Aetheral Space

Chapter 325:12.6: I Am A Graveyard

When Annatrice del Sed was five years old, she did not own a teddy bear.

Her caretaker found her with it anyway, hiding in an alcove. It took them no time at all. There were probably security cameras everywhere in the Sed, but back then Annatrice just assumed that the caretakers knew everything. For the children of the Sed, the masters of their tiny world might as well have been God.

"Who are you?" the caretaker asked her. Their eyes were cold, clinical, like they were looking down a microscope.

Annatrice said what she foolishly assumed was the truth. "Annatrice."

An open-handed slap.

"This belongs to Sally," the caretaker explained, snatching the toy away from her.

There were six of them living in that little dormitory. Annatrice, Sally, Trace, March, Rachael and Cal. Annatrice hadn’t known that the toy had belonged to Sally. Nobody had told her. But why would they?

When she sat down to eat at the canteen, the caretaker each time would appear again.

"Who are you?" the caretaker would ask her.

Again, she would answer wrong. "Annatrice."

A kick to the gut.

"This food belongs to Trace," the caretaker explained, snatching the tray away from her.

It took her time and pain to realize the correct answer. When the caretaker found her with the teddy bear again, in a new hiding place, they asked the question -- the usual prelude to a beating. But the girl understood now.

"Who are you?" the caretaker asked.

"Sally," she replied.

Without another word, the caretaker left the girl to her playtime. It was like she’d discovered some magic spell. When she gave her name as Trace in the canteen, she’d be given warm food, not the stale leftovers she’d become accustomed to. When she gave her name as March at lights-out, she’d be allowed to sleep in a bed, not on the cold floor.

The solution had been so simple she couldn’t quite believe it.

One day, the caretaker came again as she played with the teddy bear. "Who are you?" they asked.

She’d known the answer now, and gave it proudly, hugging the thing to her chest. "Sally."

"And what is your favourite colour, Sally?" the caretaker asked.

The girl had blinked, confidence replaced by ignorant terror in that one moment. She didn’t know the answer. "R-Red?"

A punch to the nose.

It had been a painful lesson, but correcting it was easy enough. Soon enough, she had learned Sally’s favourite colour -- green -- for playtime and Trace’s favourite food -- beans -- for lunch. Soon enough, those were her favourite colour and her favourite food, but that was only natural. They were the things that kept her safe.

But the questions grew harder.

Soon she had to answer from deeper levels of understanding, questions about more intimate matters. Fears, hopes, dreams, memories. The punishments grew harsher accordingly: an incorrect answer could mean a severe beating, or days in isolation. Empathy was nourished as a survival trait -- the survival trait. Her eyes grew ever more adept, and her ears more inquisitive.

Every waking moment was spent observing these people, knowing them, so she could be them. Nothing about them could be allowed to escape her attention.

Once she could answer those questions perfectly, they were replaced with the tests. Long sheets of questions she had to answer in the exact same way her fellows had, down to the way they wrote their names at the top. All of it was measured down to the centimeter. Even with the surgeries to help her along, that gauntlet took her months to clear -- by the time she had earned the right to eat properly again, she looked like a skeleton.

The tests were not the end. There was always a new level of perfection to be pursued. Soon enough, they put sensors on her head, verifying even her subconscious reactions to stimuli. If she reacted incorrectly -- if she forgot who she was meant to be -- the punishment was so bad she still had nightmares about it to this day.

But she did it. She did it. She did it so well she could become any person at a moment’s notice. Everyone was so proud of Sally, Trace, March, Rachael and Cal. They told them all the time, whenever she brought them out.

Toys. Food. Sleep. Safety.

Once she figured it out, the answer was so obvious it made her feel stupid. Why had it taken her so long to understand? It wasn’t that those things hadn’t belonged to Annatrice. It was that those things couldn’t belong to Annatrice. Annatrice didn’t exist. That was just the absence of a real person, which she had mistaken for a ’self’.

Funnily enough, she also realized that -- even though she studied them thoroughly -- she hadn’t actually spoken to any of those people in years. Not to Sally, Trace, March, Rachael or Cal. But she guessed that made sense.

Only freaks talked to themselves, after all.

She’d thought her mistake had been corrected with that realization, but it was only years later that she truly comprehended the depths of her misunderstanding.

Over the course of her training, she had become a darling to the re

Who was he? Who was… she?

They kept asking that damn question.

"Shut up!" Annatrice del Sed roared, her eyes bulging out of her sockets, her hand snapping to her sheathed blade. "Ego Emulation -- Nigen Rush!"

Whatever Annatrice had intended to do, it was clearly too much for her.

The moment she began to move with that impossible speed, the back of her suit exploded outwards in a burst of sparks and wires, fragments of bloody shrapnel raining out onto the ground. She staggered backwards, mouth forced open by the pain, gasping for air. Then, her body constricted like a statue, she collapsed back onto the ravaged ground.

There she lay, eyelids fluttering incoherently, wordless murmurs pouring from her lips. A brain in revolution against itself.

Bruno watched it all, and Serena watched it all. Their gaze was downcast. Even though this girl had tried to kill them, they took no joy at all in what they had just seen. Witnessing a consciousness disintegrate like that…

…they knew that, given the tiniest of adjustments to their circumstances, that could have been them.

Still… they had a job to do. Now that Bruno had defeated his target, he had to move on and back up the others. Ruth and Rex would have headed straight for the receiver tower, so his best bet was to make his way there as well. He took a single step back from the unconscious girl.

"Sorry," he muttered.

It wasn’t like anything he could say would make anything better. Without another word, he turned on his heel and ran off into the night. His footsteps slowly faded away… until that space was filled only with the sound of Annatrice del Sed’s delirious mumbling.

A minute later, he came running back. With a surly look on his face, he picked up the girl and slung her over his shoulder.

"There," he complained to himself, grimacing. "Happy now?"

Then he ran off into the night.

The man whistled quietly to himself, enjoying the show.

Far above, high in the sky yet just inside the dome, there hovered a hulking humanoid figure. This was not a person. It contained a person, but the shape itself was of an Armoured Chassis, a suit of advanced heavy armour capable of turning a normal human into a titan of battle -- and never mind what it could do with an Aether-user. This particular model was wide and stocky, spherical head coated with dark lenses that made it look like it was wearing giant sunglasses.

Inside the cockpit, the Special Officer they called Blue leaned forward and took a sip of Energo from the waiting straw before him. This Chassis wasn’t exactly top of the line, but the refreshment module was pretty nifty. You just didn’t get this kind of customization with the new Halcyon Gigas models. Besides, he’d heard that this was the same kind of Chassis that the guy they called Appointment used -- and if it was good enough for a legend like that, it was good enough for Blue.

He didn’t know what was going on -- these randos were attacking the Provvidenza for some reason -- but he knew what he was being paid for. As soon as he got the all-clear from his client…

…he was to reduce this place to rubble and soot.