Age 18 — The Phou Vieng Highlands
Four Months After the Decision
The jungle was older than any nation.
It rose from the valley floor in waves of green, layer upon layer of canopy that blocked the sun and muffled sound. Mist clung to the ridgelines, drifting through the karst peaks that jutted from the earth like the bones of dead gods. The air was thick with the smell of wet earth, rotting vegetation, and the distant sweetness of something flowering where no light reached.
Netoshka moved through it like a ghost.
Her boots found the spaces between roots and stones, her breathing shallow, her senses extended into the green darkness. Around her, Krovka spread through the canopy in a formation they had perfected over months of operations. Zimor on point. Volna covering from the high ground. Kedr watching the flank. Sova trailing behind, ready for wounds.
They had been in the Phou Vieng Highlands for three weeks.
The Kingdom of Phou Vieng was a small nation carved out of the mountains by colonial powers decades ago and abandoned when the empires collapsed. Now it was a chessboard for the wars that followed. The Royal Phou Vieng Army controlled the lowlands and the cities. The Vieng Pathet insurgents controlled the eastern highlands. And caught between them were the Miau people, a highland tribe who had fought for the colonizers, then for the Republic, then for anyone who would help them survive.
Now they fought for the Synarchy.
Not because they believed in Kersnik's vision. Because the alternative was extinction.
Netoshka had seen the camps. The villages burned by government forces. The mass graves in the jungle that no one was allowed to find. The children with empty eyes who had been told they were enemies of the state simply for being born on the wrong ridge.
She had seen it before. In Dongba. In Higane. In every war she had ever fought.
It never got easier.
---
The Village of Ban Nam Pha
The Miau village of Ban Nam Pha was hidden in a valley that the maps didn't show.
Wooden houses on stilts, their roofs thatched with palm leaves. Rice paddies carved into the hillsides, green and gold in the fading light. Children playing in the mud. Old men smoking pipes on the porches.
It looked peaceful. It was anything but.
Netoshka met the village elder in a longhouse at the center of the village. His name was Chou Pao, a man in his sixties with a face like cracked leather and eyes that had seen too much. He had fought for the colonizers when he was fifteen, for the Republic when he was thirty, for his people every day since.
"You are the one they call the Ghost," he said in accented Riyue. "The weapon who has no master."
Netoshka sat across from him. "I have a master. I'm trying to find a way out."
Chou Pao smiled. It was a sad smile.
"We all are. The colonizers said they would protect us. They left. The Republic said they would protect us. They left. Now your Kersnik says he will protect us." He paused. "He will leave too."
"Probably."
Chou Pao studied her.
"But you will not."
It wasn't a question.
Netoshka met his eyes.
"I don't know what I'll do. But I won't forget you."
Chou Pao nodded slowly. He reached into his robes, pulled out a small pouch made of woven grass. Inside was a stone, smooth and black, worn by years of handling.
"This is from the mountain where my grandfather's grandfather was born. It holds the spirit of our people. When you leave, take it with you. Remember us. Remember what we lost." He pressed it into her palm. "When you find what you are fighting for, remember that we are still fighting too."
Netoshka closed her fingers around the stone.
"I will."
---
The Ambush
The Royal Phou Vieng Army had been watching the valley.
They came at dawn, when the mist was thickest, when the guards were most tired. Helicopters—foreign-made, left over from the last war—dropped from the clouds like metal locusts. Troopers in green uniforms swarmed the hillsides, their rifles crackling in the half-light.
Netoshka was awake before the first shots.
She moved through the village, gathering her squad, directing the Miau fighters to their positions. The mist was their ally. The jungle was their ally. The Royal Army had numbers and firepower, but they didn't know the ground.
The Miau knew every root, every rock, every hollow where a man could hide.
The battle lasted three hours.
By the end, the helicopters were gone. The troopers who survived had retreated down the valley, leaving their dead behind. The Miau had lost twelve fighters. The village had lost seven children, caught in the open when the shooting started.
Netoshka stood among the wounded, her hands stained with blood that wasn't hers, her ears ringing from the gunfire. Sova moved beside her, bandaging wounds, injecting morphine, making the calculations that medics made.
