When one breaks their own morals, turning their backs on what was their identity, then they are essentially dead in her eyes. All that is left is an empty husk, waiting to be collected, discarded by a heartless undertaker.

She will play that role, playing it with all the fervor of a crazed, deranged creature, until she, too, will be consumed by emptiness, forgotten by all. After all, she considers herself dead as well.

It matters not which faction she is fighting for. She never had any particular loyalty towards any society. any group, any faction, any organization. She only had herself at first, but slowly, gradually, she had individuals whom she trusted, people whom she saw. They were her supports, the liveliness in her hollow life, the ones who stayed by her side. They were the ones whom she truly could call her “friends”.

And they have left her.

Perhaps she has lost herself again. Lost, alone, with no more loyalties. Not freed and uncontrolled by anyone, but just a disabled girl, picked up by the very same ones who were her enemies, pushed by only a single purpose: to kill the only one who had accompanied her for so long.

That is her only fuel. A burning, roaring fuel, engulfing her alive, forcing her eyes to only look in one direction, to only see her target, blindly chasing him until he is dead.

She looks at her left shoulder, now reinforced with a complicated array of metal plates, gears, and overlapping wires, ending at a stump where there are still exposed wires, still attached to a machine tweaking the miniscule parts. A painful reminder of that day, forever haunting her, forcing her to push further… until she has finally achieved her goal.

Tevlaia enters, her reddish hair tied up into a bun, wearing a loose shirt and shorts. It is as if she is just a civilian in the Confederation, distanced from the war, not caring even in the slightest of the chaos and destruction so long as it doesn’t bother their personal lives. In her right hand is a mask of sorts, the surface blank and unpainted, the steel still exposed to the air. The glass eye slits, reinforced by an energy-absorption layer, are emotionless and cold, just like the mass of metal around it. There is something unnerving about the blank canvas, a sign of starting anew, reshaping the identity of one’s face.

“How was the surgery?” Tevlaia asks, looking at Kavlina’s left shoulder.

“It is successful, at the very least.”

“That’s a relief.”

Although she refuses to admit it, Tevlaia is far from simply being relieved at Kavlina’s condition. She is, in fact, quite surprised at the progress. The question is merely a cordial greeting. In fact, she has silently kept watch of her newest possession for a long while. The results are beyond her expectations. The metal seamlessly weaved, overlapped, sewed in with the muscle, melting, mingling, mixing until they are melded together, combined as one. In fact, it is not the metal that has attached itself, but the muscles themselves, exposed, bleeding, reaching, stretching to wrap themselves around the metal itself, pulling them in.

It is an unnatural sight of regeneration.

Tevlaia is glad, Kavlina’s recovery being far faster than any could’ve expected. It can be interpreted as worrying with the unknown bounds that Kavlina possesses, but Tevlaia isn’t fretting too much. She will be her pawn soon, after all. A rather difficult to control one, but one with immense potential. So long as Kavlina stays as a controlled, mechanized pawn, her pawn, then she will do everything in her power to realize that potential. That frightful potential, waiting to be unleashed by her hands.

She has underestimated the Anapadeia before, costing her one of her most competent comrades. With the monster unraveling before her eyes, she cannot ignore him any further. Despite her obvious disdain for Nasition, she is forced to conform to his vision, all to kill him. She can expect… No, she knows that he can destroy them all if he wills it to. Just as a ruthless conqueror would to the conquered.

It will only be a matter of time before he cannot be stopped.

She sets the mask to the side, resting on top of a table. “I assume you are ready to receive your new prosthetic arm,” she says. “Of course, if you aren’t ready yet, we can always wait and observe your condition until you are prepared again. It is quite a painful process.”

“I’m ready,” Kavlina says firmly. There is no sense of hesitation in her words, only a declaration of determination, lacking even the slightest hint of uneasiness or worry.

At a slight motion from Tevlaia, a machine enters, delivering a long, narrow box, secured with multiple locks. Without even waiting for the machine to set it down, Tevlaia reaches for one of her knives, and in one swift motion, destroys the locks, the pieces dropping to the ground, yet leaving the box unharmed. It is merely a show of strength, but Tevlaia suspects it’ll have little effect on Kavlina. Her eyes are on the contents of the box, and the contents only.

Inside is, quite literally, a robotic arm, the numerous metal plates that protect the core pistons and wires like skin, flexible and tough. The forearm is protected by yet another layer of nahera steel, the reflected light coursing through its surface, like a sturdy gauntlet shielding the “flesh” beneath. To the side, separated from the arm, is a single narrow blade, as long as the arm itself, aesthetically simplistic but elegant with its unpainted surface, with only the emblem of the Confederation carved into the blade itself.

The machine, sensing that the box has been opened, immediately stretches out its own arms, carefully lifting the prosthetic from the box, its claws barely touching the metals. Slowly, it attaches the arm onto Kavlina’s stump, the gears cranking, the screws moving into place. Strangely enough, there is no pain, only a little vibration as the machine makes the final tweaks, the arm finally connected to Kavlina herself, the whirring of the metal finally coming to a stop.

“Is it already done?” Kavlina asks.

“No, certainly not,” Tevlaia answers, the worry finally showing in her eyes. “There is still the calibration between the prosthetic and your nervous system. I apologize, but anaesthesia will not be available for this phase. Please, just hold on.” Tevlaia hands Kavlina a piece of cloth, stuffing it in her mouth. With a sigh, she steps back, retreating to a far corner of the room.

