Theresa
Click. Whir. Snap
It was a rhythmic, maddeningly loud sound in the confined space of the bridge.
Click. Whir. Snap.
Theresa didn't need to look up from the tactical map to know what it was. It was Kiana.
The girl was pacing in a tight circle near the aft bulkhead, spinning the cylinder of her pistol, snapping it shut, and spinning it again.
"Kiana," Himeko's voice cut through the noise, "If you do that one more time, I'm throwing you out the airlock."
The clicking stopped instantly.
Theresa finally looked up. The command deck wasn't chaotic, though she would much prefer it to this oppressive atmosphere.
The tension was like a physical weight pressing down on everyone's shoulders in the room.
"Ten minutes to drop zone," the helmsman called out. "Stealth systems green. ME Corp perimeter sensors have not engaged."
"Maintain course," Theresa ordered, her voice steadier than she felt.
She looked down at her hands. They were gripping the edge of the console so hard her knuckles had turned white. She forced herself to let go, flexing her fingers to drive the blood back into them.
'Ten minutes.'
Ten minutes until she will break into Anti-Entropy to save her most precious student. Ten minutes until she sent her students into a meat grinder she had helped create.
She glanced at Himeko. The Major wasn't looking at Kiana anymore. She was staring at her greatsword, running a cloth over the blade for the hundredth time.
There was no smirk on her face, no confident glint in her eyes. She looked like a soldier who was already mourning the dead before the battle had even started.
'She blames herself,' Theresa realized with a sick twist in her gut. '...And maybe, she blames me too. I was the one who hid his condition from her after all.'
Theresa turned her gaze to the viewport. Fu Hua was there, silent as a statue, watching the clouds rush by.
And Wendy... was sitting on a crate, knees pulled to her chest. She looked deep in thought, but Theresa could see a fire in her eyes. A determination to save the person who saved her.
But one person was missing from the tableau of anxiety.
Raiden Mei.
Theresa scanned the deck and found her. She was standing in the shadows near the exit hatch, perfectly still. Her eyes weren't fixed on the map or the weapons. They were fixed on Theresa.
It was an intense, unblinking stare that made Theresa feel uncomfortable. It was the stare of someone who had committed to something.
She inwardly sighed, looks like Mei wants to talk to her, privately.
She felt a chill run down her spine. She stepped away from the command console, signaling the XO to take the helm.
She walked across the deck, the sound of her boots swallowed by the low hum of the engines.
As she approached, Mei stepped back, opening the door to the small tactical briefing room adjacent to the bridge, and waited.
Theresa followed her inside.
The door hissed shut, sealing out the noise of the ship, sealing out Kiana's nervous energy and Himeko's grim silence. The room was small, lit only by the blue glow of the standby monitors.
Mei stood with her back to the door. She didn't turn around immediately.
"We launch in eight minutes, Mei," Theresa said, crossing her arms to hide the tremor in her hands. "If this is about the mission parameters, we don't have time to—"
"I want you to deactivate it."
The words were soft, spoken so quietly that Theresa almost missed them. But the tone froze her in place.
"What are you talking about?"
Mei turned around. Her face was pale, drawn tight with exhaustion, but her violet eyes burned with a terrifying, cold resolve.
She raised her hand and pressed it flat against her chest, directly over her heart.
"The bomb," Mei said. "The one Schicksal implanted in my heart to kill me if the Third Herrscher wakes up. I want you to deactivate the remote trigger."
Theresa's breath hitched for a moment. "Mei... do you have any idea what you're asking?"
"I know exactly what I'm asking."
"That bomb is the only fail-safe we have!" Theresa's voice rose, panic bleeding into her tone. "If you lose control during the fight, if the Herrscher takes over, that bomb is the only thing that stops another Eruption from happening right here! I can't just turn it off!"
"If I lose control, I die anyway," Mei countered, stepping closer. She loomed over Theresa, exuding a confidence that she had never seen from the young Valkyrie.
"But if I hold back... if I hesitate for even a second because I'm afraid of my heart exploding... then Kenji dies."
She grabbed Theresa's shoulders. It was a breach of protocol, a physical act of desperation that shocked Theresa into silence.
"You told me," Mei whispered, her voice cracking. "You told me he was suppressing the energy. Every day we spent together, every time we watched a movie or ate dinner... he was acting as a filter. He was saving me."
Tears welled in Mei's eyes.
"I didn't know. I didn't know he was carrying that weight for me. And now he's gone, and the voice in my head is louder than it's ever been."
