_ _ _Hiiro

  We reached the city sooner than expected, but traversing the ruins took us days. Some part of me thought I'd be prepared— I'd seen the aftermath from the air on the night it happened. I was wrong. Nothing could have prepared me for the ongoing crisis in Crucibab. Roads were impassible, entire neighborhoods leveled into rubble, and even now weeks after the fact they were still finding bodies. There wasn't a place I could see that had been spared from indiscriminate destruction… All for me.

  All because I'd been too stupid and arrogant and proud to follow orders and take a night off.

  The three of us joined the dense press of refugees migrating deeper into Crucibab along the coastline instead of those scant few headed for the countryside. We fit right in with the tide of battered, destitute humanity. It was easy to believe the hearsay about God's wrath being brought down on the city. One look at an isometrically cut pillar of stone buried ten houses deep in a quiet neighborhood and you couldn't help but remember how small and powerless humans really were. It might have been a humbling work of nature if that pillar wasn't surrounded by rubble and ruin.

  Bim had done this. She hadn't been herself but she had still done this. Just like I'd burned out hundreds of houses in a moment of weakness. It was all too easy to see her failings and turn a blind eye to my own, but I had to be stronger than that. Bim, my Bim, had to know this was wrong. That this was an abhorrent sin of monstrous proportion. Nothing could ever make this right but somehow we could find a way to move past it. My Bim would never willingly do this. Would she?

  We spent days passing through devastated quarters after annihilated districts and that question was never far from mind. We could have made better time, except that Ambar and Leonor were insistent on attending every mass we chanced upon. I didn't hold it against them, they found some comfort in prayer and they could use every little grace they could get trudging through a city in ruins day after day. The tide of humanity kept flowing towards the city's heart and so did we, our progression gradually becoming less of an exodus and more of a pilgrimage the longer we traveled.

  I'd lost track of the days. We just kept moving forward step by step, hour by hour, day by day. I wished I'd paid a bit more attention to Leeroy's damned plans all those months ago. I knew the mercs would scatter to the city, that they'd use Celio's properties and keep fighting until the job was done or they couldn't fight anymore. I just had no idea on the specifics. No idea which building, where in the city they'd set up camp in. All I had was a vague ache in my chest stringing me along.

  Sunsdown was coming when that little tug on my heart became a savage yank. I stumbled on my tortured feet but kept moving forward.

  "Maybe we should stop for now." Ambar offered.

  "We're close." I don't know how I knew but I did.

  "I hope so," Leonor said. "We've been walking for days. Even I'm started to get tired."

  "No, I can feel it now. We're close." I repeated.

  Both women exchanged a look.

  "How about we sit down for an hour and if you still 'feel it' then, we'll go a little further tonight?" Ambar offered.

  Leonor was already steering me towards a sidestreet packed with resting nomads. There was no point fighting their maternal instincts. I would be cared for, no matter how I protested it.

  I slumped down against the alley wall, long kilometers of fatigue catching up to me all at once. The shade and the soft sea breeze funneling over me made me aware of how feverish and clammy my skin was. I knew a small part of that my own unnatural warmth but the ugly pus-spewing mess of my infected wounds was mostly to blame. When the breeze faltered I could smell the putrid reek of rotting flesh where my pinkies had been chopped short or my toes had been torn off. I smelled like death, but there wasn't anything I could do about that now. The sooner I found Bim and the mercs, the sooner I could stop walking and rest.

  "Hero, wake up." Leonor was jostling me.

  I blinked. It was darker now and a bit cooler too. That was a welcomed change.

  "Ambar found a women's hostel nearby. They said there's a spot free for us tonight."

  "You should go," I mumbled. "You deserve a bed." Leonor was hauling me to my feet before I'd finished speaking.

  "You're coming too. We told them you were a eunuch who worked for Celio and they practically begged us to bring you."

  "I'm not-" I started.

  "I know your not, but they don't need to know that. You need a hospice more than we do. Just keep it in your pants for one night."

