> III <

  The corrugated sheet metal was icy beneath Natalie’s bare feet. The Winter wind pulled its frigid fingers across her skin and clawed at her ragged, dirty gown. The sickly silver eye of the moon broke through the coming clouds and casted its dim, pale glow over the rooftops of District 43. In the darkness, the oppressive noxious clouds rising from smoke stacks were blacker than ink—they foamed and withered in the frigid air. The silhouettes of shack towers rose among square factories and flat warehouses like trees of recycled garbage. Hundreds of little orange firelights glittered in these false trees and poured through the streets below like veins of molten amber blooming through obsidian. A cargo train roared overhead, bellowing its thunder into the night sky. Metal crashed against concrete. Glass shattered. Someone shouted. Natalie drew in a long breath through her nose. The air was rich with the sour sting of rotting garbage, strong alcohol, burning oil, and hot slag.

  “Nattie…?” The little voice came from behind her. She turned. Kayce was standing in the doorway of their hut, the tarp pushed aside and hanging over his shoulder. His small face was set into a frown and his eyes were half closed as he rubbed at them with the back of his hand.

  “What’s wrong, Kayce?”

  “I can’t sleep…”

  Natalie smiled and walked over to the little boy, resting a hand on his head and stroking his hair. “Can’t sleep, huh?” She knelt in front of him and wiped at some of the soot on his face with her thumb. “Would you like a bedtime story?” His eyes lit up and he nodded. Natalie stood back up. “Alright, come on. Let’s go have a bedtime story…” She took his hand and guided him back into the shack, tossing one last look at the moon over her shoulder as the approaching rain clouds swallowed it up.

  Warmth met her flesh. Her eyes fell on the tub in the far corner of the room, where the wooden support beam behind it was scored with 5 notches. Natalie smiled.

  “Tomorrow’s your birthday, you know…”

  “I know,” Kayce mumbled. He yawned and rubbed at his eyes some more.

  Natalie hid a giggle. For someone who’s having trouble sleeping, you sure don’t look like it. Kayce crashed onto one of the beanbags in the opposite corner. Natalie found her place next to him. He crawled over and put his head in her lap.

  “Let’s see…” Natalie gazed off at the ceiling. “What kind of story should we have tonight…” Her smile grew as an image began to form through the sleepy haze in her own mind. “I know! How about…The Righteous Valkyrie and the Rabid Wolf!”

  Kayce sat up. The alertness was returning to his eyes. “What’s a valky?”

  “Valkyrie,” Natalie corrected. “It’s…kind of like an angel! Like a warrior from heaven!”

  “What’s heaven?”

  Natalie giggled. “If you keep asking questions like this, we won’t get to the story!” Kayce looked at the floor. Natalie pulled him into her lap. “Heaven is a place we all go when we die.”

  “What’s it like?”

  “I don’t know, I’ve never been there. I’ve heard it’s the most beautiful place, though…streets of gold, more food than you could ever want…no one sad, no one hurting…”

  “Can’t be that good…”

  Natalie pulled away and looked at Kayce. “What makes you say that?”

  Kayce looked up at her. “It doesn’t have you.”

  Natalie smiled. “Not yet, anyways. Now, can we get on with the story?”

  >>> ||| <<<

  SKREETCH!! Metal drags over hardlight.

  The air is cold, scentless, and stagnant in the digital training arena—a bowl shape formed by cubic formations of artificial metal, floating in an eternal void.

  Natalie rises and twirls her sword as she turns. An Enforcer stands across from her, crouching low and clutching two large, curved knives. Natalie shifts her stance, cocking her arm back and lifting her blade up by her head. The Enforcer leaps at her. Natalie yells and charges forward.

