[ Watashi ]

[ Tomodachi ]

[ Saint Seiya ]

[ Clamp ]

[ Fanfiction ]

The meaningless chatter spilling out of the console's sound board was annoying. It grated on my nerves and wormed its way inside my brain, but I lacked the will to do something about it. Besides, I smiled to myself, most of the nurses had always told me they enjoyed watching this particular channel, except when it was airing the World Cup's finals--like now.

"Football," Anastasia Elefteros mumbled, "you'd think all life in the universe stops, and even time is suspended--pfeh!" I gave her an absentminded nod, knowing better than to argue, and reached for my half of the linen. I matched my motion to hers, and we spread out the sheets over the bed.

Routine.

They had eventually agreed to let me help with some of the small things. It had taken long weeks of negotiations, and they had yielded upon a single condition: that I don't cut off my hair. Even Marin, the psychiatrist, had insisted on it. I had told them they were insane, then I had given them my word. It was a ridiculous thing, and an easy one as well. Thanks to one of the staff's younger recruits, I had learnt how to manage it with the sole means offered to a normal human being.

Normal--I sighed the thought away while smoothing the bed sheets. I had sunk into the world from then on, into a sky of waning stars where lights were dull and lifeless. I had focused on fabrics and voices and the taste of an orange juice. Slowly, painstakingly, I had learnt to live with them alone. I had regrown muscle after my bones were done mending. I had practised at the hospital's training center, spending as much time there as they would allow.

Working until exhaustion numbed my mind.

This morning, Marin had announced that she'd release me from the hospital before the end of the week, that I was as ready to face the world as I'd ever be. I had acquiesced, holding laughter back inside. It was true enough, anyway. Just as she had left my room, a technician had come in, and proceeded to fix the wiring of the all but useless connection node.

Then I had laughed, and ignored the opening in my golden cage's door--the opening I had demanded for so long--in a perverse need to be contrary. To be a child. Afraid.

Terrified.

A dissonant noise drew my attention to the monitor on my right, and I saw that the picture no longer was that of the giant sports stadium of Wembley. "We interrupt the regular course of our program for a special news bulletin," a woman who used far too much make-up was saying. The view shifted to an image whose colors seemed to be tied to the spectrum of reds.

Mars.

From very far away, I felt myself take a step back. The air I drew inside my lungs was ice. "Thank you, Jennifer," another woman in what looked like worn-out military gear said. "Things are moving rapidly here in Pettit, at the heart of the gigantic plain known as Amazonis Planitia. In this place forgotten on the military charts, chosen by both sides as neutral ground, we've gotten a report that a spectacular breakthrough took place during the last night. We hear that the principles of an agreement have been drawn and signed by the two parties. As Federico Montini, one of the chief negotiators for the United Earth government said himself, this could mark the end of the most terrible conflict in recent history. The war claimed close to two millions of victims, most of them among the civilian population. The agreement is expected to contain important concessions to the Martian colonists, allowing them a free access to Freedom station and to develop their own line of freighters and Merchanter ships. The government has announced clearly its will to do whatever it can to help in healing the horrible damages caused by a now deposed fraction of the Corps. Here, in Pettit settlement, we've heard no report of any terrorist action in the full week that these negotiations lasted. The hope for peace is a very real one this time, and this agreement should at last open the routes leading south, beyond the great barrier known as the Rim, allowing the relief organizations to rejoin the devastated settlements and their surviving population. The number of casualties is expected to climb in an exponential fashion as bombarded places are reached. This was Cynthia Rosenberg, reporting live from the peace conference on Mars for Universal News Network."

