You hate him, you're afraid of him, but those are just drops in the roaring, roiling ocean. A few strands of the feeling that surges through your chest and sings in your blood. You're searing hot, you're freezing cold, the fury roars in your ears like sheets of flame. It burns inside you, burns you out and eats you away. Turns your soft, tender parts to so much ash and charcoal. It draws the heat from the bones and ignites it in your throat, lets it blaze in your eyes. Enamel grinding on enamel. Your breathing long and slow. He's nothing: thief, murderer, scum. He's nothing: terrorist, freak, butcher. Your blade drawn back, aimed at a chink in his chestplate, a chunk of dented armor. Razor tip gleaming in the light.
He's fucking nothing: just a runner.
And the world is better off without him.
"RrrrrrrRRRAAAAAAAHHHHH."
Bulging muscle, rippling brawn, you push off your back foot and the tip punches through the plate. Piercing it with a metal shriek, an alloyed scream. You drive the blade in. Drive it through the leathery skin and dermal deposits. Drive it in to the hilt. Drive it in until you feel it racking over the bone, until you feel the machine-forged length shudder as the tip bursts from his back. Drive it in just like you were taught, just like you were trained. The troll's frame shudders. You know you've hit his heart, carved the rare muscle into twitching chunks. The blade is embedded in the meat of his chest. It feels like it's sunk in mud. You: in the textbook finish stance. The troll: already dead.
And then a hand the size of a cinderblock slams into your shoulder and drags you in. Pulling you off your feet, your sword torn from your hand. He lifts you up until he's eye to eye. Bloody spittle dripping from the base of his ox-horned helmet; viscous and thick. His scarlet eyes, drunk with pain, with rage. You flail, feet kicking three feet off the ground. All he has is one arm around your shoulder, the other hanging useless at his side but he's squeezing you and you feel bone grinding and muscle bruising and you're kicking but your booted feet just bounce off his stomach, leaving dents in the cuirass and you feel the black eating away the edges of your vision-
The pressure cuts out. You fall to the ground; gasping, wheezing, medical alert pulsing in the corner of your faceplate. The limb lands beside you with a heavy, meaty, thud. The troll stands over you, staring blankly at the stump where his arm used to be. Body a mess of red rents and crumpled plate. Edges of the wounds pulling, twitching with every breath. Less a man and more a chunk of savaged meat. Your sword in his chest. Another pair of points sprouting from the troll's gut, dripping red-black. Gahm to the side, blade at the terminus point of a perfectly executed arc. The troll falls.
"Niutou! Mamian!"
The anguished cry echoes through the gardens. You scramble up on all fours, head jerking towards the noise; whining as you put wait on your wounded side. You see a man, snarling, monster-skull shaped gasmask cinched tight to his face; body half-in-half-out of the access tunnel. The mask's eyes are a shining sapphire blue. The breathing filter's edged in azure light. You catch the suggestion of something loose and flowing over matte black military kit.
The only response is a scything hail of rifle fire, troopers with slanted shields arranged in an arc around the far end of the square. Advancing step by slow, synchronized step. A blue ward shines in front of the runner's chest, visibly decaying into dust as it's wrenched apart by sheer volume. Someone throws a grenade at the maintenance hatch and an arm snakes around the man's chest, dragging him down. The hatch slams shut. The grenade exploding harmlessly above it. Crumpling the thick doorway down.
The cease fire order flits through your HUD and the storm dies away. Leaving the square quiet save for the rumble of thunder from overcast skies, the rain stopped for now. A squad of soldiers advances, tower shields tightly gripped, their boots crunching on shattered, smoking circuitry and broken turbofans. The corpses of a dozen drones. An ork rips the mangled hatch off. Another takes an entire belt of deadly oblong shapes from her waist. She pulls the pin. Drops it all down the shaft and the soldiers back away.
A second later the garden lurches beneath you and a ten foot tongue of flame shoots up; scorching the air. You stagger, hand dipping to the ground to steady yourself. Lurching as you regain your balance. You stumble your way to the troll corpse and plant you boot on it's chest. You reach for your sword with your right hand and feel your body howl with pain. The sharp, jagged, spikes of sensation potent even through the adrenaline rush. You try again with your left and draw your sword, ignoring the way the body sucks against it; tugs it back. Slash the air and splatter a nearby bed of lilies with the gore. The pale, fragile petals dappled with red. You clumsily sheathe your weapon.
