Several weeks have come to pass since the protest incident.

  The troops have nonetheless come. Some protests continued, though now smaller in number; despite declaration that the Coalition troops stationed will only be used in aid towards detection and containment of “demonic anomalies”, some are still pulled over to be used to protect certain high profile institutions.

  Criticism began moving behind closed doors, voices lowered to hush-talk behind the backs of the mighty. Satire continued to be prominent in various spaces, to which the government has since turned a blind eye; it was too much work to prosecute everyone and would send the wrong message, tarnishing their image of allowing freedom of discourse.

  The other side of the argument however is pleased with the troops’ arrival; they had heard enough of the horrors of the mysterious demons, and have no interest in dealing with the conflict on their own on their home turf. The rest of the majority either remain quiet or don’t care; the Coalition has helped bring the economy up to new heights, surely, these guys know what they’re doing.

  And so, an uneasy tension hangs in suspension.

  That gray and rainy day, Vertan once more leaves the black district with some new goods. Lym is expecting to finish repairing her navigator later that day, though a few other parts of her suit needed some tweaking and repairing. Some specific scraps of circuitboards, electronics, and wires should do; she has since proven to be able to adapt and warp these local materials to her means.

  Walking down the streets, Vertan was careful to make his steps hard to trace, taking unsurveilled alleys, and through certain buildings. It was not enough that he hid from sight, as he couldn’t always do so, but more so that he must make his steps as unreliable as possible. Mechanical eyes and securosensors watched from every corner. He wore very common and ordinary clothes, covered his face, and often changed his walking gait to throw off any conceivable patterns of recognition.

  Paying with cash only, Vertan finds himself a taxi and directs the driver to be dropped off close but not quite at his mother’s house. As with his paranoid preparedness, Vertan kept a gun hidden underneath his coat, pointed at the driver the entire ride.

  Hovercopters routinely fly through the skies now, as was the presence of armored vehicles at certain street corners. Vertan watched as he was driven past the tanks stationed or being transported elsewhere, trying not to glare at the Coalition’s “freedom fighters”. Liberation from demonic occupation, they would say.

  Another safe journey, and Vertan is dropped off. After tipping the driver generously for the long drive, Vertan walks off from his stop, safer now out here, but still keeping eyes out for anyone behind him. There will be no stop at Mother Zviedal’s residence today, and he makes the trek straight for the woods where his cabin is. During the journey, he takes the time to enjoy the fresh air, away from prying eyes and urban pollution, though this mood was soured when a Coalition warship flew overhead, reminding him that he was only in another area of the same place.

  Making his way through the thick of the forest, Vertan finally arrives at his remote cabin, and heads down the stairs, closing the swiveling stovetop behind him. Arriving in the basement, he finds Lym tinkering away at one of her suit’s damaged parts. Despite the flinchingly dangerous work, she wore no gloves nor goggles as sparks flew up and about from the tools repairing the device.

  “I got your things,” calls Vertan from across the room as he holds up his bag. “Should this be good?”

  “Yes, it should be good,” answered Lym. Her biological eye examined the contents as Vertan laid them out on the table, while her mechanical eye continued to monitor her work on the navigator.

  “You have my gratitude,” she continued.

  Vertan nodded, and headed over to a table with documents strewn about. He lays out some newspaper articles from recently, and turns on some holoscreens, once again collecting ever more data.

  “How’s your navigator going?” Vertan asks.

  “It’s done,” answered Lym.

  “Oh, really?” says Vertan, looking back over. “Since when?”

  “Just before you came back, actually. I’ve already tested it—it works. I have yet to go out and locate my gunship though, so I decided to work on other minor repairs until you come back.”

  “How needed are those fixes?”

  “Not dire, but preferable.”

  Vertan comes back over to Lym’s working table, and carefully assesses the newly fixed navigator. Tentatively holding it in his hands, Lym’s biological eye darts up to him, her mechanical eye once more observing her handiwork at hand.

  “You’re nervous,” she comments.

  “Well yeah,” replies Vertan. “I don’t want to accidentally break it after you just fixed it.”

  “It took crashing out of orbit to break it,” says Lym. “You’ll be fine.”

  “How do you work this?” asks Vertan.

  Working the rest of the repairs with one hand, she takes the navigator from Vertan with the other. With a seemingly invisible form of identification, she goes through a few audible clicks on the device before a holographic map displays in a dull red color.

