6 CHAPTER 5 | Etienne

"Impossible."

"Improbable," the man corrects. "But certainly not impossible. After all, you're here, aren't you?"

"I'm still not convinced that this is real."

"The death of the body does not preclude the death of the soul. You mortals have tried for eons to prove that there is something after death to no avail. But there exists an infinite number of possibilities and endpoints in the afterlife." A faint thread of embarrassment colours his tone. "I am not the Collector, but I was passing by and your soul was... unusually tenacious. I was curious, but when I tried to detach you from your body, you broke free and fled through time and space and landed here."

An incredulous laugh bursts out of Xuan Shang's throat. He stares down at his hands, the same as they were before his death, fine boned with strong palms and slender fingers, faint blue veins beneath his skin pulsing with every beat of his heart.

His long-dead heart.

"So I'm an undead, time-travelling parasite."

"If you like. Your soul does hold a strong attraction to this place. Perhaps this was always meant to happen, though that is up to the Weaver to decide."

A desperate soul clinging to life, sucking the blood and flesh of its host...

What was the difference between him and that zombie virus?

"What happened to the original Milton?"

Silence stretches between them, long and languid, until the only thing he can hear is his own erratic breathing and the smooth rasp of the man's fingers drawing circles on the fishing rod.

"Do you wish to live?" is all he says.

"Milton - "

"Do you wish to live?"

Xuan Shang squeezes his eyes shut. His elder brother's agonized screams still echo in his ears, the taste of blood running down his throat, the blaze of fire slowly roasting him alive.

"Yes," he gasps out, then buries his head in his hands. It comes out as a broken sob. "Yes, I do."

"In order to live, you must be cruel."

"This is not my body. I can't..."

"Then you will die."

Xuan Shang's fingers dig into his knees.

"I wish to live..." he says slowly, "but I wish to live as myself. I won't become a leech that robs another of their life."

The man's chuckle is an awful sound. It is wrath and melancholy given voice.

"Regardless of what your consciousness might say, your soul clings desperately to life. In your heart, you do not want to die." A faint wind stirs through the cliff, rattling the stiff, metallic leaves clinging to the blackened trees. "Will your answer change if this body was a soulless one? If you are not robbing another of their life?"

"How can that be possible?"

"Roland Milton was never meant to survive to adulthood. He died that night in the woods. What you took over was just a husk. It matters not if the owner of an abandoned house changes, does it?"

Xuan Shang falls into a silence. He remembers that stinging pain in his chest when he woke, the fever-burned weakness and ache of his entire body. His eyes narrow.

"Although you pretend not to care about my choice," he says slowly, "you are very invested in my answer. You want me to choose to live on in Milton's body. Why?"

"When the time comes, there are tasks I will entrust to you."

"And why should I obey the one who got me into this predicament?"

"Because I have the ability to return you to your own body. To your own world."

"To my dead, pulverized body. At the bottom of a cliff," Xuan Shang says with an incredulous laugh. "Oh yes, that is a fantastic offer."

"You would be returned hale and healthy. Alive."

The sardonic expression on his face freezes.

It could be a lie. It most likely is. What are the chances that some voice whispering to him in his subconscious, promising him a second chance at life, is real?

But he has no other options. Even if it is a faint hope, it is the only one he has now.

Hope is always the most dangerous emotion of all.

"What would you have me do?"

"For now, wait and adjust to this new world. Your soul has quite a high compatibility with this body, but ultimately it is not yours. You cannot allow the world's natives to realize that you are not the real Roland Milton, or your soul will be obliterated and scattered across the earth with no chance for reincarnation.

"Increase your compatibility by acting as Milton would. Fulfil his last regrets to decrease his body's rejection of your soul.

"When you have stabilized, I will find you again."

The world around them begins to crumble back into black mist, the brief haven of respite melding back into chaos. Like a sinkhole, it rapidly consumes all the ground around them, trees uprooted and falling into the endless void below, until they, too, break down.

Xuan Shang stares down at his body and watches it disperse into motes of light.

Before he loses his voice, he says, "Who are you?"

The answer comes as a scream, a sigh, dispersed by the intertwining of a thousand voices. He doesn't hear the words so much as feel them reverberating in his soul.

"I am the Gatekeeper."

.

.

.

Xuan Shang's entire body feels weightless. It reminds him of the time his eldest brother Xuan Feng had taken him to the amusement park and onto a roller coaster - that moment when the cart lurches horrifyingly at the very peak of the tracks, before it falls and all he can feel is the wind cutting knives into his face, robbing the air from his lungs, stealing the scream from his throat. Yet the impact comes quickly as he jerks awake in a white hospital bed.

