathing hard from the effort. She waits for her eyes to adjust and starts to see wreckages of barrels and wine cupboards all around. She must’ve landed in a wine cellar.

The floor collapsed under me, she thinks, remembering. The blast overpowered my defences and then…

11 springs up from out of the rubble. “The knights!” She kick-starts her scanners, forcing them to work despite the damage they’ve sustained. She remembers now, how she ran in front of the lasers and used her body to block Hikari’s attack.

But did it work?

She waits, holding her breath.

Living organisms detected in vicinity: 27.

Species: Human.

Caution: One unidentifiable target located in vicinity.

A complete layout of the headquarters building is pulled up in front of 11’s eyes, with flashing dots revealing the location any living thing inside. Two floors above her, a group of dots flash in unison, nine in total, corresponding to the group of knights who Hikari fired upon.

11 sighs in relief, and starts to climb down the mountain of debris. She moves slowly, her bare feet crunching against jagged rocks and broken concrete. Her human clothing has been melted and clings to her skin like a layer of peeling skin. 11 plucks them away, drawing in a sharp intact of breath as icy coldness stabs at the damaged flesh underneath.

The wine cellar has been largely destroyed by the falling rubble. 11 is caught surprised as she splashes ankle-deep in icy wine. The floor has been flooded. She listens, and in the stillness starts to hear the soft gulping sounds from bleeding wine barrels.

She turns on her night vision to survey the cellar. Mounds of rubble have reduced most of the space into a maze. What remains of the shelves and wine racks have all been toppled or smashed, their contents glistening in the dim light.

The air is thick with a sweet, fruity smell.

Damage report:

Chasis damage suffered: 20%

Internal systems damage suffered: 3%

Allocating Nanobots for repair….

Intense tingling spreads inside 11’s body. She tries her best to ignore the discomfort and wades through the wine, so dark and red she can’t even see her own feet, and tries to look for an exit.

Feeling her way around a large shelf, she rounds a corner and stops so abruptly she almost slips and falls.

Hikari sits on top a collapsed wine rack, holding a dark bottle and two thin glasses in her hands. Her red eyes cut through the darkness like a cat’s, deeper and redder than the spilled wine around her.

Her smile is chilling, her fangs stark white against the dark. “You’re an idiot, Aiyanee,” she says.

Mother’s voice starts to blare in 11’s ears, but it comes as a weak and distorted whimper and she can’t even make out the words.

With a flick of her thumb Hikari pops the cork of the bottle. She tosses a glass towards 11. “But it’s an idiotism that I will drink to. Sorry there’s still no coffee.”

11 snatches the glass from the air. “I’m working on that. But aren’t you too young to be drinking?” She walks over to Hikari and holds out her glass to be filled. “What are you, nine?” The liquid is such a dark shade of red it is almost purple, and 11 watches as it churns from the bottle.

“I was AGE,” Hikari replies simply. She pours herself a glass and tosses the still half-full bottle away. She makes room for 11 by shuffling a little bit down the wooden wine rack. “That was the age I was when I died, anyway. But I’ve been around for much longer than that. Too long, in fact.”

11 steps closer to the girl and leans against the smooth wood. She brings the glass to her lips and takes a long drink, letting the spiced wine flow down her throat without really tasting it. She swallows, sighs. “I really needed that.”

“The wine, or the butt-whopping?”

11 surprises herself by laughing. “Both, I guess.” She closes her eyes, listening to the scrambling and shouting from way above.

Let me just stay here, like this, a little longer.

11 hears a tiny sip, and then Hikari saying quietly, “I remember watching a movie a long time ago, where an amnesiac guy gets hit in the head and then all his memories come back to him. I think he was trying to catch a killer or something but it ended up being himself.”

“I’ve seen that one too,” 11 says. “It’s all fake though. Pre-war, people had a lot more time to be creative.”

“Yea,” says Hikair, and the both of them are silent for a long time after that. Before long 11 has finished her wine. She looks around for more, because if her mouth is busy drinking then she won’t be expected to answer any difficult questions. Expect Hikari does not ask a question.