"Thank you, Cynthia," the first woman popped up in a small window on the upper left corner of the screen. "We'll be back with this and more in our next news report." With that, the image of the Martian desert faded to be replaced by that of the United Earth Corps flag falling slowly toward the bottom of the screen--an absurd petal of tainted stars and blood. Then the woman faced the viewers, and added:

"And don't forget to watch out for the sequel of our award-winning documentary, a unique insider's perspective on the war: 'Martian Miners and Families, the Truth of a Scandalous Exploitation Revealed!', to follow our next program." Then the image faded again, to be replaced by some kind of musical hymn while the woman was saying, "And now we return to the World Cup's finals, where the Real Madrid is leading Sao Paulo by one--"

I reached out to the remote lying on the shelf set next to the bed's head, and shut off the connection. Then, slowly, I put it back in place, and sat down on the bed. The sheets' fabric was warm and soft under my fingers as I clutched them.

Blood red sky.

Ethereal light, filtered by environmental shields.

Dust, that invaded every place, every house and every piece of equipment, despite all the protections to keep it out.

Dust, everywhere.

"Bombardments?" The blanched voice that cut through the silence was mine.

There was a ruffle of fabric as Anastasia smoothed my pillow and put it back where it belonged. "Yes," she said softly. "It happened right before you were brought here." She came to my side of the bed, and sat down beside me. "What they said at the time, was that during an operation in a terrorists' stronghold--Hellas Planitia, the name was; it's easy to remember, because Hellas sounds like Hell," she bowed her head.

Hellas was the true name of Greece, but I didn't tell her that. The sounds of that name rippled within.

Echoed.

Grew.

"An entire battalion of the Corps' elite troops was wiped out. The terrorists had used a new, horrible weapon of mass destruction. They'd strike at our forces, at innocent people with it. Nothing would stop them. So the government authorized the use of gravitation bombs when the Corps requested it. The military bombed Mars' whole southern hemisphere," she whispered in an almost inaudible voice.

Hundreds of ships swarming Mars' higher atmosphere, in low orbit.

Locusts.

Poised.

Dropping a silent death that crushed everything.

A death that ripped through houses and flesh, through shields and escape tunnels.

Smashed fragile shells of flesh and bones.

"We all hoped it'd be over quickly. Then, they say a tape reached the head office of Planetary Aid in Bombay--" Anastasia hugged herself, and went on in a shaking voice, "smuggled to Earth through an underground network involving some of our operatives and members of the Corps itself, as rumor has it. That tape made the headline news for days on end. In the same time, the information channels suddenly managed to discover the truth of Mars and of the life led by colonists born there." A thin smile twisted the young woman's lips. "The images of the war rocked the world. All those poor people, all those families trying in vain to flee while death rained on them from the sky, bursting apart in fountains of bright blood, and the children--" She clenched her teeth.

Cold.

Cold, the claws that clamped upon my stomach, so cold that they burnt.

"That's when the demonstrations began. The whole global network turned against the Corps. Even when the colonists retaliated and blew up almost half of the remaining Earth-owned mines in the north. The information channels backed the peace movement in an incredible U-turn. From a small, extremists' fraction scorned by the network journalists and the whole population, the movement became the embodiment of truth. Peace was abruptly granted the status of 'just cause'. When it became clear that the situation had become politically unmanageable, the government sacked what they called rogue extremists leading the military operations on Mars. It then called for peace, it pleaded with the relief organizations and begged them to find a contact among the colonists. With Mars swarming with journalists, it was hard to just pretend wanting peace. Worldwide opinion had switched over to the Marsees' side, fed nightmarish images by the information networks. So," Anastasia added in a quiet voice, "they sat down at the negotiations' table despite loud expostulations from the major corporations like Pegasus and Silver Eclipse."

"I had no idea," I blurted out. Empty, absurd words.

"Until now, we couldn't tell you." I searched Anastasia's face for the name of the emotions underlying her voice. I tried with all my will to ignore the horrible void that filled me when instinct prompted me to try and reach for her aura--I tried. "Doctor Morgenstern forbade it, because you needed to rebuild strength before being confronted with those terrible events."

There was nothing for me to touch.

Nothing at all!

