"Klyson!" Soho ran into the room. She staggered her footing for a moment, only just realizing what she'd nearly tripped over.
"Angels…?"
Surrounding the entrance of the room were Enzo's final 13 Angels and their blood. I knelt on the floor, staring at the ground.
"What happened?!" She rushed over to my side. "Are you okay? Are you hurt?"
I shook my head. "Enzo's Angels flanked me while we pulled off the plan on the rooftops. I was distracted."
I realized in that moment a very wicked thing—Enzo had used my own ace technique against me. He'd gone along with my plan to misdirect my attention while he flanked.
It doesn't matter anymore.
"You killed these Angels?" Soho asked.
"Enzo's dead."
Her eyes widened, stuttering for a moment from what I'd said. She was speechless. "H-He died...?"
I nodded, and we sat in silence for a moment. Acknowledging the fact felt unsure and unsteady. The revelation was so sudden it didn't feel like it was real.
"The General, Overseer Michael, killed him. Pulled the plug on Enzo right before his Angels blitzed me. In a sense, he saved my life. But it was not the way I expected our battle to end."
Soho was baffled by the sight in the room. Just soon after the end of my call with Michael, I had ensured my safety by eradicating all the remaining stationary Angels.
"Why would he kill Enzo...?" Soho asked. "Wasn't Enzo their top commander, 'First'...?"
My chest suddenly felt tight after remembering the implications about his death.
"It was because he made a mistake in Michael's eyes. Michael had been watching our battle the entire time, and when Enzo chose to flank me at the cost of the rest of his Angels, Michael deemed it 'deserving of punishment.' Their ideologies didn't match, and knowing how Michael is, no wonder he wrote him off—"
"Enzo's dead!?" Soho suddenly screamed. Her burst of emotion startled me. Tears began streaming down her face as she fell to her knees. I watched as Soho sobbed into her hands.
"What's wrong?" I asked, joining her at her side. I put my hand on her shoulder to try comforting her, but I could feel her shaking.
"Why would the General do that...? Why would he do that to his top commander!?"
"He's corrupt, Soho. He's always been that way, even while I was still at A.X.A."
She turned to me, her face flushed full of red. "That doesn't justify anything!!"
I furrowed my eyebrows with concern. If anything, I was confused at Soho's emotional response to finding out that Enzo was dead. But then it hit me.
From the start, at the very beginning, Enzo was a brother figure to Soho.
I understood it now. No matter the feud that occurred, or the differences that were made along the way between siblings, that bond couldn't be severed even in the end. And those very thoughts were made clearer by Soho's following exclamations.
"I was hoping that after you beat him, Enzo could finally be humbled. I wished that he would revert back to the Enzo that I knew from back then. I thought that maybe, just maybe, he would finally see the worth in me that he was blind to all those years ago. I wanted to prove to him, more than anything, that I was never a burden to begin with..."
"But you aren't a burden, Soho. You are the reason we were able to technically beat him in that battle."
"I know." She was stern. "I knew that wholeheartedly. Which is why all the more I wanted him to witness it all. I wanted to shove it in his face—show him how much I had developed my Fractal in the time that he was gone. I wanted him to plead for forgiveness. I wanted him to say he was sorry, and that he was wrong. I wanted him to acknowledge me."
I listened to her. She was spilling her thoughts and emotions, and I understood now just how much higher the stakes were in that battle than I had originally thought. It wasn't a battle of pride, and it was more than a fight of worth. More than anything else, that battle between us and Enzo was a proving ground for Soho to find her confidence, and reconcile that bridge burned so long ago.
She needed Enzo's reassurance. There's only so much I could say to her as someone who has only been here for a small part of her life.
I pulled Soho in for a hug and wrapped my arms tightly around her. I caressed her hair and let her cry on my shoulder.
"I'm sorry, Soho. I'm sorry things didn't turn out the way we wanted it to. I know you wanted Enzo to tell you those things himself. But I can assure you, with all of the confidence in this world, that those things ran through his head before he was pulled. I know for a fact that under all that pride he had, that you and your efforts were still able to break through that image. I just know that you exceeded all of his expectations in that moment. He would have told you that."
Soho sobbed harder. Her cries were loud and they echoed down the hall. She wiped her tears all over my shirt before finally lifting her head once again. "Is that really what he would have thought, even after how much he had changed over the years...?"
I nodded.
"In another life, he would have told that to me directly, right...?"
I nodded again, wiping the tears off of her face. "In every other life, including this one right now, you would have learned that from him, directly or not."
She finally nodded along.
"Don't let his words be the only thing granting you the reassurance you need, Soho. Even my own are stale when compared to your own."
"My own...?"
"Your own thoughts. The ones that constantly doubt you in your mind. The ones that echo those words that Enzo told you long ago. At this point, it isn't him you should be proving wrong anymore. It's yourself. You should be proving yourself wrong."
"And, how...?"
I smiled. "You don't need to know how, Soho. You already did."
"What do you mean?"
"What you did up there, with all of those Angels. Think back on yourself even just months ago—would you have thought you would have ever been able to do that with your Fractal?"
She shook her head.
"Then there you go. You'd already exceeded your own expectations without knowing, and proved your own doubts wrong. That's what matters the most."
I watched as Soho's face brightened ever so slightly. A bittersweet expression. I could tell that she accepted those words, but there was still hurt and regret and—
"Anger," she suddenly said.
"Anger?"
"What I feel most right now is anger. Anger at him."
"Who?"
"That General Michael." Her hand clenched into a fist. "He deserves nothing short of suffering."