“You remember.”

“Not all of it,” 11 admits. She feels around the darkness, finds another bottle and opens it. “There’s no doubt that the Solteria Protocol is more than we’re made to believe, but whatever the truth may be, I don’t think it concerns me anymore.”

Something like pain passes fleetingly in front of Hikari’s red eyes, though it is gone before 11 can make sure.

“Why are you so afraid to remember?” the girl asks quietly. “What are you fighting so hard to forget, oneechan, that you’d rather cast me away and remain a machine?”

11 turns to look fully at Hikari. In the dimness the girl’s skin glows a ghostly white. Her hair seems to be coated in melted silver, and her eyes, red and old, seem like they’re holding the weight of the world inside them.

“I don’t know,” 11 says, her throat tightening. “I just know that there are things I never want to know again.”

Hikari turns away and downs the rest of her wine.

Above them, men are still shouting, but the sounds of clanging armor have started to migrate through the building. 11 traces them downwards, heading closer and closer until they converge somewhere by the east wall, behind mountains of rubble.

“Whatever I was before,” she tells Hikari, “I am a God Gier now. And a God Gier’s sole purpose is to carry out the Protocol. Everything beyond that is inconsequential.” The conviction feels hollow but 11 says them anyway. If she can’t convince Hikari, maybe she can try and convince herself.

“What about your coffee shop?” Hikari counters. “What about that little yaojin you live with? And the elf you met in Oakroot? Her name was Aralyn, wasn’t it? You’ve even been using her last name. Are you saying that if both of them died, you wouldn’t grieve?”

11 trips over her words, her thoughts jumbling as they try to catch up to Hikari’s threat. “H-how do you know all that?”

Hikari waves an impatient hand through the air. “I had ghouls watching you ever since you came out of Haven. You couldn’t sense them because they aren’t considered to be alive.”

The glass in 11’s hand shatters. “You made zombies?”

The eastern wall begins to shake as the people on the other side are beginning to knock on it, clearing through the rock from their side.

“And what if I did?” Hikari says, challenging. “A vampire lord needs her army of undead. Isn’t that how all the movies we watched worked?”

Shouts burst through into the cellar with a loud crash. The mountain of rubble collapses and knights pour into the darkness towards 11 and Hikari, their armored boots splashing through the wine-flooded floor.

11 drops her voice lower. The knights only have half a yard separating them from the shelf she and Hikari are sitting on, and the distance is made only slightly longer by the maze of ceiling-high debris between them.

“I think it’s best if we never see each other again.” The words leave a bitterness in 11’s mouth, but she hangs on to them, forcing herself to taste them before spitting them out. “I can’t allow you to keep killing the people I’m supposed to protect.”

Hikari turns her head towards the ceiling, her eyes half-open as if the faint light streaming through the cracks hurts them. “I’m sorry about that, oneechan,” she says as she brings her wine glass up into one of the rays. “But I can’t survive anymore without killing. It’s one of the only things that has kept me sane over the many long years.”

Light glances off the glass to cast streaks of rainbow highlights across Hikari’s pale arms. Wordlessly, she tilts it over, letting the wine run out in a dark stream into the ocean of red below.

“I was nine years old the last time you saw me.” Hikari’s voice is a hoarse whisper and 11 has to lean in to hear her over the shouts and noises clashing through the cellar. “My heart was still beating then, but you took it with you when you left to take that cursed exam, and you never thought to give it back.”

11 opens her hand, letting the pieces of her own glass fall into the wine below. They float for a brief moment, like little stars, before sinking. She flicks her fingers and summons her nanobots back out of her, pausing the healing process to ready for another fight with Hikari

But the girl makes no move towards the shouts. “I stayed in bed all morning that day, brainstorming all the different things we could do after you came back from your exam. I thought about where we could go to celebrate, what to eat, where we could go to watch the sunset. I took my medications and drew you a card as the doctors did their stupid tests.”

Hikari looks over then, and in the shadowy dimness 11 can see two teardrops rolling down the little girl’s face. They are dark, and heavy like blood.