A pained gasp escapes his lips before he bites down to suppress the groan, arms pressed hard against his abdomen as if to keep his organs where they belong. Memories that don't belong to him scatter through the recesses of his mind, and his next breath comes out as an unsuppressed scream as he feels a deep pounding in the base of his skull, insidious fingers tracing feather-light symbols there, and a whisper that he feels more than hears -

I am...

My name is...

"ROLAND!"

Roland Milton...

"Roland. Roland, can you hear me?" A soft hand closes around his, squeezing tight. He can feel the owner trembling. A woman with a familiar voice. "Roe, please."

It takes a herculean effort to squeeze the hand back. Even though it takes all of his remaining strength, it is barely an increase in pressure, but the woman feels it.

His eyes flicker open slowly.

The bright afternoon light makes his pupils dilate rapidly and constrict again, fluctuating between them before it settles on an optimal amount of light. Xuan Shang's entire body feels sore and tired. There are bandages wrapped tightly around his chest, from his abdomen up to his neck, making it hard to draw in a deep breath. They extend down his arms and to his palms, where an oximeter is clipped to his index finger, sending signals to the heartbeat monitor by his bedside.

Although he is no doctor, he recognizes that the heartbeat electrical rhythm displayed on the machine is abnormal. The peaks are too low and shallow, trailing off between them.

It is no surprise.

Roland Milton was born with a congenital heart disorder. It is the reason why he became seen as a disappointment by his father. It is one of the reasons his personality became cold and abrasive, why he lashed out at the world and became known as trash, as a waste.

The woman sitting at his bedside was the last person who cared for him. The last who tried desperately to cling to him as he dangled over the edge, who tried to pull him back without any regard for herself.

To his dying breath, the original Roland regretted hurting her most.

His cracked lips part as he breathes out, "Lana..."

His older sister, Iolantha Milton.

Her beautiful gray eyes well up with tears as Xuan Shang stares at her with distant warmth, feeling as though she is a stranger that he has known for his entire life.

She wears a traditional pleated black skirt that folds primly at her knees and extends almost halfway down her shin, along with a loose long-sleeved white blouse. Her spine makes an uncomfortable series of cracks as she straightens up with a wince. From the haphazard red marks on the right side of her face, Xuan Shang knows she had been dozing by his bedside for a while.

"Roland, you..." She looks down at their interlocked fingers and tries to let go, knowing that Roland disdained of being touched, but Xuan Shang stubbornly tightens his grip.

"Lana," he rasps out, feeling his parched throat crack with every syllable, "I'm sorry."

"Shh, don't talk." She gets up quickly and fumbles with the pitcher and cup on the nightstand. A faint circle of condensation forms on the table surface and along the glass of the pitcher. She pours; her hands tremble a bit and splashes down on the ground. Carefully, she helps Xuan Shang into a half-sitting position. "Here. Be careful with the cup."

The water is cool and crisp, alleviating his thirst and the tightness in his throat.

"You scared us very badly, Roland," says Lana. She tries to sound stern but it comes out more tired and heartbroken. "What... what were you thinking, going off into the woods on your own? Not even taking Daniel. He's your bodyguard, for God's sake. And then we get a call saying you've been detained by the Alliance Military under quarantine because you... there were undead and I...

"I've had nightmares where the soldiers came too late. And the next time I saw you would have been inside of a box."

"More like the inside of a barrel," Xuan Shang says. "Considering it was trying to stomp me into a meat paste at the time."

She flinches. The cup comes down on the table, hard.

"That's not funny," she says sharply. He holds up his hands in appeasement.

"You're right. I'm sorry."

"Did you ever think about what could have happened?"

"But nothing did," he soothes. "And for what it's worth, I was the one who killed that zombie. I can take care of myself even if there is no one to protect me."

In this world, there were no such thing as saviours. They were always too late.

The surge of adrenaline in her veins, fuelled by anger and fear, begins to wane. She falls back into her seat like a puppet with strings cut and buries her face in her hands.

"God, Roland. What were you even - why were you there that night?"

The original's memories stir deep in his mind, tinged with indignation and shame.

"I received a message from Thom." Unconsciously, his expression reveals his helpless rage. "He said that if I wanted to know the truth behind Mum's... death, then I had to come to the woods alone that night."

Thom Milton.

The bastard son, a year younger than Roland at twenty. Charming and cunning, he is always able to surround himself with friends and admirers, people who are willing to do the dirty work for him. He hides his true self like a snake donning a new skin.

He, too, is a member of the Academy.

"And you actually went," Lana says flatly. "Roe, sometimes I wonder if you have a few screws loose."

"I knew it was a trap," Xuan Shang says, sinking back into his pillows with a tired expression. Recounting the tale seems to exert some toll on him as his face begins to take on a pale, sickly hue. "But what else could I do? If it was real..."