  “Here, I’ve displayed it for your viewing,” she says. “Usually, we only ever view these either in our minds or visors.”

  “How advanced, I see,” Vertan mutters to himself. “I can’t read anything, but I assume this symbol stands for our current position, and this symbol is for your gunship?”

  “Correct,” replies Lym as she zooms in on the map via mental command. Vertan attempts to adjust the map, but finds that his actions are ineffectual.

  “How do I work this thing?” he asks.

  “One moment,” replies Lym. Her eye looks up for a second, seemingly shifting between different pupils, and the device gives off a beep and click. “There, I gave you access. Try it now.”

  Attempting a second time, Vertan finds that his hand motions this time indeed are able to zoom in, out, pan and rotate around different angles. Although he understood none of the language displayed, he could make out the planet’s continents and landmasses, and therefore, make quick work of where the gunship is.

  “Oh, looks like it’s about the next province over,” he says. “That’s not so bad.”

  “I saw,” replies Lym, continuing to tinker with repairs on her other half.

  “That’s rather convenient then, pretty close from where we are. We can make the trip there and back today.”

  “It does have me concerned.”

  “Really? Why’s that?”

  “It seemed to have landed much farther away when I crashed here, not close enough to be the next province over.”

  “Oh, could that mean that it was moved?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Well, moved or not, we can track it down now at least, right?”

  “Correct.”

  *****

  After Vertan had his late lunch, the two made the trek back out of the woods, and rented a local car out for the day. Though in possession of a vehicle himself, it was parked back at Mother Zviedal’s residence; much farther, and likely to be used by her on errands. Besides, he often preferred his travel to not be traced by his vehicle identification either.

  On the late afternoon drive down the stretch of highway, Vertan and Lym could begin to see the looming city on the horizon. It is a bigger, better, more developed province of Ulminh than where he lived. Though not anywhere as big as what Vertan saw on Suprima and Thoma, it was nonetheless a change of scenery starkly different from his hometown. Mammoth buildings stretched halfway up to the sky, some of which appear to float slowly through the air. Limited forms of rudimentary air traffic surrounding the city seem to begin taking place, as though the first stages of evolution seeing the beginning signs of fish in an ocean environment.

  Unbelievable, Vertan thought to himself. To think I have a weapon of mass destruction in my passenger seat.

  Lym continued to monitor the gunship’s location on her open navigator. The situation has thus become increasingly concerning. There indeed is no way that such a crash in a dense urban area would have stirred no news, destruction, or death. It had to have been moved from a rural area. From what is shown on the navigator, it seems to be that the gunship is now currently held in a hidden facility.

  Part of Vertan wonders why it would be transferred to such a populated civilian area. The reasonable answer could be that it was in the midst of being transferred to another, more secluded facility. The conspiratorial answer is that it could be used for propagandic purposes. Perhaps a “tragedy” could be staged as proof of the demonic threat.

  Closing in downtown, Vertan and Lym find the gunship to be held within a large complex. Seeing no clear entrance, Vertan continues to bring the car around the streets, attempting to find a space to park. As he does so, the drumming and chanting of numerous protestors rings from down the streets.

  Finally spotting an empty lot, Vertan and Lym step out from the vehicle and onto the street, which becomes quickly occupied by marching protestors. Ahead of them, they could see that the protestors were marching towards a tightly guarded perimeter, with many armed troops guarding the complex Vertan and Lym had just observed.

  The two soon began walking in the same direction as the crowd, though there wasn’t much space to keep distance from them.

  “This can’t be good,” comments Vertan.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  “I can see that,” responds Lym. “That’s where my gunship is.”

  “Do you think they know?”

  “Likely not. I assume they at least know something is wrong, but not what.”

  Likewise, the protestors around them chanted their pleas, calling for the removal of Coalition troops, and the unveiling of hidden secrets.

  “Hey, look!” a protestor calls out. “It’s Lym!”

  Vertan and Lym immediately turn in the direction of the voice, and find a woman pointing towards them.

  “It’s Lym!” she calls out again. “I was there at the Venii protest last month! She protected every one of us from those armed bastards, I saw it with my own eyes!”

  This information begins spreading to others surrounding her in the crowd. Vertan and Lym glance at each other; they had just arrived, and yet had already been recognized so soon. Somehow, this wasn’t accounted for.

  “No way, she’s just a single woman, you’re kidding!”

  “I swear! I saw it shared all over the media, it was insane! Legend!”

  “What, does she have superpowers or something?”

