Num retro repercutio?-LXIV

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DATE:21th of July, the 70th year after the Coronation

LOCATION: Concord Metropolis

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The next morning brought an odd moment as I stood in front of the small mirror in the bedroom, applying my moisturizing cream. At first, it seemed routine, but then I noticed something off.

My reflection lacked color, rendered entirely in shades of black and white. Not only that, but it mirrored me in reverse—posing in perfect opposition to my movements. Stranger still, it was as though my reflection was on the ceiling, perfectly aligned with my head but entirely inverted.

The pupils of my reflected eyes were crude, like they'd been sketched hastily in charcoal, missing any realistic details.

I stared for a few moments, but my indifference won out. Whatever this was, it didn't matter. Maybe it was exhaustion. Maybe something worse. Either way, my skincare routine wasn't going to wait.

When I emerged, Mike was in the kitchen, frying slices of Spam on the stove. The smell wafted through the small house. His supplies were limited to canned goods, a reflection of the farm's abandonment.

Breakfast was simple—Spam, toast, and some canned fish. We ate in silence at the small kitchen table, save for the occasional clink of utensils on the plates.

Once finished, we stepped outside to inspect the truck. The damage from the mechanical hounds was extensive. Mike let out a string of curses as he circled the vehicle, taking in the bent metal and scratched paint.

"I swear, those damn things...," he grumbled, slurring his words from fatigue and frustration.

I nodded in agreement. The truck still ran, but the damage would cost far too much to repair.

"This isn't worth fixing," Mike declared after a long pause. "I'll drive it to a salvage shop and buy a second-hand truck. Something cheap."

It seemed like the only sensible plan. As much as the truck had carried us through the night, it had reached its limit. There was no use clinging to what was already broken.

As Mike drove off toward the salvage yard, I slung the duffle bag over my shoulder and headed into the small train station. It was the kind of place you'd only find this far out—remote, quiet, and almost forgotten. He couldn't risk salvaging the truck in the city. Too many questions would be asked about its battered state, questions he didn't want to answer.

The thought of visiting Kevin's parents crossed my mind. After all, I owed them some sort of closure. But then, was it fair to bring more pain into their lives? Kevin was gone. Nothing I said would change that. I let the idea pass.

Inside the station, it was almost empty. A man and a woman were the only other people there. They sat on a bench, holding hands and speaking loudly, their voices echoing in the stillness of the space. They were absorbed in their own world, laughing and passionately recounting details of their recent date.

I put in my earpiece and quietly asked Emily how she was feeling. Her voice came through weakly, a faint echo of the usual crisp tone.

"You're thinking about the vampire again?" I said softly.

"She felt real... The things I did to her felt real."

"Emily," I replied, choosing my words carefully, "what you destroyed wasn't a human, or even alive. It was a memory—someone's idea trapped inside a broken mind. She probably didn't even dissapear permanently."

Her silence hung in the air, heavy and reluctant. I decided to share something I rarely spoke of.

"You know, how my father used to chase me," I said. "Every time I thought I could stop him, he'd show up again. I could never finish him, no matter how many times I tried."

For a moment, there was no response. Then, Emily's voice returned, quieter this time.

"That's... different," she whispered, but I could tell she was calmer now.

As I reflected on my own words, I noticed movement in my peripheral vision.

The man from the bench was approaching me, his partner standing behind with a concerned expression. I removed my earpiece as he stopped a few feet away, his tone laced with curiosity and unease.

"Excuse me," he said, "are you okay? We couldn't help but overhear you talking to... someone. Sounded a bit intense."

I glanced between him and the woman, piecing together their expressions. They must've misunderstood. Talking about Emily's struggles with guilt probably sounded like something entirely different to them.

"Oh, that?" I said, forcing a casual laugh. "It's nothing. Just playing a VR horror game with a friend. You know how immersive those things can be."

The man raised an eyebrow, glancing at the earpiece. "A VR game? Out here?"