"It's been five years since Mum died. You need to let go."

But even as she says it, her voice carries a tinge of unwillingness.

"We both know what happened," Xuan Shang says quietly. "Only there's nothing we can do. No proof."

"Mum wouldn't have wanted you to ruin your life like this."

"Mum wouldn't be dead if it weren't for me."

A stone that weighed on his chest to his dying breath.

"It was never your fault."

"It's... it's fine. I'll be fine."

"Fine? You're in quarantine."

"If I were really in quarantine," he says, smoothing the starched and ironed creases in the hospital duvet with his palms, "they wouldn't have let you in. It's just an excuse to keep me at the Academy for a while. They want me to join their third year class."

Lana looks worried. She scrutinizes Xuan Shang's pale, wan face.

"Father will not approve."

He sneers in reply. "It's not like he's approved of anything I've done."

Altus Milton, Roland's father, was less concerned about him dying than about his reputation of having such a waste for a son. An embarrassment to the family name.

"Thom... he will be in the Academy as well. In the same year."

He gives her a smile that is not a smile, more like a humourless baring of teeth.

"I'm counting on it."

"Roland," she warns, sobering. "I'm serious. I can talk to Charlus and see if he can get you out. Don't try and get into a battle of wits with Thom."

The original Roland was quite infamous in Base Haven for being trash - not just for his frail body, but also for his poor temper. He was always picking fights with people and using his status to coerce and bully them.

But in truth, Roland was a simple boy with an awkward personality.

Many tales had been overblown out of proportion by rumours and gossip.

He was blunt and straight with his remarks, heedless of whom he offended, and not afraid to use the only thing he had - authority - to suppress them. The grapevine, after all, cares little for accuracy and much more for sensationalism.

Roland would be no match for Thom, but Roland was dead. It was Xuan Shang now.

"Don't worry," he says, and smiles. Something stirs deep in his chest, a resonance, a promise. "I know what I'm doing."

.

.

.

Lana leaves after another half hour with a promise to visit again. Xuan Shang spends another five hours being politely - but firmly - nagged at by Zhan Yan. "You know what your body is like," he chides. "You should've taken better care."

But I didn't know, Xuan Shang wants to say, feeling wronged.

When evening falls, Zhan Yan crosses his arms and leans on the frame of the adjacent bed, scrutinizing Xuan Shang as he ate dinner, which consisted of slightly undercooked pasta with miscellaneous sauce spread over it. He feels uncomfortably full but he forces himself to eat the last bite. Zhan Yan's glare softens somewhat.

"Can I go for a walk?"

"Come back by eleven. Beris - or should I say, her assistant - is still in the process of arranging quarters for you, so you'll stay here for tonight. And stay out of trouble."

The tiles are cold against the soles of his feet, making his toes turn pink and curl slightly. He shuffles behind the curtain and changes into his uniform, the only clothes he has, but forgoes the tie and blazer.

The infirmary is on the second floor of the West Wing. It takes him a few attempts to navigate the winding corridors and exit out of the small courtyard in the back. He merges into the chattering stream of students leaving the Academy and enters the main city district surrounding it, Sector One. Some curiously glance at him but go back to their conversations when he doesn't do anything except look around him.

The streets are gloomy, with streetlights every few meters and a patrol unit that passes every fifteen minutes. The staccato of their boots against concrete form a rhythmic background noise. As they walk deeper into the city, Xuan Shang can finally see a massive, monolithic structure rising at least twenty stories into the air. He has to crane his neck up uncomfortably in order to see the top. Garrison patrol officers roam around on the edge, the distance making them resemble ants. Towers with machine guns and flare systems are placed uniformly across the entire wall, and the top is completely lined with coils of barbed wire and broken glass. The sharp metal fangs gleam in the searchlight beams scattering over the other side.

This is the Wall.

It goes all the way around Base Haven and is the main reason for the base's success. It has been successful in keeping almost all undead attacks out.

While Haven is called a "Base," the word is a poor descriptor of just its size and splendor. With over five million people crammed within its borders, it is more like one of the last hubs of mankind. Some know it as the last heaven on earth.

Haven itself is split into ten "Sectors," from Zero to Nine. The base was built with a spoke and wheel layout, where Sector Zero - the administrative centre, with the government offices and business headquarters - lies in the very centre. Sectors One to Nine are positioned in progressively further rings around it, like that of an onion. With the exception of Sector One, which is the military and science base, the other eight are residential neighbourhoods.

"Hey, what are you looking at?" someone behind Xuan Shang says sharply when he slows down to stare at the Wall in awe. "Move it, come on."

