“Haven’t seen you in years, Cristobo,” ughed Maxim Puchkov, a heavy man in his early sixties.

  Time hadn’t left a single bck strand in his formerly brown hair, and he’d gained weight, tiptoeing closer to being called burly. However, years of proper medical care had faded his patchwork of scars; his typically reddish eye, which had suffered from exposure to a rare oxin, had regais pristine whiteness, and his keen eyes had sed the captain.

  “I’d read the reports, but I had a hard time believing them. A issioner, really? How did you get this rank?” Cristobo surveyed the office.

  For some reason, the former sergeant in charge of the anti-New Breeds unit had abahe sunny and cozy office at the top of the police building areated to a cramped, narrow room that had once beeo store a archives. On his orders, every case in here ulled for a review, and the whipped into frenzy police force had found several hiding criminals and proved the innoce of a group of citizens, releasing them from prison against the advice of the Iigation Bureau. Maxim personally offered his ear apologies to the falsely accused and instituted several Iterna and Oathtakers’ practices to prevent such a travesty from .

  The walls bore no marks of offierit badges; instead, Maxim’s hand casually pinned up letters of gratitude from citizens, photos of his old military buddies, and dragged a full set of riot gear into the er of the small room. A gruesome shardgun with two notches left by a deceased warlord hung behind his table. The skull of the previous issioner, a woman caught embezzling funds and tampering with evidence, had been broed and welded to the office’s staff. Their gracious host didn’t disappoint. He pushed a table into the middle of the room, and bottles of vodka, steaming cusack sausages, and fresh bread awaited the guests.

  “You tell me.” Maxim shrugged. “I’m more suited to quelling riots and winning urban battles. I was thinking of spending my days toiling on the Oaksters farm and raising kids, but I wasn’t foolish enough to refuse the gig when it was offered to me.” He twirled a fi the temple. “Lemme tell you, the Iigation Bureau is queer. They’d petitioned me to assist in finding two missing agents…”

  “We have missing people?” Jaie smmed a bottle down oable. “Why wasn’t I informed? Sir, do you he aid of my troops to do a city’s wide sweep?”

  “Nah, one of the lost mbs had reported back. Apparently, they are on an undercover mission.” Maxim waved his arm and clicked gsses with the officers, gulping the alcohol down. “o see everyone again, in fih. Shame about Terrifid Margery. ’t believe Duck didn’t make it. Fuck, I’m missing the old bugger. He saved my butt more times than I t.” They held a moment of sileo honor the fallen. “Truth be told, today was the first day I felt like I knew what I was doing.”

  “Yeah, right.” Cristobo grinned.

  “No, really!” Maxim insisted. “Ensure safety, apprehend criminal elements…”

  “Apprehend?” Cristobo raised his brow. “I wasn’t aware that any of the protesters were taken in.”

  “Ain’t no one arrested them. The Dynast will have my ass grilled over bzing coals if I so much as infringe on free speech. Those bozos will be fined for public disorder, reckless driving, and littering.” The issioner yawned, ain appeared on his cheeks. Maxim had never been much of a drinker, but Cristobo was happy to see his former soldier doing well. On his table was a carefully dusted family photograph. The photo featured two smiling women, six children trying desperately to look serious, and the overjoyed issioner himself. “We caught four shooters.”

  “There will be immotions tomorrow, then,” Jaie said.

  Whore. A voice uttered inside Cristobo’s skull. His hand no longer even wavered when his ‘passenger’ offered her input. He first heard this voice after Ravager’s ‘lover’ tap, whiot only ged his lungs forever but also grew ara an near his heart. Little R, as he called this strange phantom that had taken up residen his brain, paid her rent by advid alerting the captain to potential dangers. When Bogdan and his crew bravely volunteered to repair the recyg system, she warned him about a pipe that was about to burst and spill digestive waste into the corridor.

  He came to tolerate her behavior and even visited the ander, requestio ehat Little R would stay a perma guest in his mind, after her voice began to fade. Ravager inquired if he was certain about this desire, and then she did something.

  Cristobo wasn’t sure how to prehend what he had experienced. It was as if the ander’s chambers had suddenly turned hot and a cloud of storm had enveloped him. But these lightnings didn’t scorch him; they imprinted something in his very DNA. Shortly thereafter, he visited Maxence, carefully avoiding telling him anything. After aroencephalography, the shocked doctor checked Cristobo several times, worried that the man might be suffering from epilepsy. His bio-signals spiked, far exceedia waves. Little R was sour about it, g it was wicked to prolong a natural life span.

  She despised Jaie ever siheir first meeting, cursing the officer for being ugly, unpleasant, and brutish.

  Yeah, sure, have your fill, stinking drunkard. Little R growled in his head as he drank anss of vodka. Maybe you’ll learn manners when you pass out in your vomit, shitting and pissing.