  KREEE!! Metal clashes with hardlight again as the two fighters fly past each other and their blades meet between them. Natalie plants her right foot and pushes off the ground. She spins in mid air and brings her sword down. The Enforcer springs backwards. CLANG! The tip of her sword bites into the ground where it had been standing. Her opponent springs forward and swings both blades at her head. Natalie leaps out of the way, tearing her sword from the ground, then lunges again, sword aimed for her opponent’s midsection. The Enforcer sidesteps. Natalie overbalances. A fist connects with her back and drives her into the ground. Pain forces a gasp from her lungs. Black dots sparkle in her vision.

  She staggers back to her feet, shaking her head. She lifts her eyes. The Enforcer is gone. In its place is a pale, white-haired boy in a tattered cloak. A mask with blood-red fangs covers the lower half of his face.

  Distant voices echo through her skull.

  Your brother is dangerous…

  Natalie roars and springs forward. KRANG! The boy crosses his knives to catch her sword above his head.

  A new voice. Scared? Afraid of what I’ve become?

  “Shut up…” Natalie mutters. She jerks her sword back and thrusts forward. The boy deflects it with one knife and swings the other for her head. She catches his wrist just before the tip of the blade meets her eye.

  He would finally know rest…

  What’s wrong, Nat? Do you feel ashamed of yourself?

  “I can make this right…” Natalie grits her teeth and brings her helmeted forehead against his. CRAK! The boy reels back, clutching his head. His blazing ruby eyes lock with hers, shining with rage and bloodlust.

  Look at me! Look me in the eyes and face what your actions created!

  KAYCE IS GONE!

  YOU ABANDONED ME!! THIS IS ALL YOUR!! FAULT!!

  “I said SHUT UP!!” Natalie flies forward. The boy swings. She catches the blade in her hand this time. Pain rips up her arm as the knife bites her flesh. She tears the weapon from his grasp and plants her foot into his stomach. Dark pressure pushes against her skull. Her taut muscles are searing.

  HATE YOU!!

  Your brother’s been labeled a terrorist by P.U.S…

  I’M GOING TO BURN THIS WORLD TO THE GROUND! TAKE EVERYTHING! SO THAT WHEN THE ASHES SETTLE…

  The boy topples onto his back. His other knife clatters out of his hand. Natalie stands over him, sword raised and ready to plunge. He looks up at her with wide eyes. Something hot clings to her lower eyelids. It drips down her face. The world begins to stretch and blur. She grits her teeth until her jaw aches.

  …EVERYONE WILL KNOW WHAT IT’S LIKE TO HAVE NOTHING!!

  Natalie screams and thrusts the sword downward toward his face.

  Goodbye, Natalie…

  KLANGG!! The sword pierces. The impact rocks through Natalie’s entire body. She pants, sweat dripping off her face. When she blinks, the boy is gone—all that remains is the Enforcer. Her sword is buried in the floor by its head. Natalie falls onto her back, gulping down cold air.

  “End simulation,” she says.

  A stiff, feminine voice echoes from all directions. “Ending. Simulation.”

  The world sparkles with blue light then goes black with a slowing hum. Gravity shifts. SSSSSSHHHHHH. A hiss breaks over her ears and she tumbles forward. Her eyes fly open in time to catch herself on her hands and knees before she hits the ground. Her body is slick with sweat and her clothes stick to her skin. The spacious room is dim. The wall behind her is lined with Transfer Pods—metal tubes with curved doors of frosted glass, glowing from within with weak blue light. Lockers are set into the walls on either side of the room. Natalie looks down at her hand—the wound is gone.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “Had a feeling I’d find you here…” Natalie looks up. Kokona is sitting at the end of a long bench pushed against the far wall, next to the door. She lifts a plastic water bottle off the floor next to her feet and holds it out to Natalie. “Here.”

  Natalie stands. She grabs a short, white towel off the opposite end of the bench and pats it over her face and neck. Then, she takes the bottle from Kokona without looking at her.

  “Thanks…”

  “I’m sorry…” Kokona says, “about earlier…”

  Natalie twists the cap off the bottle and begins to swallow the flavorless, icy liquid. The cold seeps through her body. When she finishes, she recaps the half-empty bottle and sits down next to Kokona.