Zimor found her at the edge of the village.
"We need to move. They'll be back."
Netoshka looked at the bodies laid out in the square. At the women weeping over their children. At the old men who had seen this before and would see it again.
"Kersnik knew. He knew they would hit this village. He used them as bait."
Zimor said nothing.
"We need to get the Miau out. Find somewhere safe. Somewhere the army won't find them."
"There's no such place."
Netoshka met his eyes.
"Then we make one."
---
The Evacuation
It took three days to organize the evacuation.
Five hundred Miau—men, women, children, old people—moving through the jungle toward a valley deeper in the mountains. A place that didn't exist on any map. A place the Royal Army didn't know about.
Krovka led the way. They carried the wounded, scouted ahead, covered the rear. They moved at night, rested during the day, spoke only in whispers.
Netoshka carried a child on her back—a girl of maybe six, her leg broken by shrapnel, her face buried in Netoshka's neck. She had stopped crying days ago. Now she just held on.
On the third night, they reached the valley.
It was a place out of time. A high plateau ringed by peaks, fed by a waterfall that never stopped falling. Terraced fields, abandoned years ago, now wild with flowers. Caves that could hold a hundred families. Streams that ran clear and cold.
The Miau elders gathered in the center of the valley, looking at the place where their ancestors had lived, generations ago. They spoke in voices too low for Netoshka to hear.
Chou Pao found her at the waterfall.
"You have given us a chance," he said. "That is more than anyone has given us in a long time."
Netoshka shook her head.
"I'm just following orders."
"No." Chou Pao's voice was firm. "You are choosing. Every day, you choose. Today, you chose us." He placed a hand on her shoulder. "That is not nothing."
He walked away.
Netoshka sat by the waterfall, watching the water fall into darkness.
The child was asleep on her back, her breathing steady, her grip loose.
Netoshka thought about all the choices she had made. The villages she had burned. The families she had saved. The lives she had taken. The lives she had spared.
She didn't know if she was good or evil. She only knew that she was tired. Tired of fighting other people's wars. Tired of being used. Tired of watching children die.
But she was still here. Still fighting. Still choosing.
The stone from Chou Pao was warm against her chest.
Remember us.
She would.
---
The Conspiracy
Two weeks later, Krovka received new orders.
Not from Kersnik. From someone else. Someone inside the Synarchy.
The message came through a dead drop in a village they had passed through weeks ago. A single sheet of paper. A location. A time.
Netoshka went alone.
The meeting was in a cave behind a waterfall, hidden from the jungle, from the satellites, from anyone who might be watching. The man waiting for her was Colonel Rostov, a Rosalvyan officer who had been with the Synarchy since the beginning.
"Kersnik has lost his way," Rostov said. "He talks about order, about building something new. But he's become a warlord. A tyrant. Another man with a private army who thinks he should rule the world."
Netoshka waited.
"There are others who feel the same. Officers who remember why we joined. Soldiers who still believe we can be something better. We want you with us."
"Why me?"
"Because your squad is the best he has. Because you're the one he fears. Because when you speak, people listen." Rostov paused. "And because you've already made the same choice. You're leaving. Help us leave first."
Netoshka studied him. "What's the plan?"
"We move in three days. Simultaneous strikes on his command centers, his supply depots, his communications nodes. If we hit him fast enough, hard enough, he won't have time to react."
"And Kersnik?"
Rostov's expression hardened.
"He will face justice."
Netoshka thought about the child on her back. The Miau in their hidden valley. The sleepers in their tanks.
"I'll do it."
---
The Trap
She told Krovka that night.
Zimor listened in silence. Volna nodded slowly. Kedr started to speak, then stopped. Sova showed nothing.
Qi-7's voice was flat. "This is suicide."
"Maybe. But it's the right thing to do."
Yunyan shook her head. "Since when do we do the right thing?"
"Since we started choosing."
They prepared. Weapons. Supplies. Routes. Contingencies.
But Kersnik was not a man who survived by trusting his officers.
The night before the coup, Krovka was separated. Orders came through channels they couldn't refuse. Zimor sent to a supply depot. Volna to a forward outpost. Kedr to a reconnaissance mission. One by one, they were pulled away.