“I waited until the sun had set and the night came, and then when the sun rose once again and Dr. Oswald came with a ticket into Haven, I was still waiting for you.”

The name Dr. Oswald sparks a trail of pain down 11’s spine. Anger, revenge, fear; the cocktail of emotions pours down her asthopagus, choking her.

“She told me the truth but I didn’t listen.” More tears follow the first, carving red trails down Hikari’s pale cheeks. “I refused to leave the ship. I kept telling her that if I did, you wouldn’t know where to find me.”

When 11 realizes what she’s doing, her hand is already cupping Hikari’s cheek, her thumb wiping away the bloody trails.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispers. “I never wanted any of this to happen. I just wanted you to live.”

A great bang echoes through the cellar, followed by a staccato burst of loud splashing. A chunk in the stone pillar near them crumbles and a sphere of light emerges from between the gap as a squad of knights charges through.

“Show yourself, Blood Devil!” Their voices ring out as shadows skirt away from the fire of their torches. “There’s nowhere left to run!”

11 looks over at Hikari, but the girl gives no acknowledgement she’s even aware of the knights. The sphere is getting close. A few more steps and they’ll be visible. A waist-high wall of debris is the only thing standing in the way, but if any of the men looks over he’ll see them.

“It doesn’t have to end like this,” 11 says, suddenly anxious. “Hikari, if you promise not to harm another soul, I can convince Mother to spare you. We can -”

Hikari gently places her wine glass on the shelf and hops down, her feet making tiny ripples across the surface of the wine. She gives 11 a sweet smile. “I’m not giving up on you, Ai-nee,” she whispers. “Even if I have to kill every last person in the world, I will make you remember the past you wish to forget. I will make you, because you sacrificed everything for me.” She pops open her umbrella and props it over her shoulder. “I’m just going to break your heart, so you’ll remember that you have one.”

An icy hand grips 11. “Hikari,” she says weakly, “don’t do this.” She watches in helpless silence as trails of pink flower petals start to float out from inside Hikari’s umbrella, riding against tendrils of coiling black smoke. The petals cascade around Hikari’s small body; slowly at first, then increasing in speed and thickness until the little girl is covered in a swirling cyclone of pink and grey.

Then with a twirl Hikari swings her umbrella in a graceful arc, disappearing inside the smoke and flower petals.

11 does not know when exactly Hikari vanished, but after the theatrics settled she is gone.

Someone shouts. The knights pound towards 11, taking down the wall with ease. They pour into the cramped section of the cellar 11 is in, the torches they hold casting wicked shadows across the rippling floor as they surround her.

They stop when they see 11, hesitating as if unsure what they are looking at.

“Wait!”

One of the knights steps forward. He holds his torch up to 11’s face and then lets out a gasp.

“It’s her!” He turns to the other knights. “She’s the one who shielded us from the Blood Devil’s blast!” He drops to one knee straight into the wine. “Blessed be you, my lady, who is sent by the Goddesses!”

A murmur of awe stirs through the knights as more of them kneel.

“It’s Princess Hastarine!” another knight says. “The Princess has come to save us!”

“Saviour of Kesrock!” says one other. “She’s slain the Blood Devil!”

The rest of the knights join in, swearing their loyalties to the Princess.

11 plucks a stray petal out from her bangs and holds it flat in her palm. Against the obsidian black of her gloves, the petal looks so vibrant and alive she almost expects to see it burrow into her hand and sprout. But behind such an innocent thing is a force beyond her comprehension, and possibly even her capabilities.

When thou passest through the waters of heaven and the fires of arcadia…

Finally, Mother’s voice penetrates through the haze in her mind.

we will drown for thee. We will burn for thee.

11’s fist closes around the petal. She looks at the men knelt before her, their fragile souls burning so brightly in the dark as they desperately hope for a future in this chaotic and dangerous world.

A future she is responsible to give them.

“Princess!” they call out to her. “All hail Princess Hastarine!”

11 sighs. “Whoever you are, Hastarine,” she whispers as she goes to help the first knight rise, “you owe me.”