All at once the qi fades, the water level drops, the river runs dry. You can feel your breath rasping out of raw lungs. Feel the ache and the agony and the half-intoxicated haze escaping from it's container. Ignored fear swarms over you, atavistic instincts hammering on your nerves, yowling now-useless warnings. You sway, hand scrabbling at the release of your helmet. Popping it just in time to retch. Acidic bile splatters on the flagstones. You can taste the soju and beer again, it's not better the second time around.
In the distance you can hear sirens, the thump-thump of helicopter rotors. News crews and the obligatory Pyongyang Metroxplex Police response. Medics are already out in the garden. Filtering through ruined cover and stooping by slumped forms; triaging the wounded and dying. White tents are going up at the edges of the garden with canvas rustling and the slick whipping of plastic cloth. Riggers are moving towards the still smoking hole in the ground with fresh, non-compromised drones.
You stand. Uncertain. The rage is gone; you're not angry anymore, not even a little really. Just confused, confused and tired. Gahm's at your side. He pats your arm, just below the wounded spot. You hiss anyway, cringing at the sharp surge lances up your neck.
"You did good Anglo. You did good. Let's go get you patched up yeah?"
You shakily nod, not trusting yourself to speak.
You sit on the bench, your helmet beside you and cool morning air on your face. You roll your shoulders, testing the edges of the numb patch that wraps around your shoulder. Wrapped gauze shifts beneath your combat skin, bracing your bone in place. The medic said you were lucky, the troll only broke your clavicle, not your neck. Said in the sort of ironic, exasperated way one speaks to troublemaking children. Even so, your guts did more than a few squirming, slick flips when you saw the mottled blue-black spilling across your skin. But some local and a quick realignment later and you're feeling much better. The lingering hooks of your hangover still burrowing in your brain but...nothing to be done about that really. You don't mind it too much truth be told.
You take a swig from your canteen. The water cool and soothing as it washes down your throat. Gahm's gone to check on his other friends. The medics wrote you a slip for three days worth of medical leave. The shakes have stopped. They're not letting you go home, not just yet, but you're not worried.
You killed a man for them after all.
You're bothered at how much that doesn't bother you. It was him or you. He deserved it. You don't feel bad, you definitely don't feel guilty, and your training tells you that you shouldn't. But there's still a part of you, the part of you that grew up on a steady diet of brightly colored cartoons, that knows that you should. You mull it over, picking at it and unpacking it. The anger's long since burned itself out. There's nothing left but white-ash and a dull, not-entirely unpleasant pulse in your chest. Something happened tonight. You accomplished something, achieved something. Managed something that few do. You downed a fucking troll, that's something to be proud of isn't it? Regardless of anything else.
Your PDA chimes at your hip, you fumble it out with your good arm.
[Petty Office Esser]
[Report to conference room: 450076 for debrief]
Anxiety and excitement roar to life all at once. You calm the jitters, do your best to smother them out (although, honestly, you don't have the heart). PDA back in your belt. Helmet hooked back over your collar and sealed. You pick your way over the shattered and fractured flagstones. Pace back into the atrium. The elevator bank stands, shiny and inviting.
You can see a knot of cubicle mice standing on the steps, they watch you curiously. Half-afraid and half in awe of the blood splatter still on your suit. You let yourself relish it. Just for a second, before the doors close. Gravity plucks at your gut as the car rises. You pass the few seconds before the the 45th floor leaning against the wall. The doors open with a ding and you're padding down another set of classy, tile corridors. A few right turns through the cubicle maze before you find the right room.
It's the one with the pair of troopers flanking it.
You hesitate at the threshold, good mood slipping by a few notches before your conscious brain kicks it back in gear. The staff ignores you, seemingly bored. After a second you knock on the frosted pane. A man in a dark suit opens the door. Eyes hidden by shades so black they could be made from obsidian shards. You feel more than see his attention smoothly drift from the dataslate in his hand to the nametag on your chest. He steps back and gestures you in without a word.
