“Every cricket must known its hearth.”

- Russian saying.

Viktor shrugged. The outline of his body began to blur, as if seen beneath water, and the Chassis faded from sight. Another invisible sigh went through the crowd. Martin mused: did that mean that Viktor had made it invisible, or banished it to whatever place Chassis went when nobody wore them?

“Excellent. Now that’ve taken each other’s measures, here comes to the syllabus. The first module will be done by the end of September…”

Martin zoned out. He was still excited to be here, and a bit surprised by the confrontation he had just witnesses…but a syllabus was a syllabus. It had to count as some sort of achievement, turning a module about ‘rapid flight responses’ into something dull. At 20 years of age, he was far too old to hear another recitation of a schedule he barely paid attention to. But…he wondered what their instructor would do to a student that wasn’t paying attention. He fixed his face in a mask of intense concentration.

He punched in a series of buttons on the pad, and it began to record.

That left him free. He began searching the public profiles, searching on Russia, different variations of the word ‘YKOK’ and ‘Solhesin’.

He was soon rewarded. He glanced up, placing the pad at an angle so that he might pay attention to the lecture while simultaneously read other articles.

An article took up the better part of the space of the pad’s screen. The translation might not be a 100%, but it sure was eye-catching. ‘SERENA SMILER APPPREHENDS YOUNG CRIMINAL’.

He went on searching, looking up back the on-going lecture.

Another headline read:’VIKTOR SOLZHENITSYN: MONSTER, OR TROUBLED TEEN.

As he skimmed the various articles, certain phrases jumped at him.

“…the orphan had made a lucrative living scavenging the area of Ukok Burning…”

A picture then. Martin glanced up, comparing the man before him, with the one in the photo. Viktor Solzhenitsyn stood in a plaza, his Chassis fully expressed. The photo had been taken from behind, and at an angle, so his face stood in profile. The feathers pointed in different directions and the beak of the mask was open. There was something defiant in the way the stood. The ground was broken in a wide circle around him, and there were police-officers beyond that circle. The photo was blurry, but the faces’ of the officers were stiff and wooden.

Another section of another article jumped at him.

“…you’re all just a bunch of hypocrites. Ask the arcology administrators the lengths to which they’ve gone. We fight the Host because they’re monsters. But you have to wonder, when does the dragonslayers become the dragons they’ve hunted?”

The second photo…A Chassis in feathers, one Martin had just seen. Holding another Proxy, this one in the form of a bear, whose armor had been torn and savaged.

It all served to paint an image, but the way Viktor had stood up when their instructor had teleported Renaldo…that tone of voice spoke to a grudge, to pain kept and held.

There was something here, Martin thought. Something he had missed.

One article, titled ‘WHAT HAPPENED IN ALTAI ARCOLOGY?’ had a timeline that suggested…something.

“1) 2083, Solzhenitsyn begins to makes his living on the plains of Ukok, surveying the old battlefield for parts, 2) 2090, he shows up at the local Bureau of Administration with a Chassis, 3) the tests were unanimous, confirming that the child was a Proxy, 4) when offered an Access to the Altai Arcology, Solzhenitsyn supposedly laughed, citing his comforts in the provincial camps 5) 2093 a series of blackouts occur in the region, 6) Solzhenitsyn consequently fights his way through a smaller habitat in the Altai Arcology, injuring six Proxies, before being apprehended by Serena Smiler, the victor of the infamous Barrowblack Campaign.”

The dry words created the impression of someone happy. Martin looked at the man before him. If they were of an age… Martin did the math. He would have begun to make his living on that old battlefield when he was 8. At that time, Martin’s parents were still alive. In that time the trajectory of his future had been stable. He wondered if Viktor Solzhenitsyn had ever experienced such stability.