76°00'08.2"S 53°43'31.2"E - Nuevo Trujillo, Spanish Antarctic Colonies

  26.05.2024 19:00, UTC+03:00

  “Fire them off! Please, fire them off!” the Weaver shouted, with the determination of someone ready to die. I was not, however, and as she begged someone for something to be fired off, I closed my eyes.

  This was it. I expected to be blasted into smithereens immediately.

  But I was not.

  I opened my eyes again. I could hear the noise, chatter, and music of a canteen brimming with people. It was familiar, and its scent was dangerously calming. But no; I was outside, not in the canteen. A warm summer breeze hit my face, while I stood on the porch.

  I glanced back over my shoulder: the canteen at the training grounds back at Santiago. I had spent many free days and nights there. But it was different. Not how I remembered it.

  “To special friends and their gifts,” I heard a woman’s voice, somewhere by my side.

  I turned around to face two women. And although I recognized both of them, I had trouble reconciling their image. They both looked way younger than I had known them, at least fifteen years younger. They wore loosely fit cadet uniforms.

  “To special friends,” Azura said, raising a bottle of beer. The Weaver, or rather Hanying, before she ever got the monicker, raised her bottle as well.

  I raised my bottle in a toast as well. “To special friends.”

  I did not know who I was supposed to be in this memory. I had never met either of them so young.

  They both laughed, as if I had said something funny, and drank from their bottles. Then they looked at each other.

  I was in Weaver’s mind.

  “How is that possible?” I said.

  “Training summer is over! We will be T-6s in a few days,” Azura said.

  But that was not what I meant.

  This was Hanying’s mind. How was I in it?

  Hanying chuckled and pinched Azura.

  “But we have these days to have fun, don’t we?”

  It was impossible.

  The only times I could do that were when we combined hexes.

  Death was the ultimate soothing state. Miguel would bring them to the edge of death, the precipice right before they step into the light, and Catalina would draw their mind, while I opened the door to their mind by accessing their soothed state. It was an elaborate exercise, but it always worked. My visit to their soothed mind was a byproduct of the triple hex, one I did not particularly enjoy. Seeing suspects and criminals in memories they found most calming.

  But then again. It was possible.

  “It makes sense. Catalina is here with me. And you are about to die – or you think you are,” I said to Hanying.

  She chuckled with an innocence not fit for her personality, or at least, the personality I knew.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “But if I am here, it means I am still next to you,” I continued. I looked at my hands: male hands, with hair on their fingers. Not hands I recognized. “What is it? The explosives you rigged?”

  “Explosives? What are you talking about?”

  “How does someone like you think they are about to die?” I asked, my temper rising. Her smile turned into a frown. Then she popped a deriding smile:

  “I can’t die, Ric, you know that,” Hanying said, “my luck will never let me.”

  “What’s all this really about?” Azura asked, stepping in between me and Hanying. The eyes of a woman that I used to respect before her betrayal crossed mine. And that angered me. So, so, so much.

  Everything around us warped and reshaped.

  “Catalina!” I shouted, “Pull me out of Hanying’s mind!”

  I AM SORRY

  “You bitch!”

  I did not know how much time I had. Usually, minutes or hours inside their soothed minds took as much as seconds in real life. But there was no rule, and it differed every time. Death was not the same experience for everyone.

  “Mama! Mama!” A young girl’s voice.

  I was in a child’s bedroom, windowsills shut, with the midnight sun’s light only marginally coming in. The walls were painted and drawn, depicting different mountains of Antarctica, and some I did not recognize. Hand-drawn paper pictures of birds and dragons were stuck with stickers across the walls.

  A girl, no older than seven or eight years old, was crying in her bed. The door opened, pouring some light into the room.

  “Mama!” The girl shouted a third time as the woman walked to her. She was in her forties, and she looked as much as possible like Hanying, only her eyes and hair felt misplaced. She was her mother; the Weaver was the little girl.

  The woman spoke in Mandarin with the girl, as the little girl whimpered about a nightmare.

  I closed my eyes.

  “Come on, take me out of here!” I said, trying to ignore the unfolding scene. I tried to seek my other senses, maybe my allies on my earpiece, or explosions, or gunshots, anything that would pull me back to the train station in the Plaza de Armas.

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  “Sh, sh, sh,” the mother shushed Hanying, calming her. That was all I could hear. My Curse would be my undoing, trapping me in a terrorist's soothing memory.

  “Catalina! If I die, your last pieces of a soul die as well!” I begged, still with my eyes closed. “Release me!”

  White blurry letters floated in the dark backdrop of my shut eyelids.

  I DO NOT CARE.

  Hanying’s mother started humming a lullaby. The verses did not sound quite like Mandarin, but they were soothing.

  “Fuck begging,” I said. I opened my eyes and walked to the girl and her mother. “Shut the fuck up!”

  The mother, startled, stopped humming and grabbed her daughter tighter to her hug.

  “I don’t care either,” I said, and I kicked the mother in her face with my full force. I felt her nose break, by my boot. This was a memory, but we were living it.

  Seven-year-old Hanying cried.

  “You want to be soothed to death? How about trauma? Wake up!”

  A kick to her mother’s stomach.

  “I am not…” I shouted.

  And then kicked her twice in the face. Teeth flung to the wall behind her.

  “Going to… die here…”

  I grabbed her mother from her hair and dragged her right into young Hanying’s face.

  “…so if Catalina won’t, you let me out!” I shouted at the little girl.

