“Hello, doctor. Such a shame we couldn’t come to an agreement. I hope the new accommodations aren’t too claustrophobic for you.”

  “Oh, screw off, warmongering bitch. You know I won’t help you, so why waste your time?”

  “Oh, of course you won’t help me. But I had to wonder about whether you’d do it for her sake. She is quite sick, you see. Unless you could find a solution to this problem instead, of course.”

  “Don’t take me for a fool. She’s immune. I’m not falling for the act.”

  “I’ll let you see her as proof. Then, we’ll revisit your conditions.”

  -A Conversation, Hidden Facility SER Uriel Point (Undated)

  Mari:

  “Hello Marielle. I hope this message finds you well.” The voice was crisp and clear, and Mari frowned as she approached the hidden terminal. “Now that you’ve awoken and received your memories, I hope all of your belongings have survived the test of time to your standards.”

  Mari finally reached the screen in time to see the image of an adult woman who appeared to be in her thirties, smiling in her direction from the display. The next moment, the image shifted to reveal a very quaint slide presentation that would allow her to input a keystroke when she was ready to continue.

  Oddly enough, the terminal seemed a little out of date for Sylpharien tech. It had a common enough digital screen, but the keyboard was a little oldschool. It reminded her more of some of Marielle’s memories from the WWIII era.

  “All of this has English subtitles, too. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised. They probably scanned the entire ship’s log.” Mari thought she’d be translating for Kris and Alynne, but both of them clearly still were recovering from their hearing being abused by the gunshot. She winced as she mouthed an apology to Kris before turning back to the screen.

  “I am certain you’re quite confused right now. It all must be very sudden, but I’m not willing to compose extra parts of this just to smooth over your feelings.” The woman’s voice was callous and bored, but as the slide progressed, a few lines of text appeared, not that they mattered, since everything was narrated.

  “Welcome to Sylpharia. You are currently on the southern hemisphere’s smallest proper continent. We have chosen you to be the guardian of what remains of our world and the weak people left behind after the collapse.”

  “Uh, yeah, no thanks.” Kris—still rubbing her ears, but clearly getting some hearing back—was looking at the terminal skeptically, speaking with a tone of annoyance. “Having this pushed on you is pretty dumb. Like, you get to pick how you live, not some recording.”

  Mari gave a soft chuckle in agreement.

  “Kris, you may want to cast fewer stones from your glass house.” Mari smiled at her playfully. “Who was it who made unilateral decisions that affect my life first?”

  Kris’ face twisted in an affronted expression, and she put her hands on her hips, about to retort, but Mari got ahead of her instead.

  “No, I’m sorry. That probably crossed a line. Still, we need to talk about things when we finally have the time to do so. I do like you, so don’t sink into negative thoughts about it, just know that we have a lot of things to figure out. For now, what’s done is done, and you’re lucky you’re cute.” Mari finished off with a playful verbal jab. She really hoped she was doing a decent job of not tormenting Kris’ emotions too much while not forcing the issue while they weren’t alone.

  Alynne cleared her throat, gesturing at the console. “Shall we see what their insane rationale is?”

  Mari nodded and hit a very Earthly enter key on the keyboard.

  “While you may be keen to run away from this duty we’ve imposed upon you, please have a look at what we’ve got to offer.” The display shifted to reveal a strange spider-like thing that blended machinery and biology. “These are the solution. The cure. We have made you into an experimental Afflicted. Able to overwrite the disease with a neutralized, less detrimental variant. Meanwhile, these tiny machines are the method to cure that affliction. And yet, they are also your strongest weapon. Your most versatile tool.”

  At that, a vial of green liquid emerged from the machine, then cracked open as the fluid stopped being so liquid. It seemed to just disperse into the air like a faint mist before fading.

  “Congratulations, you no longer need to worry about your blood infecting others. These microscopic machines—nanites, if you like—will convert the disease into whatever physical objects you desire. They can even cleanse your afflicted blood within your body. The question is whether you’ll rid yourself of it entirely, or if you’ll maintain the disease to keep your grip on this power.” The voice almost sounded like it was teasing her. As if the woman who’d created the display already knew what she’d choose.

  “But why wouldn’t they just mass produce these things and use them to cure the disease entirely everywhere?” Mari frowned, having spoken just before the issues began to pile up in her head. Simply allowing anyone to create as many things as they wanted? A widespread utility of that sort might be just as problematic when people tried to keep that power instead of fixing the problem it was meant for. She sighed, shaking her head.

  “These already existed. Not in the same capacity, but they converted the disease into rich gases that would help local wildlife. These, in particular, are some new type. Something more advanced, maybe. But there are historical records of automated machines that broke down the disease.” Alynne seemed very thoughtful, or perhaps excited. That made sense, given how she worked with technology so much.

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  “Next up,” the slide continued on its own, “we have your security clearance. Functionally, you’ll have the same permissions as the former Emperor himself.”

  The screen shifted back to the woman’s face, which had vanished earlier, and everyone else froze in recognition.

  “That’s always disturbing to see.” Alynne was the first to speak up, eyes narrowed in a promise of violent intentions.

  “Yeah, freaky, isn’t it? I found a few images of her while studying some old books.” Kris recovered quickly, nodding sagely.