  “Who cares if she does? What matters is she’s here! She’s with us!”

  “I heard she made a deal with the devil—”

  “You know that shit ain’t real and neither are their lies!”

  “Where was she in the last few weeks of protest? We need Lym!”

  “Who is that with her?”

  “I heard he’s a hero in the Coalition!”

  “Why would he be with her? Aren’t they on opposite sides?”

  Vertan and Lym continue to press forward in spite of the unwanted attention.

  “Were they expecting me?” Lym comments.

  “What do you mean?” Vertan asks. “There’s no way they knew we were coming, right?”

  “Not what I meant. They seem to imply that they can't do anything unless I’m here.”

  “I suppose it’s the one thing they agree on for once.”

  The tension in the air continued to stew; the chanting and shouting of the protestors continued to grow louder, and the armed troops likewise began pushing back. Onlookers from the surrounding buildings look down at the streets, some of them recording the event on personal devices.

  Somewhere, a water bottle flies over the shield of an armed officer, narrowly missing his head. In retaliation, he fires back a canister of gas, striking a protester in the chest.

  “How are we supposed to retrieve your gunship through this?” asks Vertan.

  “There’s too many people,” Lym answers. “Too much risk of collateral injury if I go about it the easy way.”

  “We’ve also been recognized. I think we need to be careful about —”

  Screams and shots began to ring out. The unarmed protestors began falling to the armed troops, the survivors struggling to pull the injured to safety. The armed men rush up to beat down those that have already fallen.

  “We need to go!” shouts Vertan. “We picked a bad day, save it for another time—”

  Within a few seconds’ worth of thinking, an eternity for her, Lym had already once more rushed off in a blur and flash to come to the aid of the unarmed and reduce injury.

  Towards his left, two armed men begin approaching Vertan as he turns to face them.

  “Get out!” one of the men shouts at Vertan. “Stop resisting!”

  In a moment of instinct, Vertan flashes out his identification, a unique badge granted to him for his service during the Expeditions.

  “It’s me! I’m Vertan Zviedal!” he shouted back. “Don’t shoot! I’m a hero of the Coalition!”

  “Yeah, right!” the man retorted back. “Good fake—!”

  “Hold your fire!” a comrade next to him screams. “I read about him, idiot! This is his homeworld! Imagine the trouble we’d get into if that is him!”

  “That hobo?!” the other man shouts back. “No way he’s—”

  Taking advantage of the confusion, Vertan draws his handgun and shoots both men in the legs, sending them wailing. He begins to rush over to disarm them.

  The voices of the surrounding people just barely reach Vertan’s ear.

  “He’s got a gun!”

  “Is that really him?”

  “He’s the only one here with—!”

  Reaching for the grenade launchers from the downed men, Vertan shoots off several canisters over everyone’s heads, quickly attempting to set up a smokescreen of gas to obscure the troops’ view of the protestors. Hovercopters and skycasters watch overhead now, so while it wasn’t much, it was at least something.

  Out of the corner of his peripheral, Vertan could see Lym continue to bring the injured to safety, and repeatedly push armed troops several meters away. Bullets continue to seemingly miss their targets every single time.

  After a while, he watches as Lym disappears off behind the smoke screen. Instinctually, he presses forward and follows suit.

  Though the screen soon thinned, Vertan nonetheless had to hold his sleeve up to cover his face, his eyes teared and watering. Holding his breath, he struggled through the smog until he made it across to the other side, where armed troops and a line of tanks pointed at them.

  Lym still remained ahead of him by several meters.

  “We’re good!” Lym calls back. “There’s no one left up here!”

  “Halt!” one of them shouts through a megaphone. “Do not proceed any further, or risk retaliation!”

  “Hold your fire!” Vertan shouted. “We’re unarmed, and we are not protestors!”

  “Then identify yourself!” the megaphone operator shouts back.

  “Vertan Zviedal!” Vertan shouted as he waved his badge. “Vertan Zviedal! I was in the Expeditions!”

  “And the woman?!”

  “She’s with me!”

  Behind them as the smokescreen eventually disappeared, murmurs from the crowd began to heighten. Eyes began laying on Lym, the mysterious figure that had rushed to pull them all to safety.

  To them, it had been one thing to hear and read about the mysterious and legendary figure present at the Venii protest, but it was another otherworldly experience to witness her in the flesh, flashing across the battlefield in the blink of an eye.

