Chapter 2: A Tangled Web

"Goddamn it," Haze muttered, rubbing his strained eyes. He'd been staring at the holographic display on his desk for over an hour now and things still did not seem much clearer. The Emperor had tasked him to succeed where other, grander men had failed; a task in which even the Emperor themself had been forestalled.

The speculator device on his desk was a small sphere with a magnetic base; through a set of three lenses, it could display tactical information and run simulations in a clean array of laser light and green hues. 

Currently, the sphere displayed a holographic mockup of the Silver Dawn's capital, Saint Sandersburg. For the past hour, Haze had run a thousand simulations of possible assaults, using only the limited resources allocated to him by the Emperor. Each one failed—just as all their past assaults had failed in reality.

The entirety of the inner city was protected by the Iron Dome—a city-wide shield generator that intercepted any long-range attack whether it be drone strikes, artillery, or orbital-bombardments. Beyond that, he had the Wall to contend with. Every general who ever managed to reach the Wall had failed to ascend the fortified megastructure which stood over a hundred feet high. 

Needless to say, Haze was well out of his depth. He was a cavalry commander, not a general. The Emperor, however, had been very insistent he take the task, leaving him with only an illusion of a choice in the matter.

He found the whole situation quite funny in a way. Somehow, warfare had managed to come all the way back around to constructing walls. Once city-wide shield generators had become commonplace, urban warfare suddenly became the new norm. Large scale land invasions into major population centers were a messy but necessary strategy to disable a city's shields so that a more conventional approach could be taken.

But Saint Sandersburg was not any ordinary city; it was an ancient stronghold for humanity from a dark age long past. Yet, the Silver Dawn clung to it as though it were still their final bastion. In a way, it was. All the Emperor's projections suggested the Silver Dawn's will would be broken were the city to be lost. So, he was to make an example of it.

Though, the Emperor's been wrong before, Haze thought, not daring to voice such an opinion aloud.

"You seem troubled milord." Haze heard from behind as a firm hand rubbed his shoulder. 

Haze turned to find his stalwart companion, Cornelia, standing beside him. She was a centauride—a first-generation splicer—though, she was large even for her kind, built like a mountain, standing just over seven feet tall. Her lower body was that of a chestnut mare, over which she wore a grey sheet woven from arachne-silk—a material far stronger and much lighter than even imperial-steel. She kept her long dirty-blonde mane tidied away in a bun, as demanded by legion doctrine. Over her human torso, she wore a set of well-fitted grey fatigues—which matched his own—and a chartreuse sagum that hung around her shoulder . . . where her left arm used to be, hiding her shame.

Cornelia looked at him with her one blue eye—the right covered by a patch. He saw an ocean of regrets in her gaze; she had lost so much that day because of his mistakes, yet she remained by his side. 

"Is everything alright?" Cornelia pressed further, her voice unusually soft, as though she too felt his regrets.

Haze rubbed Cornelia's hand, not wanting her to let go. Things had been so much simpler when it had just been the two of them in the field, leading charges into fortified crusader lines and breaking sieges in spearheaded assaults. But those days were long past them.

"I don't think I can do this anymore, milady," Haze whispered, looking back at the hologram.

"Well, then let's take a break, just you and I—go for a ride in the park like we used to do," she wistfully replied, tightening her grip on his shoulder like she was afraid he might leave.

Haze wanted so desperately to accept her offer, to escape the bleak confines of his office. Being underground for so long had not done his mental state any favors. But he knew that the issue plaguing his mind would only fester the longer he was away. He needed to find a solution. He needed to find a way to win this war once and for all.

"I'm sorry, Cornelia; I just can't bring myself to shirk my duties at a time like this." Haze pulled his hand away from hers. "The Emperor has demanded I do the impossible, so I must find a way." 

Cornelia finally relented, letting go of his shoulder. "I understand—another time, perhaps."

Haze looked back and saw Cornelia had her head down. Maybe, he ought to change his mind. This is about more than just me, he thought. "Cornelia, I—" Haze paused as the room became flooded with a red light.

Cornelia locked her gaze to his, her eye lit aflame. "Sir, I need to get you out of here," she quickly said.

"Code 5A—splicer containment breach on sublevel 3; all non-security personnel are to follow proper evacuation procedures. Doctor Kim, your presence is requested at the scene." The facility's management system spoke with a gravelly, monotonous tone, repeating it's message.

Kim? Haze thought. What the hell is the kid gonna do?

Cornelia seemed to share a similar thought as they looked at one another, equally perplexed.

---------

Charlotte laid in a soft hammock of arachne-silk, her eight legs dangling leisurely toward the ground. She hung in the comfort of her room, directly over her bed, waiting as she did about this time every day. One o'clock on a Friday afternoon. Lunchtime.

She had found her personal quarters to be perfectly adequate for her modest tastes. The ceiling was twice as high as the little glass she grew up in and the walls were wide enough that she could fully spread out all eight legs, giving her ample room to spin webs.

The only feature the room lacked was color, but Charlotte didn't mind; after all, the grey triangular plates reminded her of where she came from, reminded her not to be too trusting of man's hollow words.

She yawned softly, stretching her arms out in an effort to keep herself awake. She was still tired after her midday nap, longing to sink back into her web, but she was expecting company.

The room was once an officer's quarters, so she was told—renovated to accommodate her unique needs—filled with all the commodities one would expect to find: a private bathroom, a large bed which she herself never used, and a shelf lined with an array of colorful literature from across the many empires which filled God's green earth.