She let go of Theresa, stepping back and unclamping her hands. Purple electricity sparked faintly around her fingertips—a warning.
"I can't fight Cocolia with one hand tied behind my back, Principal. I need the Third Herrscher's power. And I can't use it if I'm worried you're going to blow me up the moment my levels spike."
Theresa stared at her student. She saw the raw, bleeding guilt in Mei's eyes. She saw the reflection of her own failures.
All the pain Mei felt… was because of her. Because she was too engrossed in the possibility of protecting Kiana and Mei, she began to view Kenji as nothing more than another tool.
Mei was becoming a monster. She was willing to risk becoming a Herrscher, willing to risk the entire world, just to save one boy.
And Theresa... Theresa was the one who had pushed her to this point.
"'I'm not going to remove it," Theresa finally said.
"I didn't ask you to, I just want you to disable it for this mission… Please, give me this choice."
Theresa closed her eyes. She felt sick. She was the Principal. She was supposed to protect them from this kind of choice, not enable it.
But she thought of Kenji, alone in the dark of ME Corp. She thought of Kiana, who would break if they failed.
She opened her eyes. She reached into her pocket and pulled out her command override key. She walked to the wall console and slotted it in.
BEEP.
[SUBJECT: RAIDEN MEI. FAILSAFE: DISENGAGED.]
The red light on the console turned to a dull, passive amber.
"It's done," Theresa said, her voice hollow. "The automatic trigger is off. It won't detonate unless I manually command it."
She turned to Mei, her expression hardening.
"Do not make me regret this, Mei. If you lose yourself... if the Herrscher takes over... There won't be anyone left to save him. And I will be forced to kill you myself."
Mei looked at the amber light. She let out a breath she seemed to have been holding for days.
"I won't lose myself," she vowed, her hand dropping from her chest to the hilt of her katana. "Not until he's safe."
She turned and walked out of the room without another word, leaving Theresa alone in the blue glow.
Theresa slumped against the wall, sliding down until she hit the floor. She buried her face in her hands.
"I built this place to save them from him... only to treat them exactly like he would."
/ — /
Cocolia
ZZZRRRT.
The high-pitched whine of the laser scalpel cut through the sterile silence of the laboratory.
The air in the laboratory was scrubbed clean and chilled to near freezing to keep the biological samples stable. But even the high-grade ventilation couldn't wash away the smell.
The smell of burnt flesh and the copper tang of fresh blood.
Cocolia Buran stood over the operating table, her expression hidden behind a surgical mask, though her eyes betrayed a cold fascination.
Below her, strapped to the metal slab by heavy titanium cuffs, lay Kenji Aoyama.
His chest was bare, a roadmap of fresh, angry scars that were constantly moving.
With a steady hand, Cocolia dragged the laser across his forearm. The beam sliced through skin and muscle like butter, exposing the bone beneath. Smoke curled up from the wound, thin and gray.
"Fascinating," she murmured.
She didn't even have time to retract the scalpel.
HISS.
Steam erupted from the cut. The muscle fibers writhed like living worms, snapping back together with wet squelching sounds.
The skin knit itself shut over the wound in seconds, leaving behind pale, pink tissue that faded to his natural skin tone before her eyes.
"Regeneration rate remains constant," a researcher announced from behind the safety of a reinforced glass partition.
His voice trembled slightly over the intercom. "Subject has endured forty-eight hours of continuous testing. Cellular fatigue is practically nonexistent."
Cocolia set the scalpel down on the metal tray with a CLINK.
She picked up a syringe next. It was filled with a thick, glowing purple liquid. A concentrated, corrosive Honkai serum designed to liquefy organic matter on contact.
"Let's test the limit," she said.
She leaned over him.
'Kenji' was awake. He had been awake for hours.
His eyes were open, staring up at the blinding white surgical lights. But they weren't the eyes of the self-sacrificing fool she captured.
They were a deep, blood-soaked red that seemed to glow in the dim light of the lab. They didn't blink. They didn't water. They just watched.
A small part of her knew that whatever was in control wasn't Aoyama Kenji. But she had no idea what it could be.
Cocolia drove the needle into the side of his neck.
PLUNGE.
She depressed the plunger, emptying the corrosive fluid directly into his jugular.
Spiderwebs of black necrosis spread from the injection site. The veins in his neck bulged, turning a sickly violet as the poison ate away at the vessel walls.
The skin around the puncture site sizzled, sloughing off like melted wax, revealing the blackening meat underneath.