I was shocked by how quickly Soho's demeanor had changed.
"You aren't wrong."
"I know I'm not." She looked me in the eyes, and I could see a fiery determination in her I had never seen before. "I've proven myself to you, to Enzo, and even to myself. But the one in this world who continues to stay ignorant to everything is that damned General. I've never felt more compelled to prove someone wrong more than him. He must think we're all just tools!"
"That's exactly how he thinks. That's why I left that place."
"Then let's do this," Soho said. "Let's prove him wrong together. Let's show him what we're made of—what Heathen's made of."
I nodded. But unease quickly set in. I was reminded of my call with Michael just moments ago.
"On that topic, Soho, there's something you should know."
"What is it?"
"Michael revealed to me that A.X.A. knows about Heathen. They even know about Ian. We are all no longer anonymous."
"What? Really?" She looked panicked. "We have to tell Ian!"
"Even more, Michael gave me an offer. If I spilled info about Heathen, he said he would grant me a position as an Overseer."
"Seriously?! What did you say?"
"I obviously declined. But it seemed to anger Michael. He threatened all of us, saying that I'd regret my choice and that they'd throw everything they've got at us."
Soho was bewildered. It looked like she didn't know what to think. "I know I said we'd show him what Heathen was made of, but I didn't expect they'd already know about us..."
"Hasn't Ian been preparing for this kind of worst case scenario?"
"Probably with the Null," she said.
She'd reminded me of my responsibility.
"Is that our only chance of standing up against A.X.A? For me to use the Null?"
Soho nodded slowly. "I mean, there's Ian's Control and his proxy colonies, as well as Seris too."
I trembled at the thought of an all-out war between Heathen and A.X.A. With my current limbo of a mindset, I couldn't even tell who was worth more to represent. Although I rejected Michael's offer to be with A.X.A, at what cost would I pay for staying with Heathen? What outcome would make it worth fighting so hard for Heathen, when Ian has done nothing but take advantage of me until now?
Was I just going to be used as a tool, again and again, until the end?
"You also still have 90 proxies left to use," Soho said.
I pointed at a dark, wet, corner of the room. "Control is gone now. I'm Fractless all over again."
"Oh, right…" She scratched her head with embarrassment. "You were so good at using it, I forgot that you only had it temporarily."
I stood up, off my knees. "We have to go. I don't know where, but we can't stay here. Michael's going to make his next move soon."
We stepped over the fallen Angels and made our way up the stairs, returning to the surface that withheld a gruesome sight of even more casualties.
"So this is what it looked like…"
Throughout the entire battle between Enzo and I, I hadn't been able to see a single thing. I could only make out my own mental visualizations using what I sensed from my proxies. Now that I'd encountered the authentic sight of the aftermath, it'd engrained into my mind how much more brutal the fight was than I'd imagined.
"I still can't believe he's dead…"
I added to Soho's words. "I can't believe it either. Enzo was one of A.X.A.'s most valuable resources, and he was wiped off the map just like that. To Michael, anyone is disposable."
We stood there in silence as if mourning in the middle of a cemetery. It truly felt that way being surrounded with the dead as we were. Suddenly, a bright green light flashed before us, momentarily putting our sights into a daze. When our visions cleared, Seris was floating there with her hood over her face.
"You held your own against Enzo?"
I hesitated to respond at first, unknowing of how to feel about the outcome of this battle—whether it was my win or not. So I just nodded.
"Is he dead?"
I nodded again. Seris hovered towards the ground and landed in front of me, taking her hood off and revealing her aquamarine hair.
"You have my respect, Klyson Rainer. You've managed to take down one of A.X.A.'s stronger figures. Ian will be pleased to hear about this."
"Does it mean he can inherit the Null now?" Soho asked.
Seris turned away to face the horizon. "It was going to happen either way. The battle against Enzo was just an unforeseen hurdle that would determine Klyson's strength."
"And?"
"You've passed, according to Ian's standards." She turned to me. "Those questions of yours—he'd be more than willing to answer them now, I'm sure."
Tension built inside of me. "Then where is he now? I need to pass on the news."
"Of what?" Seris asked.
"Overseer Michael contacted me. Him and A.X.A. have waged war against Heathen. They're also aware of Ian's existence, his Fractal and proxy colonies, and your presence too, Seris."
Her face was surprisingly emotionally unchanged, but something about it omitted a serious quality.
"Just as Ian had expected. This is exactly why he needs you to inherit the Null as soon as possible." She motioned us over. "Join me at my side. We need to go."
"Where?" Soho asked.
"To the Sloth."
As Soho and I stepped towards her, a bright flash of green light submerged our visions into a disorienting oblivion. The world flew past me in mere moments, as I felt wind blow against my face from all directions.
What's going on?!
All I saw were blurs of green, blue, and white—the sky, the clouds, and Seris' constantly expanding spheres of green spun me around in circles. We were traveling at immeasurable speeds that I couldn't even comprehend the movement to. I was spiraling into an uncontrollable daze. Then, in a sudden, abrupt moment, it all stopped. I was standing at the bottom of a massive green sphere.
Am I inside of Seris' Fractal right now?
I looked around, noticing Soho at my side regathering herself after that bizarre trip. As she looked ahead of us, I saw her eyes suddenly widen with shock. She immediately dropped to the floor on a knee with her head down.
"Soho?" I turned to face where she was looking, and to my surprise, an elderly man stood at the opposite end of the sphere.
"Kneel."
I immediately dropped to my knee upon his request. Then, I finally realized that it was Ian.