  In front of them, the disarmed men continued to get up to scramble back to their comrades’ defensive position. From this distance, Vertan could just make out a looming figure, perhaps the head of their command, standing amongst them.

  A familiar crackle and beeping picks up in Vertan’s ear, almost quiet in the midst of the urban chaos.

  “Separate yourself from the demon or risk return fire!” the megaphone operator commanded.

  “What?!” Vertan shouts back, looking over to Lym.

  “Separate yourself from that demon, or risk return fire!” the operator repeated.

  Behind them, confusion continued to build up.

  “Demon?”

  “So there is a demon?”

  “Where’s the demon?”

  “What’s the demon?”

  “That woman is the demon they’re after?”

  “Why would a demon have protected us, as opposed to consuming our bodies and souls like every credible source says?”

  “We’re all still here and alive, aren’t we?”

  “How do we and they know that’s a demon?”

  “Hold your fire!” Vertan continued to shout. “Don’t shoot! We are unarmed—!”

  “Move—!”

  A shot rings out, and a high velocity round manages to slip past Lym’s fingers, bouncing and striking Vertan in his prosthetic leg, breaking it and sending him falling to the ground. He drops his badge with him.

  Looking up in shock, Vertan could see for a moment a glimpse of anger underneath Lym’s eyes as they reconfigured themselves. Her mechanical eye began to narrow and glow a brighter and more menacing red, and her pupils shifted to an all black color.

  She turns back towards the armed men, the tanks, the armored vehicles, and begins to take cautious and calculated steps forward. If she were to rush, Vertan may not be so lucky next time.

  Meanwhile in front of her, a struggle continues to take place amongst the grunts.

  “Which one of you fools shot him?!”

  “What?! That’s the anomaly?!”

  “Yes, sir! It’s giving back 100% on the Daero!”

  “But sir! We can’t shoot her! She’s just a woman!”

  “Who the hell cares?! Do it or we all die!”

  “—Fuck—!”

  “Get back!” Vertan begins shouting to everyone behind him. A few strangers attempt to help him up to safety, and he attempts to motion for them to run off.

  “Get to safety!”

  Machine-gun fire begins to send high velocity rounds straight at Lym, and everyone instinctively ducks down.

  Looking back up, they find her to be still standing, unscathed.

  A temporary eternity passes in awe amongst the crowds who witnessed the defiance of death before them.

  A tank lowers its barrel, and fires.

  Not even a step back, but in fact, a stride forwards, Lym catches the shell in her outstretched hand, and crushes it under her fist, igniting the shell into a bright explosion, the shockwave sending a tremendous beat through the air that pummeled at everyone’s internal organs. Lym’s dark robes blow back in the blast. The subsequent smoldering crater in the road revealed pipes, cables, and other infrastructure underneath.

  Everyone stares in awe at the impossible spectacle.

  “She has to be a demon!”

  “There’s no way—!”

  “But she’s still protecting us—?!”

  “How do we know that?!”

  “What if it’s real?”

  “Of course it’s real, fool!”

  “What if she’s more—?”

  “Lym! Lym! Go, Lym!”

  Lym continues to take her slow and calculated steps forwards.

  The chants begin to grow behind her. Though overall still confused, the crowds of protestors began to cheer her name.

  “Lym! Lym! Lym! We stand with Lym!”

  The people watching from the windows and balconies of the surrounding buildings soon join in.

  “Lym! Lym! Lym! We stand with Lym!”

  For a moment against the vastness of time and space, their differences settle to come to a common agreement.

  Another shot is fired; this time, rather than outright crushed, Lym sends it flying back in the same direction, destroying their defensive lines, mirroring their actions against themselves.

  Steps forward.

  Behind her, Vertan, now with a makeshift cane, has managed to organize the protestors into a controlled retreat as they bombard him with questions.

  Looking behind him, for a moment, he stares on at Lym, taking on an army by herself. There seemed to have been no hesitation, no question of duty. Only pure initiative; task, then action.

  In that moment, he felt a sign of rupture, however slight, bearing the end of the current age. He has yet to process and come to terms with these emotions.

  Up overhead, the hovercopters and skycasters continue to watch, broadcasting their narratives to the world, looking down upon the woman staring down the line of tanks, and beating them.

  Lym continued to press onwards with restraint, retaliating only when provoked. Her mind had been trained for hundreds of millions of different scenarios across millennia.

  But there was one thing she could not process;

  “Lym! Lym! Lym! We stand with Lym!”