  The walk was a brief little jaunt of hell. Days spent as a nomad had taken their toll on me. Everything hurt and it was no less than I deserved for what I'd done to this city. If it wasn't for the magnetic ache in my chest drawing me onward, I don't know if I would have made it. Ambar was waiting at the hostel with the proprietress when we got there.

  "This is him?" The proprietress asked.

  "Yes, Mistress. He was the Savior's personal driver until-" Ambar started before she was silenced with a hand.

  "That's enough. You won't be able to sleep in the dorms with the other women, but I can lay down some bedding in the storeroom for you tonight. Make sure you don't roam the halls and don't leave before I get you at dawn."

  It sounded fishy, but I was in no state to argue. If it was a trap, it wasn't a very good one. Ambar and Leonor still had their rifles and ammo, plus I still had a pistol stashed in my pocket. We stripped off our filthy outerwear to air overnight, the clothes so grimy they mostly kept their shape. We had a lump of bedding, four walls and roof. It was the best place we'd had to sleep in for weeks. Ambar and Leonor snuggled close while I tried to keep some space between us without lying on the hard floor.

  "Hero?" Leonor whispered. "You can spoon if you want, but try anything funny and you're walking out of here with two broken arms in the morning."

  I barely heard her. I'd already fallen asleep again.

  "You look like shit."

  I had my pistol in hand and pointed at the door before I'd even opened my eyes. All I saw was a glaring white blur through my sleep-crusted vision.

  "Oh wow. You really look like shit." Princess stated looking me over.

  The albino woman looked like she'd escaped untouched. She was clean and well fed, not to mention she wasn't wearing the same pair of unwashed pants she'd stolen half a month ago. I tried not to be too envious.

  "If you can believe it, I feel worse than I look." I groaned, sitting upright at length.

  "Somehow, I can. Come on. We've got a job to do."

  "Fuck off." I growled rubbing more filth into my eyes than I was cleaning.

  "Wanna repeat that for me?" Princess snapped, glaring daggers at me.

  The way she was staring down at me made me think of when I'd first woken up on the merc's ship, strapped to a table and half dead. All these months and somehow things had barely changed.

  I absentmindedly reached for feverish heat within me and felt it answer. I was sweltering in an instant, the entire room shimmered with heat haze seconds after that. All these months and somehow things would never be the same.

  Princess didn't baulk. Her freakish purple eyes danced around the room. She could see what I was doing. She and I were the only two humans who could see just how dangerous I'd become now that I had a rookie's grasp on powers most men could only dream of. I was a firebomb, a living weapon and she didn't flinch.

  "You can take your job and shove off." I groaned. "I'm done killing. I don't owe you a damn thing-"

  "You owe me your life, Shithead!"

  "You should have left me to die in that airlock where you found me." I growled, meaning every word.

  "Maybe but I didn't, and we both have to live with that." Princess heaved a frustrated sigh. "Okay, fine, whatever! You say you're done killing, so what's with the gun? What's with that?" She asked, gesturing vaguely at me and the heat-swamped room. "Why come back just to drag your feet and whine like a little bitch?"

  "Is Bim still with you guys?"

  "Of course…" Princess rolled her over-large eyes. "Yes, she is. We had a deal and unlike you, she's not flaking on us when we need her the most."

  "Oh come on! You don't need her for scat. She's playing tourist. You and I both know she's useless in a fight unless you're planning on slipping her collar again."

  "No." Princess answered instinctively with a slight shudder. "No, we're not. Don't be so certain of her being useless either."

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "Well, I can fuck off and you'll never know. Or, you can stop thinking with your dick, find your balls and come with me to see this job through to the end in a week's time. So, which is it?"

  "That's not much of a choice." I grumbled, but my resistance was token at best. "Fine. You win, I'll come. But I meant it when I said I was done killing. Period. I don't want anymore blood on my hands."

  "We'll see about that. Just so you know, if you ever test me again I will turn you into chunky salsa before you can even think about turning up the heat." She was deadly serious. I didn't doubt her for a second.

  "Wouldn't dream of it. Us freaks gotta stick together, right?"