"Yeah," I replied, maintaining the lie. "Helps pass the time when you're stuck waiting around. My friend's not great with the whole 'facing your fears' thing, so I was giving them some advice." I don't think he knows what VR is. Does he not want to be embarrassed about it?

His expression softened, though there was still a flicker of skepticism in his eyes.

"Must be some game," he muttered, retreating to his partner, who whispered something I couldn't hear. They resumed their conversation, though much quieter this time, occasionally glancing my way.

I sighed and leaned back against the wall, re-inserting the earpiece.

"People are always so quick to assume the worst," I whispered to Emily.

"You're used to that, aren't you?" she replied, her voice regaining some strength.

"I've had practice," I admitted. Practice in lieing, that is. Why do I hate it when the Changeling does it, but I react the same? I wonder...

The distant rumble of the train approaching broke the tension in the station. I picked up my duffle bag, feeling the weight of it pull at my shoulder, and moved toward the platform.

As the train pulled in, its brakes screeching, I turned my thoughts to my next destination. I didn't have a clear plan, but one thing was certain—I wasn't safe yet. Whatever conspiracy Mike had uncovered was just the surface of something much larger, and Emily was the key. For better or worse, I was tied to her now.

As I boarded the train, the man and woman followed, choosing seats far from mine. I settled in by a window, watching the barren fields roll by as the train lurched forward. Emily's voice broke the silence.

"Where are we going now?"

"To pass some time" I said, more to myself than her.

I looked out at the horizon, the faint glow of the sun breaking over it.

The train carried on, leaving the remote station—and what little safety it offered—far behind.

After getting back to Concord, I stayed at a café for a few hours, sipping a lukewarm coffee as I stared out the window at the bustling streets. I was restless, my mind running in circles about what to do next. The black market was calling to me—a lifeline to resources and potential leads—but something about my body felt off.

I couldn't stop the involuntary shivering. It wasn't the kind of tremor that came from cold or illness. It was deeper, embedded somewhere beneath my skin, an instinctual reaction to something unseen. I checked my pulse—steady. My breathing—normal. I was certain I wasn't sick.

Yet, every time I blinked, fragments of something alien flashed before my eyes, brief and chaotic like broken shards of glass reflecting another world. Colors, sounds, and sensations that didn't belong to the present. It was as if my body was reliving trauma that my mind hadn't agreed to revisit.

When I closed my eyes for even a moment, I saw more. Not the comforting darkness of my eyelids, but a vivid, fragmented scene. There was movement, heat, and blood, but it was disjointed, like trying to piece together a puzzle underwater. It wasn't the first time I'd experienced such things—my past had its share of demons—but this was different. It didn't feel like a memory I'd summoned.

I reached out to Emily.

"Are you seeing this?" I asked, trying to steady my voice.

There was a pause before her faint response came through the earpiece. "Seeing what?"

"The... flashes. It's like I'm trapped in something that isn't here. Are you in my head right now?"

"No," she replied. "I'm not connected to anything like that. Whatever it is, it's not me."

Her answer didn't ease my mind. If Emily wasn't responsible for this, then what was? Was it some external force—something I'd been exposed to recently? Or was it just my own subconscious finally cracking under the weight of everything I'd buried?

By the time I reached the cheap hotel, the flashes had begun to fade, leaving only an uneasy tension in my chest. I locked the door behind me, dropped my duffle bag onto the floor, and collapsed onto the stiff mattress of the plain bed.

I decided I needed to confront whatever this was. I wouldn't be able to move forward—not to the black market, not to my next contract—until I dealt with it.

As I lay back, trying to make myself comfortable on the scratchy sheets, I closed my eyes deliberately, letting the darkness take me.

This time, the shards of memory sharpened, the images aligning into something more coherent.

Yes, I remember.

I rose from a pile of corpses stacked over me, their blood sticky and warm against my skin. The overwhelming stench of iron filled the air, suffocating and inescapable. For a moment, I thought the blood might drown me before anything else could.