Words slipped past me, escaping my grasp. Anastasia's green eyes were clear pools from which nothing could be glimpsed, except one thing: the sparkling reflection of my failure. She was a mirror sending back to me the truth that they had kept from me for months--the truth that I had allowed them to hide. I shied away from it, from the tableau she had painted with such terrible precision. But still, the afterimages of it reeked like a thing many days dead.

Carrion rotting away in abandoned settlements beyond the Rim.... I bit my lower lip, and fled again, refusing to confront that reality. Instead, my mind snatched the first derivative it could find, and I found myself telling the young nurse in a far from steady voice, "You seem really well-informed on this whole thing." Which was true enough, and worthy of note in a world where the public's attention span concerning the woes of others was expected to last an average of no longer than two minutes and a half--time for the commercial break before the next part of whatever sports or entertainment show was in fashion.

During a long, long moment, Anastasia just stared at me, silent. Then she looked away. "It's not a fact I like to advertise, but I'm Mars-born," she sighed, "from a small independent mining family--"

Elefteros.

I felt sick when I made the connection. Nausea crawled up from the pit of my stomach to burn the inside of my throat as I remembered a place of despaired hope and magic.

A garden and its old, kind and fragile tenders.

Styx.

I clamped my jaws shut, and swallowed back the bile rising up my throat. No matter how I tried to escape the truth, every time it seemed to corner me back in that same place inside my mind, where everything was grey and empty. Releasing air from my lungs in a shuddering breath, I looked out the window.

"I failed," I whispered, clasping my hands over my knees. I couldn't feel anything inside. Even the cold was gone. There was only the low, senseless vibrations of my heartbeats resonating through the hollowness that I was. "I failed." The two words spilled from my lips--a flat, convenient euphemism for the truth. It was far worse than that, but again I shied away from that other admission. "I failed." There was something like the seeds of a howl in my voice.

Black.

Starless abyss.

Full of ghosts.

Touch.

"We all did." Reluctantly, I looked down to see Anastasia's right hand closing over my left. "In the end, what resolved the issue was the willingness to do so on both sides. Without that, you can't force anything real, anything stable to happen. There was no imposing peace from above. We failed, because we're only human," she said gently. "We're not gods." I lifted my head, and saw that her gaze was set on me, unreadable. "We're just people. Weak, fallible people."

I smiled, unable to stifle the ludicrous reflex. It was too small, too insignificant, what they had done to me--what Gabriel and Cain had done, what Shiva, Taka and Raziel had allowed. The scope of my failure-- I clenched my teeth, keeping laughter locked within. Abruptly, Anastasia's hand squeezed mine, and I realized I was shaking.

Falling.

"Here," she whispered, holding out a Kleenex. Uncomprehending, I took it, and she pointed toward my cheeks. I reached up, and found moisture there.

Tears.

Numbly I wiped them away, then I saw the light in her eyes, and the expression written all over her face--pity.

No. I jerked away, and stood up. Anything but that. Anger, contempt and hatred were fine, but pity.... "I'm leaving," I told her between clenched teeth. To my ears, my voice sounded raw, rasp. Without waiting for an answer, I walked out of the room that had been both refuge and prison for what felt like an eternity.

I fled.

I ran, my mind full of blood-red dust.

Mars' bone-gnarled hand clamped upon my heart.

"No, I'm sorry. Mr. Goldstein is busy in a very important meeting right now, and he--"

Yeah, sure. Busy getting a good blowjob from a newly hired clerk, all young and clean and pretty and female--not to mention tasteless and greedy for a shining career. The middle-aged woman's shrill voice faded in the distance as Cain strode forward and ignored the frantic attempts to stop him before he could push open the big double doors leading to the luxury office of Planetary Aid's head representative in New York City, America.

"Come back in a million years!" he scoffed as he shrugged off the two bodyguards called by the secretary. Then he opened the doors and went in--had they been locked? Ah well. Unfortunately the spectacle inside was nowhere near as amusing as Cain had thought it would be.