  "You're such a dumbass. Come on. Don't want to keep your girlfriend waiting."

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Leonor and Ambar were waiting outside the door, trying their best to look innocent. They'd both been eavesdropping and it showed. Neither of them would meet my eye while Princess led us to the rest of the outfit. It's not like Princess and I had done anything untoward in there but for some reason it still felt like I'd been caught with my pants down. We didn't go too far, maybe a few kilometers before Princess started taking us through side streets and back alleys and eventually to some kind of warehouse that was swarming with mercs and maids and the odd Vigia.

  No one seemed too surprised I was still alive, except for Gerald who quickly forgot his healer's oaths and found somewhere better to be. I should have called him out but I didn't. Part of me wanted to kill him to make a point— it was more than deserved considering he'd tried to murder me in cold blood over something as stupid as a necklace. But I was so sick of death. I hadn't come back to keeping killing for them or anyone else, myself included. All the same, I scanned the room for a different medic to tend my aching, feverish everything.

  I spotted Bim first and suddenly my pains couldn't be further from my mind.

  Seeing her again was like seeing the rising dawn for the first time all over again. Like suddenly things just made sense. The impossible magnetism that drew us together was replaced by the utmost ease of being from the sight of her across the room. There could have been a hundred people doing who-knows-what around us, but in my eyes there was only me and her.

  I started walking towards her before I even knew what I was doing. I'd had weeks to think about all the things I wanted to say but now my mind was completely blank. There was just me and her and nothing else mattered. So long as I had her, somehow everything would work itself out just fine.

  She saw me coming. Something like twenty different expressions all crossed her face in a blink. Did she feel the same as I did? Was she still my Bim, the woman who'd clung to me so desperately on crowded market streets? The woman I wanted to wake up next to for the rest of my life? The woman I'd gone through a hellscape, one she'd created in my name, just to see again?

  I wanted to throw myself on her then and there, right in the middle of the warehouse where everyone could see. It was primal, it went beyond lust or instinct. I wanted to put our two halves together and never separate again. Bim was right there, she was mine and I wanted to be one with her more than anything.

  But was this monster really Bim?

  I stopped just short of pouncing on her as the doubts clawed into me. She hadn't taken a step towards me. She hadn't so much as moved. What was that expression on her face? A happy scowl? A relieved frown? I'd been overjoyed but now I was coming back to my senses. Why wasn't she reacting? Why wasn't she saying anything?

  "I missed you." I said dumbly.

  "We missed you as well." Bim answered.

  We? I looked around. No one else seemed to have missed me very much, though I did see a few prying eyes. People were looking and I saw more than one weapon held at the low ready. I turned back to Bim, trying to read her. She was throwing off a dozen signals all at once but they were all garbled, conflicting messages flashing in tandem. That wasn't like her at all. She'd always been so deliberate and considered before; now it was like a dozen chimps were all mashing buttons at the same time.

  "I-" I couldn't spit it out. I couldn't say I love you. "I think we should talk in private."

  "I'd like that." She answered instantly, but she sounded mad about it. Like I'd done something wrong already.

  Bim led the way. This wasn't like her either. In all our time together, I couldn't recall a single occasion where she'd led and expected me to follow. I followed regardless. It had been nearly a month since we'd spent any time together. It made sense she'd be more independent now, but still… Was a month all it took for her to change so completely? Was that all it took for her to stop being the woman I loved?

  I followed behind her and I couldn't stop myself from seeing the differences. She was wearing regular clothes when she normally hated anything touching her at all— I even spotted the outline of underwear which she'd always abstained from in the past. She didn't walk like she used to either, she walked like a regular person instead of lithely flowing from one place to another. Her gaze was fixed straight ahead. It didn't linger on every little thing while she contemplated everything in ways I could barely imagine. This woman had Bim's face but I couldn't shake the feeling that it wasn't her. Not on the inside, not where it mattered.