  On the screen, the display was showing a solidly built athletic sort of woman. Powerful legs and shoulders that screamed of a lifetime of exercise. She was also blonde with vibrant blue eyes. The overall features, though… the angle of her nose and the slight tilt of her lips when she smiled on the screen? The woman could’ve been a close family member of Constance, Kris’ stepmother.

  “You know who this is?” Mari couldn’t help but lean a little closer to figure out if she knew the woman’s appearance beyond the resemblance to their acquaintance.

  “Lyna Verity Regula. First Empress of Sylpharia. She was born before any of the slave races had been created. According to historical texts, she personally fought on the main war front of every conflict with every nation they conquered during their global expansion. A human who was referenced across eight centuries of history. Living that long is quite impossible prior to the creation of the Sylpharien race.

  “But then, after she solidified the Empire, she was recorded as deceased with no cause. The creepy part is that she shows up as the default appearance of the Operating Systems of any Imperial equipment. A sort of undying image of their ‘eternal queen’ despite being long dead.”

  Mari crossed her arms. She could think of three paths for a person to possibly live that long. One of those would allow someone to not age at all. Not that she was willing to share that information with Alynne around. She might not even trust Kris with those details.

  “Why does she resemble Constance so much?” Mari finally asked.

  “It’s for the same reason as the terminals all using her image. Sylphariens are largely bio-engineered. While some define appearances they prefer, the frequency at which parents in the Empire would choose the appearance of the eternal queen? And then make a few changes just to not be disrespectful, if I had to guess.” Mari didn’t trust a word of what Alynne rattled off. It sounded too rehearsed. The strange part was that none of the explanations for such a lie served a logical purpose.

  “That is creepy.” Kris just brushes past it, as if she’s used to some song and dance only the pair are a part of.

  “Indeed. You two should be glad to not have ever had to handle an investigation of someone with roughly those features. You’d have thousands of suspects if you only had a description to go on.”

  “It can be easy to forget you used to be an Investigator in your home city before the revolution, Alynne.” Kris smiled over at the older woman warmly. “We should continue, though.”

  Mari dragged her fingers through her hair, feeling the sweat that had built up. With a sigh, she gave up on thinking over weird PR scripts, as well as pushing her body more for the day, so she retrieved her wheelchair. Then they continued the presentation.

  “Foremost among your clearance access will be various containment areas set up by the empire when it was still new. Back then, our biggest concern was the spread of the bioweapon, as well as the mutations that inevitably arose. This pathogen targets the cellular structure of the body, and then it halts the effects of aging in their tracks before setting the Afflicted to spreading the condition. However, it hopped species more than a few times. It took immense resources to contain those mutations.”

  Mari already didn’t like where things were going. Her suspicions were immediately confirmed.

  “This is the reason for genetic research in the empire. We created people who are naturally entirely unaffected, barring another mutation. This is also why we conquered the world. No other nation was planning to halt the spread before it got out of hand. We were forced to take matters into our own hands and then alter the genetics of the people of each region to prevent the endless cycle.”

  Alynne’s reaction was the most visceral. She had her fists clenched so tight that her hands were dripping blood, and her normally calm demeanor fled entirely as she slammed her fist against the stone wall. Whatever words she shouted were in a language Mari didn’t recognize. Her voice was tinged with disbelief and anger.

  “We couldn’t halt the spread of every mutation. We tried to restrict them to limited regions where we could. Electromagnetic fields that split the world into pieces to prevent overland travel. Hot zones were continually restrained to be smaller and smaller. All measures taken until the first version of the Solution. Tiny machines that could use the original variant of the bioweapon to rebuild the environments that had been devastated.

  “Then, we had to adapt the Solution to work on the mutated strains. We had a problem, though. One strain ended up with rapid reproduction. Observe.”

  The screen flickered, and the video that began was showing a strange black cloud descending in the sunset, swarming towards a city. People could be seen moving around the town, blissfully unaware of the tornado approaching from the sky. On a fairly cloudless day, no less.

  Then the cloud hit the city.

  That was when the blood began to spray through the air. The quality wasn’t good enough to see what had happened, but the people of the city were torn through and slaughtered by the dozens.

  The only exceptions were areas where light was strongest. The cloud stuck to the darkness, never fully exposing itself under proper illumination.

  The video changed, and instead showed an outdoor concert performance. A large open space with bright lights all around was entirely surrounded by the flitting shapes of some sort of bird. Until the lights all went out at once, something having cut off the power.

  Mari closed her eyes, unable to force herself to watch a massacre.

  “This strain reproduces faster than our machines could contain it. Eventually, we fenced them in with frequency fields. The problem is that the global networks are now offline. Without any early warning systems active, who knows when the fields might fail? Do you wish to wait for cities to begin to fall before addressing this crisis?”

  Then, the presentation ended without fanfare. All three of them were silent.

  Mari turned her thoughts inwards, visiting her Mindscape to confer with Marielle.

  “What the hell do I do? This is insane. I’m barely even able to walk and they want me to be a soldier to protect their world? A world they screwed up in the first place!”

  “That doesn’t matter anymore, does it? After all, you live here now. Your friends and family live here. They knew you wouldn’t abandon them.” Marielle wasn’t so good at being comforting, but she was a dutiful woman who generally always got down to brass tacks.

  With a shuddering breath, she returned to reality without reply, then looked at a shell-shocked Kris with a grim expression.

  Her friend shook her head, taking a step away from her, a knowing look on her face.

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