Netoshka was alone when the Synarchy agents came.
They moved through the jungle like shadows, their weapons silenced, their faces hidden behind masks. They didn't try to kill her. They only needed to delay her, to keep her from the fight, to make her watch as everything she had built burned.
She fought through them. Killed three. Wounded four. Made it to the rally point.
No one was there.
She waited through the night.
In the morning, the messages began.
Zimor. Captured. Executed.
Volna. Found in her outpost. Shot twice in the head.
Kedr. Never reached his objective. Body found in a ditch.
Sova. The medics who killed her left her with her own bandages wrapped around her throat.
Qi-7. Yunyan. Honglian. Lotus. All dead. All killed by Kersnik's loyalists. All killed because they had chosen to follow her.
Netoshka sat in the jungle, surrounded by the bodies of the agents she had killed, and felt something break inside her.
---
The Example
Kersnik found her at dusk.
He came alone, walking through the jungle with the ease of someone who had never had to run from anything. He stopped a few meters away, his hands in his pockets, his expression calm.
"You're still alive. Good. I was hoping you would be."
Netoshka didn't move.
"The others are dead. All of them. Your squad, the officers who thought they could replace me, everyone who followed Rostov." He paused. "I let them die quickly. That was mercy."
He stepped closer.
"You, I'm letting live. Not because I'm merciful. Because I need you to understand. You are not a person, Netoshka. You are a weapon. Weapons don't choose their masters. They are used. Every time you try to choose, people will die. Your friends. Your allies. Anyone who follows you."
He knelt beside her, his voice dropping to a whisper.
"You will carry this for the rest of your life. The weight of their deaths. The knowledge that you led them to slaughter. And every time you think about betraying me, you will remember that I let you live. Not because I needed you. Because I wanted you to suffer."
He stood.
"The war is not over. The sleepers are still waiting. And when the time comes, you will be there. Not for yourself. Not for them. For me."
He walked away.
Netoshka sat alone in the jungle, staring at nothing.
---
The Stone
She didn't remember leaving the jungle.
She woke in a village she didn't recognize, surrounded by Miau women who tended her wounds and fed her broth and spoke in voices too soft for her to understand. Days passed. Weeks. She lay in a hut, watching the light change through the thatch, and did nothing.
Chou Pao came to her on the seventh day.
"You are still alive," he said. "That is something."
Netoshka said nothing.
"I have seen this before. The grief. The guilt. The weight of the dead." He sat beside her. "It does not go away. But it changes. If you let it."
"How?"
Chou Pao was silent for a long moment. Then he reached into his robes and pulled out a small bundle of herbs and feathers. He placed it in her hands.
"This is a blessing. For the dead. For the living. For those who carry them both." He paused. "You will never forget them. But you can learn to carry them without being crushed."
Netoshka looked at the bundle. At her hands, still stained with blood that wouldn't wash off.
"I got them killed."
"You made a choice. They made the same choice. That is not nothing." Chou Pao stood. "When you are ready, you will fight again. Not for Kersnik. Not for the Synarchy. For them. For the ones who are still waiting."
He walked away.
Netoshka lay in the darkness, the stone from Chou Pao warm against her chest, the blessing in her hands.
She thought about Zimor. Volna. Kedr. Sova. Qi-7. Yunyan. Honglian. Lotus.
She thought about Ruzina. About the sleepers. About the child on her back.
She thought about the boy in Higane, who had promised to remember her face.
Watch what I become.
She had said that. She had meant it.
Now she had to decide what that meant.
---
Krovka was dead.
Eight soldiers who had chosen to follow her, who had believed in something better, who had died because she had led them into a trap.
Kersnik had let her live as an example. A warning to anyone who might think about betraying him.
But she was still alive. And she was still choosing.
The stone from Chou Pao was warm against her chest. The blessing was in her hands. The dead were in her heart.
She would carry them with her. And one day, she would make them mean something.
The war was not over. The sleepers were still waiting. And Kersnik had made a mistake.
He had let a weapon live.
Weapons, he had said, do not choose.
He was wrong.
She was choosing.
And when the time came, she would choose again.