  Pot calls kettle, ssie. Cristobo thought.

  What was that, dipshit?

  Then again, being disliked by Little R meant little. She hurled insults at everyone, not sparing even the Blessed Mother. But Cristobo was wise enough to know an asset when he heard one, and having a speck of the divinity in him was inspiring. He never shared the belief in the Spirits, not fully anyway. His occasional religious gestures and words were more of a slip of the tongue. He no longer doubted the shamans.

  That cowardly bitch is no god! Little R growled.

  Just a messenger of gods. Cristobo responded, enjoying the infuriation emanating from Little R. Why are you so rude to your mom, spirit?

  Because I am aion. I should . My very presence may viote your freedom of will, fool. She, more than anyone, should know how horrible and disgusting it is to subject me to the staation to take you rumbled his inner angel.

  Well, I don’t mind you existing. Cristobo told her. As for taking the helm, we might…

  We won’t. Never. I have principles, shit for brains.

  “Nah, nobody’s going to burn,” said Maxim.

  “Eborate.” Jaie’s face hardened.

  “I will not inform the Iigation Bureau.” The issioner drank from the bottle and tapped on the bronze skull. “They fy me like that traitor, but I will not n minors to their deaths. I ut here to proted serve, not to murder and torture. The teens made a bad decision, thinking to nd a shot at the ander for clout. There will be a trial, free from the influence of the Bureau. Two-three years in a quarry will set them straight, and the whip will knoy foolish thoughts out of their heads. Gon me?”

  Cristobo tensed, preparing to order the lieutenant to ighis ht. The army and the Iigation Bureau had a long and strained history. Soldiers believed iigators to be bloodthirsty bastards who solved every inveniehrough excessive violehe iigators not only set fire to the corrupt governors but also to their families. The captain, using the Blessed Mother’s name as a shield, secretly rescued several infants and many children from such a fate.

  The Bureau believed the soldiers to be too soft and tolerating to the problems that risked turning a cut on a society into a festering wound that could risk them potentially seeing the horrors of the Extin once more iure if the rot reached high enough. Even if it was true, Cristobo opposed taking part in culling children for the crimes of their parents and regurly voted to repeal these antique ws. The time of barbarism had e and gohey had to be better than this.

  “No.” Jaie touched the sagging skin on her cheek and frowned. Her skin was loose in many pces and the color of wax. “It isn’t pretty, being engulfed in fmes. Guess you found yourself an aplice, sir.”

  “Aplices,” Cristobo corrected her, raising his gss. “Cheers to a on spirad to reunification!”

  “To serve the state!” Jaie fshed a rare, shy smile.

  Not a total bastard. Little R grumbled.

  Is that an approval in your voice? Cristobo asked slyly.

  Go die in a ditch!

  “True that!” Maxim joihem. “Jaie, I don’t mean to be a dick, but have you ever sidered visiting a surgeon to have your skin repaired? I know several; they helped me get rid of the scaly patches on my back.”

  “The nguage and culture of my people are gone, and they don’t seem to care.” Scowled Jaie. “The Sed have my hide as a bonus. I am funal and live still.”

  Bitterness. Mood shifts. Don’t trust her. Little R warned.

  The vodka speaks in her. Cristobo dismissed the worries.

  Why drink it if it turns you into a babbling ?

  Alcohol has been man’s panion for thousands of years. Cristobo raised his gss, catg electric rays on its surface. In shared times of unity, it bridges gaps between us and helps subordinates speak truthfully to their superiors. It lets us mourn and rejoice alike. It truly is a friend, if taken in moderation. How I abandon a friend?

  Self-deceiving alcoholic. Little R accused him. You itch to suckle from the bottle like a cub from a mother’s breast.

  “Irrelevant.” Jaie shook away the memories. “Sirs, we o talk seriously. ander Ravager has left, leaving a bored, wild army at our hands. I mean no disrespect,” she addressed Cristobo, who nodded amiably, “but we must formute a strategy to prevent is. I am particurly ed about the protesters. If they annoy a Wolfkin enough and blood is spilled....” She rubbed her head. “What a mess. There are also those Horde bastards. I refuse to believe that no one has heard of them; you don’t get to show from nowhere, wielding top-of-the-line onry and assaulting our settlements…”

  ****

  Welp. I am officially no lohe ugliest person on the ship. Decided Sergeant Daion, a heavily augmented member of the First Army. Till Ingo requested a New Breed test subject for a stress run of a ype of power armor, and his Excellency Outsider anded Daion to arrive in Houstad and participate irials. The Sergeant took the humiliating assig in stride. Yeah, he’d miss the glories of the current quest, but if the new battleptes are as hot shit as Ingo sold them to be, they might help him stick around for longer.