The rows of books were the only semblance of color Charlotte could find in the whole room. Perhaps that was why she was so attracted to them. They were filled with potential; possibilities of what life may yet hold for her outside the bleak blacks and greys of the subterranean splicer complex.

It had been eight years since she made a deal for her freedom. Eight years and still that dream had yet to come to fruition. Commander Haze put her on a longer leash and called her free—such strategies may have worked on the centaurs—but she was not so easily deceived.

You'll be free once we finish the fight, he told her time and time again. Eight years of bloody attrition and they didn't seem much closer to accomplishing that. Somehow, there always seemed to be another name to cross, another man to kill.

Though, Charlotte wasn't even quite sure what she would do once free. Where could she even go? Much of the world considered her kind to be demons. It wasn't as though people would just one day drop their convictions and accept her. She had to accept that the world simply wasn't built for someone like her. Monsters, after all, had no place in a world of men.

Charlotte heard a familiar knock at her door. Light. Gentle. She smiled. Maybe I don't need the world's approval, she thought.

"Come in," she gleefully called out, propping herself up on one arm as her pedipalps slowly rubbed together in subtle excitement.

The three circular locks on the massive steel door twisted in response, sliding apart and pulling the door open. Kim stood in the exposed doorway, holding a large paper bag in his right arm and a tray with two drinks in his left hand.

The light outside bounced off the reflective strips on Kim's jacket, flooding Charlotte's dimly lit room with light. She shielded her eyes with her hand, watching as Kim stepped inside.

Most considered the young doctor's bright green jacket to be the only notable feature—at least physically—on an otherwise exceptionally average man. He always wore his short black hair in direct adherence to the Imperial Legion's regulations: plain and unstyled. His black pants and boots were indistinct from any of the other soldiers stationed in the facility, fitted precisely to his medium build.

Charlotte, however, found nothing average about Kim's soft brown gaze. His solemn eyes were a trap, luring her into a dangerous sense of security. She remembered how those eyes stopped her the day they met, getting through to even her baser instincts. His look was . . . priceless; after all, she herself couldn't truly describe the way he looked at her. Perhaps she saw some innocence there that she had lost in herself.

"Sorry I'm late," Kim said, placing the paper bag on a large nightstand beside Charlotte's bed. "I got stopped at the checkpoint again."

Intrigued, Charlotte peeked her head over the edge of her hammock. "Oh my, getting into trouble again, are we?" She asked playfully.

"You could say that; I got caught with contraband." Kim turned to her and smiled, holding a brown paper cup with a white lid in his hand.

Coffee? Where did he get that? Charlotte thought. It'd been years since she had the pleasure of drinking an actual cup of coffee. It was a rare commodity in a rationing society. The stuff served in the canteen down here was nothing more than artificial sludge which tasted closer to burnt dirt.

"My, my, what do you have in mind?" Charlotte subtly mused. The real stuff was certain to get her drunk—one of the few perks of being an Arachne.

Kim raised an eyebrow at her. "It's decaf . . . Black—just the way you like it," he replied, raising a cup to her. 

Charlotte took the cup. "You're no fun."

"Trust me, I won't be making that mistake again." He sat down on the bed and looked up at her. "You remember last time, don't you?"

She didn't. What she did remember was getting dizzy after one cup of coffee, much to Kim's surprise; then she remembered waking up hungover and unable to walk straight the rest of the day, much to Commander Haze's frustration. Nothing else in between was in her recollection. 

Charlotte peered down at Kim. "I didn't do anything embarrassing did I?"

"It doesn't really matter if you don't remember." Kim shrugged and turned away. She caught a knowing smirk on his face which he tried to hide, not doing a particularly good job at it.

"I'll get it out of you eventually; it's only a matter of time, though you may not like what I did to you if you wait."

"I'll take my chances."

Charlotte laughed. It felt good to have someone she could let her guard down around. She felt almost normal around Kim. Though, it would be insulting to call their relationship normal. Consistent was a word closer to how she would describe it.

With a firm grasp, Charlotte pressed the coffee cup to her lips, feeling a balmy warmth envelop her as she took a sip. It was smooth and earthy, tasting ever so slightly sweet, as though there were just a drop of honey in her drink.

"How sweet," Charlotte mused.

 "Is it?"

"I'm talking about you." Charlotte smirked as Kim became flustered. It was fun to tease him from time to time. A little bit of payback. "So, any plans for lunch?" She asked.

"Oh, uh, that's right, I brought us some—" Kim paused as the room suddenly became flushed with red.

Charlotte sighed, knowing what was about to come. 

"Code 5A—splicer containment breach on sublevel 3; all non-security personnel are to follow proper evacuation procedures. Doctor Kim, your presence is requested at the scene." A voice which sounded gravelly and robotic rang through a speaker built into the wall, repeating the message.

What do they need Kim for, Charlotte wondered. She looked back at him and saw he had already gotten up without hesitation. Splicers were a dangerous sort; after all, not all of them were as stable as she was. And she couldn't have Kim getting himself killed; it wouldn't sit well on her conscience if she stayed in bed while he was out risking his life.

"Guess I'm skippin lunch today," Kim said with a hint of disappointment as he stood up. 

"We're skipping lunch," Charlotte corrected, climbing down from her hammock. "Let's go handle this quickly."