  “Don’t be.”

  “You just…you have to understand, I’m worried about you. You haven’t been the same since…y’know…”

  “I could say the same about you, since Nobunaga left.”

  Kokona gives a weak chuckle. “I’ll admit…this job is harder than I thought. Some days I really don’t know what I’m doing…” She clasps her hands and rests her forehead against them, studying the floor. “Nat…do you remember what you promised me?”

  Natalie gazes off at the wall, stirring her brain to try and bring the words to the surface.

  “You promised me that if you saw Feng, you would run.”

  Natalie’s heart flinches and she grits her teeth. “That was before I knew he was my brother…”

  “You’re missing the point, Nat…”

  “And what is the point, Kokona? That I should just give up on him? Let him throw away his life after everything we’ve been through?”

  “Natalie…” Kokona lifts her head and rests her chin on her fists. “No one could’ve known he was your brother…and no one was asking you to give up on him either…but we’re a team, we could’ve handled it together.”

  Natalie clenches her fists and presses them into her thighs. “He’s my brother, Kokona, MY responsibility. No one else’s.”

  “You’re still blaming yourself, aren’t you?”

  “Of course I am!” Natalie flies to her feet. “I abandoned him! If I hadn’t joined P.U.S…hadn’t left him behind…” Crack! She drives the bottom of her fist against the door of a locker.

  “You don’t know what would’ve happened, Nat…you couldn’t have known—”

  “I should have known!” Natalie says. “Now I have to make it right…”

  “Natalie, it’s too late—”

  “You’re wrong!!” Natalie whirls. Her heart is blazing against her lungs. “It’s not too late! It’s never too late!” She leans against the locker and rests her forehead on the cold steel. “I can fix this, Kokona…I have to fix this…I’m the only one who can save him…”

  Kokona sighs. “...what if you can’t?”

  Natalie tightens her fists. “It won’t come to that…”

  “What if it does?”

  “It won’t.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I do.”

  “Natalie…listen to me…”

  “No, you listen! I’m not going to kill my own brother!”

  Kokona shifts her hands to her lap and leans against the wall. “Why did you join P.U.S?”

  Natalie’s eyes narrow. “What does that have to do with this?”

  “Just answer the question.”

  “...I wanted to make the world a better place…”

  “Come on, Nat, everybody who joins P.U.S wants to make the world a better place. Half of them don’t make the cut. Even fewer become high ranking investigators like us, unless they have a reason. So tell me: why did you really join P.U.S?”

  Natalie relaxes a little. Her mind wanders back—back to an alleyway across from a cafe, where she sat with a little girl eating taiyaki. “I…I wanted to make a brighter future for all the kids like me and Kayce who weren’t fortunate enough to have one…I wanted to build the world Kayce and I always wanted…I wanted to give them…give him the future I couldn’t have…” She shakes her head. “And I failed. You don’t get it…he was right, I—” She turns away. “I sacrificed him for the future of others…I had no right…”

  “Maybe…” The fabric of Kokona’s pants rustles as she stands. “Maybe you didn’t have the right to make that choice, but you did, Nat.” Her shoes scrape the linoleum floor tiles. “So what’s less fair? To go back…try and undo your mistakes? Or to commit to the path you’ve taken?”

  Natalie looks at the floor. Her hands shake—the plastic bottle crackles in her grip. “I…I don’t know anymore…”

  “Natalie…we all make tough calls that we have to live with at the end of the day. I can’t tell you whether they’re right or wrong. But I can tell you that the least you can do is make them mean something.”

  A tangled, black web ensnares every thought swirling in Natalie’s brain. A chirp pierces through the fog. Natalie turns as Kokona pulls a small communicator tablet out of her pocket. As the screen paints her face with its soft glow, a flush of bone-white color washes over her skin.