The table inside could sit twenty four without trouble. It sits three. A dwarf man, a dwarf woman, and the man who opened the door. All dressed in the same, identical dark suits. Each with a half-empty glass of water by their hands. Styli still between their fingers. Softly glowing electronic slates sitting in front of them. They say nothing as you sit down. As does the troll standing behind them, arms as thick as your waist folded behind his back. Black Turtle armor straining to contain his sheer mass.
The world pivots, turning by degrees. That warm, shining feeling flickering and fading. You feel as if you're slipping. You hold onto your good mood with both hands, gripping it tightly. Ignoring old nightmares. Missed calls from mother, an intercom demanding that you come to the principal's office, dragging your feet down the stairs for a "family meeting". You start sweating. Beads of perspiration soaking through the bandages. Your suit suddenly feels a size too small. Your storm-grey facemask too thin a barrier. You feel like they can see you through it. See you squirm. They look like they might be augmented, maybe they can. The dwarf woman, her hair elegantly coifed, touches a manicured nail to the surface of her PDA.
"Please state your name for the record." She asks.
"Petty Officer Christoph Esser." Your voice is hoarse. The microphone in your helmet just turns it metallic.
"And how long have you been an employee of Black Turtle CorpSec?"
"I...seven months. I was hired right out of college." Your head hurts. Your tongue feels desert dry and clay-cracked. "It should all be in my file ma'am."
She smiles. It's clearly intended to be warm but it doesn't quite reach her eyes. The men on either side of her don't even bother pretending to be anything but disinterested.
"It's for record keeping." She lies without so much as a tremor of tension. But you know, you can see it. And you think...you think that she can see you see it too because the faux-warmth dissipates as quickly as it came. Leaving only stone-cold bureaucratic boredom. She touches her stylus to her slate, scrolling down. Eyes scanning the notes. You see Chinese characters, thick upon the page. You couldn't read them even if they weren't upside down.
"I understand you were involved in the fighting in the South Garden, Petty Officer Esser?"
"Yes ma'am."
"And, of course, you were contributing to your fullest ability Petty Officer Esser?"
A pause. "...I...killed a troll. One of the runners." Your voice sounds small and plaintive, even to you. She doesn't even look up from her own writing.
"Combat metadata indicates that this was a joint kill."
"Yes ma'am." You don't press the point.
"Do you enjoy working for Black Turtle Corpsec, Petty Officer Esser?"
"Y-yes ma'am!"
"And you would never abuse company resources or access."
Swapped shifts, meals charged to the principal's accounts, taking breaks in the quiet part of the building, in cubicle-mice only areas. The nicer areas. Not just you, of course not just you. Everyone did it. Everyone does it. Your good mood, your sudden flash of pride, slips away entirely, draining through weakly grasping fingers. Leaving only a cold, clammy, fear in its wake.
"N-no ma'am."
"Mm." She finally looks up. You shrink back in the chair, synthetic black leather squeaking and creaking against your striated combat skin. Your hands are folded on your lap. You resist the urge to lace them together. She seems to take pity on you and her voice is softer. More conversational as she leans forward. "Let me be honest with you Christoph. We know about what you've done. The little transgressions. The little...'oh it's not big deal if I do it, everyone's doing it,' right?" You nod, desperate. Drowning. Dumb. She presses on.
"And while discipline will be forthcoming in that regard, this committee has a broad amount of discretion in our recommendation. Between your exemplary combat performance and comparatively minor role in this organization we would be willing to overlook these more petty infractions-" hope surges, bright and bold, "-if you could point us to one of the 'bad seeds' we believe lay at the root of these widespread, endemic, issues. Issues that this most recent incident has brought to light."
It dies, muted and sodden and sick. Leaving only a hollow, infected throb in its place. A wounded tooth buried somewhere in your brain. A sore somewhere beneath your sternum.
"But," you say with despicable meekness, "I don't really know anyone."
"Everyone," she says with a slight smile, "knows someone."
And you realize...you do.
You know Gahm.
Hard-drinking, boisterous, irreverent, Gahm. The one, single friend you've sort-of made since you got to Korea.
[ ] Tell them everything you know, everything they could ever want to hear about Petty Officer Gahm Sang-chul.
[ ] Make some broad, general comments that incriminate no one in particular. Least of all Gahm Sang-chul.