Johnatan Goldstein was focused on a computer terminal, the fingers of his right hand posed above the keyboard like a cat ready to spring onto a mouse. So, it was nothing more than the man's online auctions addiction--one of his smaller vices. "I need you attention, Johnny-Gold," Cain sing-songed, "now." He gave the man at least three heartbeats to turn away from the screen. Then he stepped over to the self-important wretch, and pounced a hand on top of the horribly expensive leather chair and shoved it around, leaning down and shutting off the console in the same fluid motion.

"Zwilling?!" The dissonant shriek brought a smile to Cain's lips. "Who let you in here?! I specifically said--"

"I let myself in, darling." Cain rested both hands on the chair's armrests and leaned toward Goldstein slowly, ever so slowly, stopping only when the other found enough brains in his empty skull to shrink in his seat and push back in a futile, reflexive attempt to flee the predator looming over him. Cain watched him in silence for a while, watched the gooseflesh the proximity of him raised on the man's forearms with the same smile hovering on his lips.

Cain felt like killing these days.

He really, really felt like killing.

Too bad he didn't have time to enjoy terrorizing Johnatan Goldstein until the other wetted his pants and that rotten heart of his gave out--but then it wouldn't have been convenient. One could hardly be picky about tools like this one--rare, stinking bastards whose names opened doors and unlocked knotted situations in places where the Graude Foundation's long arm couldn't reach.

"What is it you want?" Goldstein whined in a muffled voice, his eyes wide. There was an almost imperceptible layer of perspiration on his brow, glowing with the lights of the office's costly halogen lamps. "If this is about getting you on a shuttle to Mars--"

"Not me." Cain shook his head. "The one you were warned about is coming. You will instruct your underlings to greet him in a courteous manner, and you will tell them to grant him what he wants without the smallest hint of opposition."

Goldstein blinked, and then licked his lips. "This hasn't been cleared with the central bureau," he said, reaching down with a foot and pushing himself and his expensive chair back, away from Cain. Cain allowed the movement, and let go of the armrests, straightening. "I didn't hear anything like this," the man added, a low, speculative glint in his small, swine-like eyes.

Cain sighed.

This was why he hated spending time in the Sanctuary. He grew used to awe and complete compliance to his every whim far too quickly. When he came back to the world, he had to remember patience and that he had to tolerate slights like these. It demanded an effort of will, and Cain didn't like efforts. Cain was a lazy, prideful bastard, and he was quite content with himself--most of the time. The truth was, his little jump to and back from Mars shouldn't have had a back part to it. He should have remained there--but.

"You're hearing it now," Cain retorted in a deceptively soft voice. Judging from the way Goldstein's eyes darted left then right, it looked like the other wasn't fooled. Good. "When Cendre Aries enters this building, you will accommodate him, and you will find him a safe place to be as one of our operatives on Mars. You just need to switch him with someone who'll fill in my position. I'm not returning there for a while."

Johnatan Goldstein snorted. "Easy for you to say. I can't move people around with a clap of my fingers--much less when they're scores of millions of miles away." The man had smelled the possibility of a bargain, and he was trying to haggle, like the greedy swine that he was. In other circumstances, it would have been fine with Cain, but right now it wasn't.

Cendre would be here soon. Cain had gotten word from Anastasia--steady and loyal Anastasia, who had been born Gemini but lacked the darkness and the seed of madness that went with the name. He hadn't had the heart to abandon her on Mars--to leave her to try and find a home whose roof would most likely have been that of a brothel after her parents had died in a skirmish with commando troops beyond the Rim, and the only family left to her that of the slowly dying garden in Styx. Not when she had looked at him and seen him. Wild sparks of cosmo had spilled away from her in that moment--a talent she could never learn how to use, a part of herself she'd only touch in dreams. Bringing her back with him, finding her a place in the world...well, it looked like Cain's generosity was proving useful after all.

"You'll move them," Cain said lazily, resting back against the priceless ebony desk that went with the chair. "And if you don't, I'll find someone else to do it." There was no time to play games. Johnatan Goldstein was toying with his head, and he had better realize it before Cain decided that he had had enough.