  “Sorry, I—” Kokona chokes. Her eyes are wide and glittering. “I—” The communicator trembles in her grip. Her breathing becomes shallow and fast. The voice that comes out of her is small and weak. “I need…I need to go…”

  “What’s wrong?” Natalie steps toward her. Kokona spins and hurries through the door. “Wait, Kokona—!” Clack! The door swings shut behind her, drowning Natalie in the darkness of the room once more. She steps toward the door, then pauses. I shouldn’t… The water bottle crackles in her hand again. She looks down at it. A sigh escapes her lungs. “Hold on, friend, I’m coming…” She pushes out through the door.

  >>> ||| <<<

  Natalie’s shoes pound the floor. Her lungs ache and her already-weary legs protest the sudden sprint.

  “Kokona, stop! Wait up!”

  Kokona is just ahead of her, her braided tail of ash-brown hair trailing behind her head. She slams through a set of swinging doors, marked with little white crosses. A holographic sign flickers over the doorway: EAST WING: INFIRMARY. Natalie chases her around corners and down long hallways.

  Kokona jerks to a stop, slamming herself against a large window. Natalie slows. Kokona’s hands slip down the glass as she falls to her knees. Her hair spills forward and obscures her face. Little glints of light drop from her hidden eyes and disappear against her pant legs.

  Natalie walks forward. “Kokona…what’s going—” Her eyes land on the glass and she chokes on the words. The sight tears the marrow from her bones, leaving them cold and hollow.

  On the other side of the glass, Michele is lying in a large infirmary bed. She’s wrapped in bandages in several places—her arms, midsection, forehead, and legs. Her breath fogs against a plastic oxygen mask over her nose and mouth. With her eyes closed, she looks almost peaceful, despite her wounds.

  Kokona whimpers to herself on the floor. “This is my fault…this is my fault…this is all my fault…”

  “Doctors say she’ll pull through.” Natalie jerks around to find a woman in a neat, white-and-blue suit. The woman doesn’t look up from her Star Pad. “She’s a tough kid.”

  Natalie turns back to the window. “Yeah…”

  “Do you know her?”

  “Ran a mission with her, that’s all…” Natalie’s voice trails off as her eyes fall back on Michele’s broken body. “What happened?”

  “She and an Investigator from Bravo Team were dispatched to respond to a public disturbance call regarding a potential Collapse Syndrome patient.” A chill crawls down Natalie’s neck. She tightens her fists. “The last contact we received was that the patient was growing violent. Michele made it out…the other Investigator was not so lucky. As per protocol, we’ve deployed an Enforcer strike squad, but we’ve since lost contact with them as well.” The air around Natalie grows cold—something begins hardening at the back of her mind.

  “This is all my fault,” Kokona says. She hammers her fist against the floor.

  “All due respect, ma’am, but you couldn’t have known—”

  “Who is the patient?” The words fall out of Natalie’s mouth and hit the floor.

  Kokona looks up. Her eyes are glittering and her face is stained with tears. “Natalie, don’t—”

  “Who is the patient?” Natalie asks again, turning to face the woman.

  “We…we don’t know—”

  “Move.” Natalie brushes past her.

  “Natalie, stop!” Kokona’s voice hardens around Natalie’s ankles like cement. “I can’t let you go…”

  Natalie looks back over her shoulder. “I’m not asking for your permission, Kokona.”

  “I can’t…I won’t be there to save you this time, I—” Kokona looks back at the floor again. “I can’t lose you again…”

  “You won’t.”

  “If you do this,” Kokona says, “I won’t be able to protect you from the consequences…”

  “I know…” Natalie starts walking again. “I’m sorry…”

  “Natalie!!” She pauses. “Just…remember what we talked about…and please…be careful…”

  Natalie carries on without a word. Kokona, the woman, and the injured Michele disappear around the corner behind her. Hot lead hardens under her skin. She clenches her fists until her fingernails bite her palms.

  I’m coming, Kayce…