  In front of him stood a young girl who moved her meical fingers uainly, as if struggling to believe that she had arms. Prosthetic limbs had repced her arms and legs and were attached directly to her spihere were no longer any pelvis or cvicles in her worth speaking about; the surgery had removed most of her internal ans, going so far as to repce her trachea. She sat on an examination table, her head bald and every inch of her skin covered in a thick yer of scars and freshly healed incisions. Daion gave her his coat to wear.

  He saw her frightened eyes as she floated in a healing tank, and instinctively he reached into the green liquid and pulled the girl out. She thrashed and pleaded not to be seared anymore in a broken nguage of some crushed try, and Daion held her steady until his old transtor adjusted to her speech, then he seated her so the child could rex.

  “ander Ravager won’t like it.” A man in a white b coat licked his lips nervously. “She insisted for every wouo remain asleep…”

  “Well, I don’t see her or Till Ingo on board, and as the highest ranking officer, I have personally decided to remove the restraints from the pletely healthy individual to facilitate her further iion into civilized society. ander Ravager is free to direct her ire at ander Outsider, so he sp her across a field again. Okay? Great. Gd we reached an uanding. Now hop-hop away and bring the girl food and you,” he poi a female doctor, “towels, now. Why the hesitation, egghead? Haven’t you matured to motherhood yet?”

  “And you’re not overripe for it, loudmouth?” the woman snapped and hurried to the girl, gently helpio herself of the sticky liquid.

  “Nope.” Daion’s bombastic ughter filled the medical bay, eg off the wall. “Raised sixteen orphans. Let’s see if your womb ever matches that number, girlie.”

  Whether it was his rades, anders of the Dynast himself, he wasn’t afraid to speak his mind and never minced his words. New Breeds of his abilities and closeo the superiors had access to the rejuvenation iions, and this led them to bee tamer as a potential eternity stretched before them. But Daion was finite. Acrid mucus gathered in his mouth, clogging his windpipe and overwhelming his filtering system. Patches of sickly yellow hue covered his skin; he was losing hair, and his joints ached. Short of a miracle cure to heal his poisoned brain, his time was fihe sergeant came to terms that he’d shamble and break at some point. What’s the point over a natural order? His life hadn’t been that bad, aill had decades ahead of him.

  “How are you feeling?” Daion asked the kid, and the transtor repeated his words with a slightly snarling, feminine at. Soulless One from the Third had taken oask of rec the nguage and st it iabases, and no real linguist had yet corrected her mispronunciations.

  “Weird,” the girl said. She pressed a metal finger against the table and gasped. “Is this a dream? I have fingers, but I don’t feel them.”

  “You will,” Daion promised, and the girl shrank in terror. “Not like that!” For the first time in his life, he yearo be a member of another army, to have a go och who did this to these poor souls. He k and took the girl by the jaw. “Listen, the nightmare is over. Hard to believe, I know, but there will be no more pain.”

  “P-promise?” the girl whispered. Her face cked color, and there were no eyebrows over her gray eyes. She ched her hands over her chest, clutg the coat closer.

  “I swear.” Daion put a hand over his heart. “Feel scared or threatened? Call me, and I’ll arrange a meetiween the fad the ass of a creep who does it to you. How about we read a book while we wait for a te breakfast?”

  “I… I don’t know how to read,” the girl admitted. “Teo-Queen took me… She took me.”

  “About time to learn, then.” He didn’t tell her tet. There were things impossible to be banished from the memory. The creaking of rusty metal cages, the stench of rotting flesh, and the moans of dying sves haunted his dreams to this day. Daion used his traumatic past to spite himself into living the best life he could. In time, the little one would learn to do the same, but for now, she her memories, and fast. “We have a road ahead of us.” Daio go of her and gave her a pat before addressing the doctor. “Wake up the rest of the kiddies, sweetheart; the kindergarten is open. And where is the food, dammit!?”

  “Will…” Daion halted his ands and turo face the girl, who swallowed and asked, “Will I see the night queen? The one who toppled the mistress!” She crified, notig the fusion in the sergeant’s eyes.

  “Ah, you mean that stinking animal…” A fsh of anger appeared in the doctor’s eyes, and Daion ceded he was being too rude. “The great ander Ravager is not here. Doubt you’ll ever see her again; she tends to go pces.”

  “She spoke to me,” the girl stated. “The mistress tormented us, never showing mercy, and then it ended. And there was a voice that sang a beautiful but so sad song to me while someone freed me from the metal. It somehow took away the pain and gave me hope.”

  “Okay, time to learn new words,” Daion snapped his fingers, ign the girl’s obviously muddy memories. There was no way she could hear the ander. Every patient ut into a a. “No mistress. Say bitstead.”