To hell with Planetary Aid, and the need for contacts among the ministry of defense.

"I'll try." Cain scoffed when he heard that. "All right, I will," the other whispered, anger plain in the set of his shoulders--mixed with dread.

"Good." Cain gave a small pat on the desk, and then left the lavishly decorated office without looking back. Goldstein would obey if he valued his life, which he did, passionately so, but--

Perhaps it was a mistake to let Cendre go.

Perhaps Mars would finish breaking him and shattering his heart.

Cain didn't know. The only thing he was certain of, was that it was where Cendre needed to be. He'd waste away here on Earth, where he could find no purpose, no reason for him to go on living. Mars might tear him apart, its old, withering core drowning the locked, dull light that Cendre had become.

Perhaps.

Cain wasn't Gabriel. He didn't spend his nights atop the altar of Star Hill. He didn't juggle with futures and the balance of the world. Interfering as he was doing was a mistake. Cain knew he was overstepping his boundaries. Gabriel would frown on that, as he frowned on many other things, but he wouldn't be able to do anything about Cain's actions. It was a game between them.

A very dangerous game.

Cain stepped into the world, he touched it and the people living in it, but the ripples he made were small--insignificant. That checkmated Gabriel, whose hands were tied. It might be that by giving Cendre a way to reach Mars, Cain was bowing to Leo Taka's stinging words. It mattered little, because she'd never know. Nobody would. It was far better, far simpler that way. Besides, maybe this would be enough to free Cain from the unremembered nightmares that had plagued him recently, and made him sour-minded in the morning. At least he hoped so, because the grumpiness made it difficult to keep pretty young things in bed after dawn, and there was nothing that compared to making love all through morning.

With a long, suffering sigh, Cain left the American headquarters of Planetary Aid, and dived into the tide of commuters returning home after a day of hard work. He didn't look toward the other side of the prestigious fifth Avenue, where a burnt-out light flowed with the waves of people. He didn't pause in his steps to watch the slim silhouette and its mantle of glossy chestnut hair that drew stares and some muted whistles from almost every person it passed by.

Cain didn't close his hands into fists at his sides. He didn't release air from his lungs in a hiss. He checked what was before him, so he wouldn't bump into the young couple to his left or the old lady right before him, should the rhythm of her steps falter. Cain listened to the low, overwhelming song of the crowd, and chuckled as random words of inconsequential chatter drifted past him. He didn't turn back. There was no thistle blooming within, no stem full of thorns that coiled up to his spine. He didn't feel the sharp, tearing ache in his heart reaching out to embrace the whole of him. He didn't feel what wasn't a burning pang of longing. Lifting his face to offer it to the wind that had risen from the south and was engulfing the wide avenue, Cain closed his eyes.

And smiled.

Going through Stella Marineris' customs wasn't pleasant. There were questions, doubts, and searches--several times. Faces were drawn, eyes darting left and right, as if their owners expected an attack at any moment despite the now official peace agreement. It was true there was a good reason for that, I sighed as I went through one last batch of checks. When I at last cleared customs, I stepped in an arrival hall of monumental proportions--empty, except for lines of military personnel streaming toward the departure section in slow, orderly motions.

I didn't look at their faces.

I stared out at the transparent door leading outside, at a dull red sky that chilled me to the bone. Teeth clenched, I closed the fingers of my left hand over my small suitcase's handle, and looked for directions panels. Quickly I spotted the way to the cargo unloading section, and stepped down another empty corridor in long, brisk strides.