  The room she led me to was more of a root cellar than anything else. Thick, windowless stone walls and only a few cracks of sunlight slipping into the room. A minute ago, I would have thought the space was perfect for an intimate reunion, but now it reminded me of the interrogation cell we'd last met in. I was shaking by the time she finally turned to face me and I couldn't tell if it was from terror or excitement or just my battered body finally failing me.

  "I missed you." I said again, sounding ever stupider the second time.

  If Bim heard me, she didn't show it. Seconds passed in the worst silence of my life. I could barely see her, I couldn't tell what she was thinking! Was she waiting for me to take the lead?

  Suddenly, light. A tiny domesticated star in the palm of Bim's hand. The root cellar's shadows recoiled and I could have sworn the room was shifting around us. Somehow I was in three places at once and all of them were from my nightmares.

  Bim stuck the light ball to the ceiling and I caught the glint of silver around her throat. I saw the collar around her neck but it didn't make me feel any more grounded.

  "Your powers-" I started.

  "You are wounded." She noted, her face still a mess of conflicting emotions.

  No, that wasn't it at all. I could finally see it in the fey light. Her face was barely moving, it was everything under her face that was— the writhing alien hell-goop that she actually was under the skin of a human. This thing wasn't Bim! An unbridled animal panic was building in me along with a numb, cold dread.

  I felt cold and that did more to terrify me than the rest of this creature's horror show combined.

  "We will heal you-" The creature wearing Bim's skin said, stepping towards me. She had a hand outreached, a hand that writhed like a pack of grubs picking her bones clean just under the skin.

  "No!" I snapped recoiling from her.

  She stopped, a riot of expression crossing her face. I knew it was Bim's face but I couldn't see the woman I loved anywhere in it! Except for the eyes. This creature still had Bim's eyes. I could see pain in them.

  "Last time-" I could barely breathe. The air in here was empty, biting thin air I'd still smother in no matter how much I gulped down. "Last time, when you tried to fix- Don't make me into a monster like you did him."

  "…I see." Bim said, stepping back. I could see in her eyes how much it hurt her to do so. How much I had hurt her.

  "I'm sorry." I mumbled. "It's… it's been a while. I think this is going to take some getting used to."

  "I apologize as well. We let our excitement get the better of us."

  "Are you still her?" I asked before I could stop myself.

  "Of course I am…" Bim answered instantly. "But now we're more than what I was when you last knew me."

  That didn't make any sense but I wanted to believe her. I just couldn't shake the feeling that somehow there wasn't more to her but rather that there was less of her in there. I didn't know, I couldn't. But if there was any of Bim in there then I'd just have to take that leap of faith and hope it all worked out.

  "I- I don't really know how to say this," I started, "but I've been thinking about you every day since we met and I think a long time before that too. I don't know what we are or what this thing between us is. All I know is I'm crazy about you. You're like… You're like… There's nothing like you in the entire universe, Bim. I want to be with you and maybe together we can figure this whole thing out. I want the spend the rest of my life with you."

  She stood there unmoving save for the writhing alien worms beneath her skin. I closed the distance between us, hurling myself off a cliff hoping she'd catch me. I took her hand in mine hoping that she'd give me a sign, something like what we'd shared before so I knew that she felt it too. Those three little words on the tip of my tongue were terrifying, but Bim was worth the risk.

  "Bim, I love you."

  The light ball flared and vanished. My guts were doing loops and if it weren't for her hand in mine I would have fallen into the black abyss. She was frozen stone still, deep in thought. That was my Bim! I knew she was in there trying to get out, to come back to me. I could barely see her amber eyes but I knew that look. She was considering everything and she would see the truth.

  She'd come back to me, I knew it.

  "You don't mean that." She uttered. Her words were like a shot to the gut. "You don't love me, you're infatuated with this vessel. This human guise that deceives you into chasing impossible dreams. We've… I've changed since you knew me. Your idea of what I am is so fundamentally flawed and I am to blame. We knew so little of humans but that has changed too. Everything is so different now that I understand you humans better."

  She tried to pull away from me but I seized her hand in mine.

  "What are you saying?" I croaked. "I love you, Bim. I mean it. I love you!"