I was in a military base. The sprawling complex that had once been alive with movement and noise was now a graveyard. Everyone around me was dead.

Corpses littered the ground, bodies contorted in unnatural shapes. Some bore clean, precise slashes, their lives ended with the efficiency of a surgeon wielding a blade. Others were slumped against the walls of the barracks, their blood pooling beneath them, as though they had surrendered to the inevitability of death.

I walked carefully through the carnage, my boots squelching in blood-soaked earth, and stopped to examine one of the slashed bodies. The clean cuts, the absence of hesitation—it was unmistakable. I knew who had done this.

These were insurgents. Men I was supposed to protect.

My mission had been straightforward—guard a Ventian lieutenant who had defected and was now training these rebels. His betrayal of my country wasn't my concern. I wasn't here for politics, only for pay. But walking through the aftermath of this slaughter, I felt an eerie weight settle over me. This wasn't war. This was something else.

I gripped the assault rifle strapped across my chest, its weight familiar but suddenly meaningless. Against the person who had done this, it was a useless piece of metal.

I wasn't even sure if "person" was the right word.

I remembered it vividly—the sound of boots on stone, deliberate and unhurried. The gleam of a longsword, too pristine to belong to this world.

He had a marine blue coat with golden buttons.

A single man.

That's all it took to wipe out an entire insurgent base.

When I first saw him, I froze. He moved with the grace of a predator, his blade cutting through men as if they were paper. I didn't hesitate for long. I ran, tripping over bodies, scrambling for cover. The corpses became my shield, and I buried myself beneath them, their weight pressing down on me, the smell choking me.

I could still hear him as I lay there, pretending to be one of the dead. His movements were slow, deliberate, as though he was savoring the massacre. He didn't speak. There was no grand declaration of justice or vengeance. Just silence, broken only by the sound of his blade meeting flesh.

I stayed still, forcing myself to breathe shallowly, to resist the urge to cough or gag.

Time lost all meaning in that pile. I only knew I had to wait. Wait until he left. Wait until I was sure the military wouldn't arrive to arrest me along with whatever survivors remained.

How was that possible? A single man, armed only with a longsword, dismantling an entire base of trained soldiers and insurgents. Back then, I didn't know. I didn't understand what I had seen.

Back then Heroes were just legends, stories told to inspire hope or fear. But even if IT was one of them. No hero would leave a trail of blood and death like this. No matter how You put it, I couldn't have been prepared. How could I have known?

It wasn't courage that kept me alive. It was fear. Pure, unrelenting fear that told me to stay hidden and silent.

This was the first time I truly understood what it meant to face something beyond my comprehension. And it's why I ran.

I open my eyes, but I couldn't muster any tears. This wasn't even about the massacre. I don't think it affected me in the long run that much.

No, I was frustrated at how much of a tool I was most of my life for that damn Syndicate.

The lieutenant I was protecting who betrayed the Ventian military 'or what was left of it' And started teaching the militias apparently confidential military tactics May have not even been a traitor. Considering that the Syndicate controlled most of my contracts, at least from what Barryvard said, The lieutenant could have been one of their own agents. He may have been sent to the Stochk Confederacy with a purpose.

No, I'm certain that he was.

In hindsight, it makes so much sense. The goal of the insurgency may have not even been to attack neither the Unified Kingdom nor the Confederacy. The chaos alone would help The Syndicate.

How many other of my jobs were like this?

But that was besides the point.

It still didn't explain how my body was relieving the memories of what happened.

Was it the influence of the psyker? I don't think so. It's been far too long since we last met.

Easy to then another agent? The late Donn' estate should be in too much of a chaos to send people after me. Secundo Manus shouldn't even be aware that I exist.

But then again, there was that agent who wore a skin mask let's tried to lead me into an ambush site.

I pushed those concerns away and fell asleep.-*-*-*-*-*