It had been surprisingly easy to register a candidacy to a position on Mars. I knew that Planetary Aid was short on employees, but I had expected inquiries and delays. There hadn't been any. Upon announcing my appointment to Mars, a young clerk had told me in a confiding tone that nobody wanted to set foot in that graveyard anymore. People were afraid, terrified because of the horrors they had seen depicted in grisly details all over the global network. Planetary Aid was all too happy to process my appliance file without asking questions, or so the man had claimed. It seemed strange to me, but as Planetary Aid was linked to the Graude Foundation, that might have facilitated matters. Perhaps they knew--no. No, enough with going back over that rotten wound over and over again. It didn't need my constant poking; it was festering nicely on its own.

"May I see an ID, sir?"

I froze, then belatedly realized I had arrived at yet another checkpoint. Was there anything in this spaceport besides an endless series of those? With an imperceptible shrug, I nodded at the guard while fishing the documents out of my jacket's inner pocket. It was all there: passport, Planetary Aid papers and the government-sanctioned safe-conduit--my key to whatever now lied beyond the Rim. I held them out for the soldier to take, and he passed them over to another guard. The woman checked something from a computer terminal, her nut-brown eyes glazed over with a sickening mixture of concentration and utter exhaustion. How long had she, had they all been on duty without sleep?

Was Earth's military stretched so thin?

Eventually the whole set of papers found its way back to my pocket, and the guard gave me a short nod. "Thank you. Incoming cargo from Freedom is unloaded in bay four, right down that way," he indicated yet another corridor right before me, and I followed the direction, bobbing my head in thanks as i walked past the man and his companions.

I heard the low hum of engines before I entered the cargo bay. It was immense. Full of containers and boxes set up one upon the other to reach a two-stories building's height, forming streets and avenues in which the traffic of loaders and small transporters was as heavy as that of Athens or Manhattan during the rush hours. Jumping back to avoid being run over, I discarded the angry yell that came from the driver, and took a closer look at the cargo stored here.

Food supplies: rice, pasta, flour, sugar and salt.

Water.

Military rations.

Medical gear.

Coffins.

I stared at those for a long time, transfixed. There was something pressing upon my chest, where the bones had been broken--something constricting my throat. It was hard to breathe. The loud howl of a transporter's horn snatched me out of the morbid contemplation, and I skidded to the left with a startled yelp. "Ain't no place for a nap! Fucking moron!" I blinked, then waved an apology the driver's way.

It wasn't easy to find my way through the labyrinthine paths set between the rows of cargo. At last, I reached the section devoted to Planetary Aid-owned material--well, at least I hoped so.

"No! No, that won't do! I need the blankets and the clothes separated from the food stuffs!" There was more than a hint of annoyance in that voice. As I turned around a corner, I distantly wondered why it seemed familiar.

There was a transporter set in the middle of the path, and it blocked the whole traffic. Three men in the uniform of Stella Marineris spaceport ground personnel were hovering around the half-loaded trailer while two others were leaning over five huge boxes set next to it. A smaller silhouette whipped past the discarded boxes, and held out a hand toward the transporter, slamming it against its metallic hull. "Take those boxes off now, and sort out the rest correctly! I'm not leaving here until it's done!"

She was angry, all right. I stared at the short-haired figure, and wondered with a sinking feeling to the pit of my stomach if that was the Planetary Aid operative I was supposed to report to. Then the woman jerked away from the transporter and whirled around.

Green eyes going wide.

Hands which reached up to her mouth.

Emerald gaze that clouded in an instant, even as she stepped back.

The echo of my heartbeats was deafening--mad drums that resounded in the emptiness within to reverberate against the blades of ice encasing my being. Of course I knew that voice. Of course I knew that silhouette.

Essiah Jacarande.

"You!" she exclaimed in a blanched whisper, "the new recruit--it's you?!"

I should turn my back on her and run. I nodded instead. The strain upon my chest and the ache rising in my throat were a scream wanting, needing out. I swallowed it back. Willing my legs to move, I stepped toward her, and asked her in an even voice, "Do you need any help with that cargo?"

Not: how can you be here?! Not: what's the meaning of all this?! Not: what happened after I left you in the vaults of Pavonis Mons?!