Any normal human would be screaming. A Valkyrie would be begging for death. But 'Kenji' didn't make a sound.
Slowly, he turned his head on the metal pillow. The movement was smooth and fluid, ignoring the fact that the muscles in his neck were quite literally liquefying.
He locked those unsettling red eyes onto hers.
He tilted his head slightly. A look of pure, unadulterated boredom crossed his face. Then, his lips quirked upward.
It wasn't a smile of bravado. It wasn't a grimace of pain.
It was a smirk.
'Is that it?' his expression seemed to say. 'Are you done playing?'
Cocolia felt a momentary flicker of unease, a primal warning bell ringing in the back of her mind.
But she crushed it instantly. She was a leader of Anti-Entropy. She did not fear her subjects.
FSSSSSHHH.
A massive cloud of steam erupted from his neck, blinding her for a second.
The black veins receded. The necrosis stopped dead in its tracks, pushed back by an aggressive, golden-red glow from beneath his skin.
The wound on his neck sealed with a final, dismissive POP.
Kenji—or whatever was wearing his skin—chuckled. It was a dry, raspy sound, devoid of humor.
He winked at her.
Cocolia didn't step back. Instead, she leaned closer, her eyes narrowing as she studied the intelligence burning in those red irises.
"I can tell that you are not Aoyama Kenji. What are you? Do you not feel pain?" she asked. Her voice was calm, though her pulse quickened with intrigue.
The chuckle rumbled in his chest again, vibrating against the metal restraints.
"Pain?" His voice was smooth, a velvety baritone that sounded nothing like the frantic boy she had studied in the reports. "Why would I be in pain? You're feeding me."
Cocolia paused. "Feeding you?"
"That serum," he said, rolling his neck to crack the stiffness away. "It has a delightful kick. A little spicy, perhaps. Kenji would have passed out after all of this… This attempt at breaking him."
He smiled, baring his teeth.
"But I don't mind breaking. It reminds me that I'm alive."
Cocolia's curiosity spiked. "You speak of him as if he is separate. A split personality? Or something more parasitic?"
"Parasitic?" He laughed softly. "No, Madam Cocolia. It would be more accurate to say that I am the… Immune system."
He shifted his gaze past her, looking through the reinforced glass at the researchers huddled over their monitors.
They flinched under his gaze, though he hadn't raised his voice or strained against his bonds.
"Tell me," he said, his tone conversational, as if discussing the weather. "Do those people have families? Partners? Children waiting for them?"
Cocolia frowned. "That is irrelevant."
"Is it?" He tilted his head back, looking at the ceiling. "I think it's very relevant. Because you seem to be under the impression that this glass protects them. That these cuffs hold me because they are strong."
He flexed his wrist. The heavy titanium groaned, but he couldn't break through.
"They only hold me because my host butchered his healing factor, leaving me vulnerable," he whispered. "Make no mistake. I am letting you poke and prod because, frankly, I find your little science project... quaint."
He looked back at her. The red in his eyes seemed to swirl like liquid magma.
"But eventually, I'm going to get bored. Or hungry. And when I do..."
He turned toward the glass partition, toward a pale-faced researcher.
"I'm going to paint this room with him. And then I'm going to tear the rest of them apart, piece by piece, just to see what color they bleed. It's only fair, isn't it? You checked my insides. I should check yours."
The threat was delivered without a shred of anger. It was a statement of fact. A promise.
Cocolia stared at him for a long moment. The logical part of her brain warned that this was a Class-A threat, that she should terminate the experiment and put him in cryo-stasis immediately.
But if she did, she would lose the opportunity of an incredible discovery.
"A distinct consciousness," she mused, ignoring the threat entirely. "Born of the anomaly energy? Or could there be something else?"
She stripped off her surgical gloves, dropping them into the incinerator bin.
"You are confident," Cocolia said, meeting his gaze. "But confidence without leverage is just arrogance. You are strapped to a table in the heart of my fortress. You aren't going anywhere until I say so."
The Alter Ego smiled. It was a terrifyingly genuine smile.
"We'll see."
Cocolia turned to the glass partition, keying her mic. "Prepare the neural interface. I want to map his brainwave patterns while this… Alter Ego is active. Classify it under the name, Zero."
"Yes, Director," Multiple researchers said simultaneously.
Cocolia turned back to Kenji one last time. "Rest while you can, Zero. The next phase will be... invasive."
Zero didn't respond. He just watched her leave, that amused, predatory smirk never leaving his face.