She has reason to be worried. Despite their advanced technology, the Confederation’s success rate on implanting a prosthetic limb is quite low. All their failures have come from the calibration process, the process where the nervous system will truly be “connected” with the new limb, treating it as its own, as flesh and bone. Yet for various reasons, too many of their soldiers have been permanently damaged from this process alone. Some were more lucky, losing only the robotic parts already installed. Others less so, further paralyzing other parts of the body, losing physical or cognitive functions. For a pawn who wields such potential, Kavlina cannot fail here, yet Tevlaia can only watch, wishing, hoping that it will succeed.

And wishes are always just a reliance on luck and fortune.

The screams begin, barely muffled by the cloth. Tevlaia has heard of many of these screams, resembling one in desperate, dying pain, unable to even absorb some of the pain. Sweat pours down from Kavlina’s face, dampening her clothing. Her entire body is shaking, twitching uncontrollably, her breathing no more than shallow wheezing. Her nails dig deep into her thighs, scratching them back and forth, blood squirming out from the new wounds. Tears constantly stream from her eyes, mixed and dyed with blood. Despite her best efforts to escape from the chair, the machine holds her still, her strength unable to even budge it a little. Kavlina can only sit and suffer, her nerves overloaded, rendering her essentially paralyzed for the duration of the process.

Her legs soaked in blood, Kavlina now begins tugging fiercely at her hair. Her messy hair is a tangled mess, poking her eyelids, trapped like a web of knots.

But she must hold on. She imagines the day when it is over, when Avalel’s head is in her hands, his wretched face now dead and gone. Her mission complete, she will drive her own blade through her body, tearing apart her intestines, her torso, her lungs. She will die as the last of the three, completely forgotten by the world.

But at least in some afterlife they will be together, as the three friends, again. She imagines Avalel delivering a simple meal, the food a blessing to their mouths. She imagines Tarak’s laughs and jokes, so joyful and filled with energy. In a world without war, they will run around freely as young adolescents, innocent and pure, playing and joking around, just as they had before. They will, for once, truly be happy. Only that they will be dead.

The braid tied by Avalel, somehow still intact until now, breaks, a tuft of long, silky, smooth dark hair falling to the floor. The symbol of their bond, their four-year-old friendship, broken from the merciless shocks of energy, shattering her mind like glass.

The memories flash before Kavlina’s eyes, appearing only for a moment before they abruptly fade away from her mind. The cooking, the brief afternoon with Rehlen and Sehlen, the battles she fought with Avalel and Tarak, the dorm in Thille, the Anapadeia, the smiling face of Avalel, the narrow eyes of Tarak… They all disappear, leaving only the will for vengeance, for reasons that she does not know why now. Her memories have been tampered, erased, replaced only with a single scene: Avalel, the Anapadeia in his hands, piercing Tarak’s body, their figures already blurred, their faces barely recognizable.

Kill Avalel. That is all she can think of, her former logic and reason now gone with her sane mind. The pain isn’t that bad now. She can feel the individual gears in her arm moving, her fingers shifting a little. Her vision has tunneled. In her eyes, she can only see Avalel, and one day, she’ll kill him herself. She has already forgotten who he is, only that he is an enemy, a despicable villain that she will destroy with her own hands.

The price for her arm is not anything monetary or material, but her own free will.

Her robotic arm twitches. Immediately, the machine stops, the sounds dying down.The joints move at first awkwardly, but eventually, they move just like a normal arm, Kavlina already familiarizing herself with the robotic fingers. In a sense, she is reborn, her memories of the past foggy, if not already gone. Her brain, much like a robot receiving a single command, has only one thought: to kill Avalel.

“It is done.” Kavlina’s voice is monotone, lacking any sort of relief or exhaustion. Her legs quake a little as she stands, but she quickly makes her way to Tevlaia, ignoring her disgusting self. The new arm moves about, adjusting to its new owner, but Kavlina has already forgotten how or why she has received that arm. There is only one command: to kill Avalel.

“Kavlina…” Tevlaia begins, but Kavlina promptly ignores her, reaching for the mask on the table. Kavlina does not know what it is for or why it is here, but she senses it is hers, the metal appealing to the eye.

She dips her index finger into her wound on her thigh, acquiring a good amount of blood, rich in color. There is no pain to be felt. In a horrific artistic fashion, she crudely smudges the mask with a single streak of blood on either eye slit, as if it resembles one’s eyes being slashed away, rendered useless and dead.

Without even waiting for Tevlaia’s response, Kavlina brings the mask to her face, concealing her beautiful features with the bland sheet of metal. Pshhhh… The mask adjusts itself, creating an airtight space inside with only the air entering from a thin, tall filter in front of the nose and mouth. With the naturally tall and lean figure of Kavlina, she is like a newly created humanoid robot, her mind already destroyed, becoming a true mindless pawn.

She breathes, feeling the air coming into the mask. It’s quite comfortable. She has already adjusted to her new arm, the joints all working as intended. Looking at Tevlaia, she sees not a former enemy and rescuer of her life, but her superior in command, guiding her to kill Avalel, wherever he may be.

“Kavlina, at your service,” she says.

Tevlaia is afraid.