When those behind him push him aside with disgruntled mutters, he stumbles out of the moving stream.

He finds himself in front of an art gallery. It is built in the classical style, with twelve elaborate Corinthian pillars supporting the front of the triangular facade. The white marble of the building glows softly in the moonlight. As if by some strange magnetic force, Xuan Shang finds himself ascending the stairs and walking through the gilded doors.

The floor is made of square pieces of marble interlaid with gold leaf, polished until it shone. A central corridor leads to smaller rooms on either side. Xuan Shang wanders around until his feet become tired and he sits down in an empty seat at the corner of a room. He looks around at the other patrons curiously. There are not many people. It does not seem to be a popular one.

A young girl with a yellow balloon tied to her wrist. Her grandmother is whispering into her ear.

A young, frazzled looking man hisses into his phone. His face is a rictus of frustration and he repeatedly runs his hands through his gelled hair, messing it up.

A man sits on one of the worn, padded seats in the centre of the room, staring at a painting with such breathtaking melancholy that it briefly takes his breath away. Xuan Shang's gaze lingers. Deja vu strikes him with the force of a hammer. It felt as though they had met before... in a dream, almost, or a half-forgotten memory.

Hands folded, back straight but shoulders curved forward, chin tucked gently against his chest, eyes fluttering with hidden agony. A golden waterfall marks the delicate curl of his hair over his ears, a streak for the shapely nose, gently downturned mouth. He's beautiful in a way that no mortal should be, a classical emperor revived from ancient stone. The scene is burned into his mind; he lets his eyes fall across the burnished golden room, the plush benches that had once been plump and fine but had since been worn to shreds by the touch of thousands of hands, the scant light casting from the westward windows.

He follows the gaze towards the painting of question. Half of it is dominated by a black cliff that looms far into the churning grey sky, its craggy surface beaten ragged by eons of wind and rain. On top of the cliff, a small figure kneels in supplication. The other half of the painting is a vast, incomprehensible sea, a dingy of sailors splattered over the red foam of roaring waves.

Before he can suppress the urge, he walks to the man's side and sitting down. There is, strangely, a vast clearing of empty space around him. Xuan Shang catches some of the gazes cast in their direction and can make out awe, fear, and wariness.

"Do you know?" The man doesn't look in his direction, though his eyebrows furrow slightly at the uninvited intrusion. "The story behind the painting?"

His frown deepens and an aura of hostility starts to permeate the air. Instinct tells Xuan Shang he should stop talking, or move away, but something deep inside of him aches with the remembrance of things his mind has forgotten and he continues.

"It's a story of fated love. Fated to meet, and fated to depart."

It is a myth, a fairy tale, one that is not well known.

The man's hands clamp down tightly onto his knees until the tendons stand out, his fingers trembling. His eyes close halfway, hiding the thoughts beneath.

"They were opposites in many ways. He, the king of monsters. His consort, the light of mankind, the saint of mortals. The king fell in love with the consort, but the consort loathed and feared him - and resisted him thrice, but was eventually sacrificed to the king to prevent the annihilation of the human race at his hands. Martyrdom was thusly the dowry price.

"Many years passed and the consort eventually fell in love with the king. They lived a harmonious life together. But when the consort's mortal family grew ill, the consort begged the king to allow a visit. Just one.

"The king's heart ached at his consort's tears and grief, and agreed, leaving behind a last way to contact him:

"He said, 'Call my name thrice to the sea. If alive, let the sea foam milk. If dead - "

" - let the sea foam blood."

The man's voice is hoarse, as though he has spent a long time without speaking, the roughness covering his pleasant baritone. He raises his head and looks directly at Xuan Shang, hostility and aggression mixing with a faint, desperate confusion in his eyes.

"Then you know how it ends."

It is a tragic story. In the end, the Consort betrays the King and tells the secret to the brothers, who use it to successfully kill him. But there are some who believe that it was not the Consort who betrayed the King, but a servant with a deep grudge who eavesdropped on their conversation and relayed it to the Consort's brothers.

"How do you know the tale?"

Xuan Shang laughs softly. "I had a fascination with these kinds of stories many years ago. Love and betrayal. Isn't it the quintessential romance story?"

"The ending..."

"Which do I believe in?" At the slight nod, Xuan Shang says, "In betrayal. People don't change as much as we'd like to pretend. How could a saint ever truly love a sinner?"

The man's expression turns blank and cold, etched into marble.

"You don't agree," Xuan Shang observes. The familiarity tickling at the front of his brain finally clicks into place. "I never took you for a romantic, Commander."

The face that stares back at him is the one hung on the walls of the Academy, the name held piously on everyone's tongues.

The Commander of Division One. Saviour of Mankind.

Etienne Cezare.