  "I'm saying that I'm fond of you, but what you think this is… It will never happen. I never meant to lead you on. I didn't know what I was doing. We're too different."

  She tore her hand from mine and I swear she tore my heart out with it. This wasn't right, this wasn't her! My Bim wouldn't do this. Not to me.

  "What happened to I am your's and you are mine?" I demanded with a voice about to break. "What happened to wanting me, always and eternally. For the rest of my life and all those that come after this?"

  "We didn't know what we were saying. What those things meant. I only wanted your soul-"

  "Then you can have my soul! Wasn't that was this was always about!? Ever since you called out to me while I was dying by inches in the snow? You wanting me."

  "We do. I do, but it cannot be so. Not like this."

  "Why not!? I'll give it to you willingly, so take my soul-"

  "How could I take your soul when I don't have one to offer in return!?" Bim screamed. It was the first time I'd ever heard her raise her voice. "You don't know what you're giving up! And for nothing."

  "Not for nothing, Bim. I'm giving it up for you! So we can be together. Isn't that more than enough?"

  "How could that ever be enough?" Bim stated, her voice held nothing but the cold hard fact.

  She could have shot me through the heart and it would have hurt less. My soul, me, all that I was and it was all worthless.

  I couldn't breathe. I couldn't think. All our time together, all those memories that I'd thought had meant something. I couldn't…

  I looked at Bim and saw the golden tears falling from her wounded eyes. This thing wasn't her.

  My Bim wouldn't do this. Not to me. Words had failed me. I'd already thrown myself off this cliff so there was no point holding anything back now.

  I stopped tripping over useless words and pressed my lips to hers. All the thoughts I couldn't give voice to, all the passion lost in translation, all of my love combined into a single kiss. My Bim was in there. I just had to reach her and this was the last way I knew how. I could still save her! My heart and soul bled through my lips into her's and all the while I prayed it would be enough.

  She gave me nothing in return. No surge power, no reality-altering perspective, no tongue. Nothing. I could have been kissing a dead fish and still gotten more in reply. I drew back breathless and exhausted, defeated.

  "Are you done?" Bim asks.

  "I guess I was wrong. You really aren't in there anymore."

  "Don't be absurd, of course I'm in here but that doesn't make the impossible possible. I'm not human, I'm not even a woman. Not really. We can't be together. I can't love you back."

  "You may be in there, but the woman I love isn't. I guess we really are done…"

  "You don't see it now, but it's better this way. I'm sorry, Hiiro."

  I slammed through the door, past Treu and his damned leering smile. I wanted to kill her. I wanted to destroy that deamon parading around Bim's skin but that would never happen.

  I couldn't think. I couldn't see anything through a haze of rage and grief and tears for the future torn from me. My dreams were nothing but gunsmoke and ash and I was an idiot for ever hoping things could be different. A murderer like me didn't deserve happiness.

  "Hero!" Leeroy caught me on the shoulder and didn't let go when I tried to keep moving. I was a mess and it didn't take a genius to figure out why.

  "Let go! I'm leaving." I barked, or tried to at least.

  "Not like this you're not. I won't pretend to know what you're dealing with, but if you storm out of here and fuck with my plans, I'd have to kill you. So instead, you're going to calm down and act like a professional for three days until the next leg of this op is over with. Then you can go play the fool and get yourself killed if that's what you want."

  "Why should I!?" I screamed. "Why not skip to the end already!? You're just waiting for an excuse to put me down like a fucking dog anyway! So do it already!!! I'm sick of this. If you want to fucking kill me just get it over with!"

  Three sharp little pricks poked my neck from behind.

  "If you've got a deathwish, the least you can do is take it out on the bad guys, you little shit." Leeroy growled, propping me up as my legs went rubbery.

  "Don't pretend you're not bad guys too…" I slurred as darkness took me.

  I didn't dream when I slept. There wasn't anything I could look forward to anymore and I didn't trust myself enough to look back. Death ahead, pain behind, I couldn't even take solace in the present. I had nothing left.

  I had no one.