  I did not care if she understood it or not. I did not care if she was too far into her soothing dying fantasies and had lost her sense of herself. If we were both going to die, none of us would die in peace.

  The world around me shifted again, the child’s bedroom being replaced by mechanical parts, drone cameras, and smoke.

  “Why don’t you bully someone your size?” Hanying’s voice – no, Weaver’s judging by the maturity of it – threatened.

  The girl was gone, and her mother had turned into a corpse, unrecognizable and burnt to a crisp.

  I looked back, only to see Hanying in full T-Agent gear, earpiece, goggles, and gun strapped to her belt. She stood a few meters away from me. She held a dueling sword, and her hair was tied in a knot.

  I rose and looked around: cars were burning, people were running away, and media drones were casting light on the scene, somewhere in the streets of Santiago.

  I do not know who I was supposed to be, but I had a long, heavy sword in front of me. I would have preferred a gun, but whatever would work.

  “Maybe look into therapy for that,” I said, “a bit narcissistic, don’t you think? Being soothed by your laurels in battle.”

  The Weaver tilted her head. “Soothed by senseless violence? Only terrorists like you.”

  “Bitch, it is your fantasy,” I said, and picked up the sword.

  She ran to me, going in for the strike. I pivoted and deflected with my sword, pushing her back. The drones flew in closer, and as they did, she smiled. I tried to attack her from her sides, but with her usual panache, she dodged my blade as if it were nothing.

  And then swiveled to the left, using her momentum to strike again.

  Sharp pain in my abdomen answered the question I did not have time to ask myself: would it hurt inside the Weaver’s soothing fantasy?

  It did, a lot. I kneeled.

  The drones flew inches away from me and her, broadcasting her victory, subduing whoever she thought she did, throughout the Spanish Colonies.

  “Any last words?” Hanying asked.

  “Yes,” I said and turned to the drones, “the Weaver has now been associated with more than twelve attacks by the Escapadas, a rogue destabilizing group in Nuevo Trujillo. Her actions in 2024 have caused the deaths of tens of agents – and thousands of innocents, counting the Breach as the result of her actions and her allies.”

  “What are you…” Hanying tried to interrupt me, but more drones appeared.

  Maybe she did not have a conscience, but she had pride. I had to get creative.

  “She will always be known as the Great Deceiver of the T-Agency, using her Curses not only to lead terrorists to our doors, while seeking a vanity death, made impossible by the collection of her Curses,” I turned to her, “a broken excuse of a Cursed failure.”

  “That’s not true! None of this is true!”

  She looked around, and now more drones were hovering around her as well. The eyes of the public, her companions, and the future generations.

  “Then don’t fucking die a stupid death and defend your legacy!”

  The world collapsed once more.

  She had one last memory she could find solace and soothing in. I knew it, because this was her absolute last memory.

  “There is nowhere you can go now,” I heard myself say.

  I saw myself pinning her down, and both of us tumbled down to the train tracks.

  I walked near myself, just to watch the scene.

  “The only calming memory you can retreat to is that of your death? That’s pathetic,” I said, “I have had enough of your self-pity.”

  It was peculiar, standing next to myself and her, fighting on the ground. Watching the last waking moments I had as well, the ones I was trying to get back to before being dragged into her mind.

  “In that case, then fire them off,” the Weaver said, surrendering in her grapple. This was it, the moment I saw her calm beyond explanation. The moment she knew it was over. A moment so blissfully peaceful for her, her own death would be the last moment she would fantasize about.

  Bright light.

  It felt like a jolt of electricity passed through me when I saw him appear. I hadn’t seen him when I lived the fight; but through the Weaver’s eyes and memories, he was there.

  A young man, dressed in light and with runes shining bright and flashing throughout his clothes and body, was leaning by her side. I would recognize that face everywhere. We were searching for him for days. I had also closely encountered him the very same morning, in San Isidro.

  The Survivor - ángel Vázquez Ramos – he was there, but also was not. He looked translucent, like a spirit. A ghost, but bright. An apparition of sorts.

  I could see Elena, myself in Weaver’s memory, unable to see him, and focusing on pinning the Weaver down. Even though his bright light should be impossible for anyone to ignore.

  “Fire them off! Please, fire them off!” the Weaver begged, and I saw her begging the boy. So that was it, the boy was the one who could detonate the explosives, or set in motion whatever the Weaver thought with certainty would kill her.

  I stepped closer to the scene.

  If there were even the slimmest of chances the boy’s Curses could reach beyond reality and fantasy, I had to try.

  “Don’t! I can save your friend!”

  The Survivor turned to me. His eyes were replaced with light, and for a moment, I could not tell if he looked at me or in me.

  “Who are you?” He asked, his voice echoing.

  “The one who captured Romero,” I said, and added, “Oriol. His name is Oriol. Your friend.”

  I saw Weaver fainting, and myself on top of her. Tranquilized, the moment Catalina could trigger our combined hexes.

  I did not have much time.

  “I can wake Oriol up. Let us live, and I will return Oriol to you, unscathed. But if I die, Oriol dies too,” I said.

  I did not know if that was true, but it was plausible. I kept Miguel asleep, and after I died, he could remain as such. He kept Oriol alive, from my bullet. It was a risky business and a delicate balance of Curses, but we were all, as luck would have it, linked by a string of Curses, one’s death linked with the next.

  As luck would have it. I looked at the passed-out Weaver. She really had no control over what her luck had planned. Self-pity was perhaps justified.

  And that ghostly boy, the Survivor, cared for his friends. I knew it, I could see it.

  “I see,” ángel’s apparition said.