"Yeah." She indicated the transporter waiting behind her with a brisk gesture of the right arm. "Unloading must be finished within the hour, and we must be ready to leave Stella Marineris in two." The mask of business had descended upon the young woman's face. Following suit, I made myself focus on food supplies as I joined her side and started helping the docking crew with the fastidious task of loading and unloading boxes and containers on the transporter.

As luck or fate would have it, we finished the job a mere half an hour behind schedule. I'd have thought that Essiah Jacarande's obsession with meticulous precision and order, while useful in the military, would have made the task impossible--on the opposite. The Martian sun was still a good two hours away from its zenith when I stepped into a beleaguered Marslander's piloting compartment.

"Not to worry," my companion's lips curled up into a thin smile while she focused on screens and started the engines, "this good old thing will get us there."

"And where exactly is there?" I asked, my voice trembling with the engine's rather brusque vibrations.

"Planetary Aid transport to Stella Marineris, we're packed, and leaving. Expecting arrival at the Outer Gate within five minutes," Essiah Jacarande's tired voice echoed in the cabin.

"Roger that, transport. Identification frequency is rotating by three octaves every ninety seconds. Adjust your authentication module accordingly. Good journey to you. Stella Marineris, out." That sent Essiah Jacarande's fingers flying over the piloting console while she muttered under her breath about paranoid fools and their obsessive need for overly complex and unnecessary procedures.

It took us less than the announced five minutes to reach the edge of the Stella Marineris settlement, but not much so. We didn't even slow down as we approached the mouth of the tunnel leading out to the Martian desert. My stomach lurched as we dived into the dark. The sensation was worse than I remembered. "Terra Cimmeria," the young woman said all of a sudden, still focused on her piloting. "We should get there by sunset. That's what I'm aiming for, anyway." Even as her words dissolved in the engine's hum, dull red light flooded the cabin.

The big Marslander faltered, and its engines howled a loud protest when Essiah Jacarande compensated for the violent gust of wind that had shoved us aside, her jaws clamped shut. "Small storm," she whispered between clenched teeth by way of explanation, somber laughter in her tone. On her right, a stark blue signal flashed, indicating that a savage atmospheric pressure drop had struck the area.

I stared at the rain of dust and dry ice crystals battering at our front viewer, and reached out to it. Resting the palm of my hand against the synthetic glass that was as hard as titanium, I focused on the sensation of cold against my skin, I focused on the gooseflesh it raised on my forearm and on the cold that spread to my shoulder and my spine. "I never expected to see you again," I said softly.

"No!" she scoffed. "I guess not." Silence followed her short burst of laughter, and I sat back against my seat, taking my hand off the viewer's surface.

I hadn't felt ancient Mars' wrath.

It hadn't shrieked at me its insane despair and hatred.

Its terror.

"I was demoted after the disaster of Hellas Planitia," she whispered, her eyes still set on the chaos we were driving through. "They were looking for people to blame, scapegoats to condemn for a fiasco they could neither admit, nor comprehend. I saw the commandos who came back." Something that was more grimace than smile twisted her lips. "Most of them were safely put away in mental institutions back on Earth, but some ended up in disciplinary camps, like me. They were crying in their sleep, every night, repeating that they had to stop the war now, over and over again." She looked at me, her emerald eyes dark.

"They said they saw a light, a golden light as bright as the sun on Earth. They said it destroyed all their equipment in less than a heartbeat. They said," her voice reduced to a murmur almost completely covered by the noise of the transporter's engine, "that the wrath of God had struck them down, and that it was His Will that the war stop at once."

I stared back at her, numb.

Silent.

Listening to the words resounding within, and finding a terrible echo in memories of a council where Gabriel had warned me against what he viewed as madness--a danger to humanity. Beside me, Essiah Jacarande heaved out a sigh,, then turned away from me. "Things went downhill from there," she went on quietly. "Nobody ever managed to understand--not the weapons' experts, not the Omega intelligence section. Nobody. But Omega knew you had escaped their grasp as if by magic--but then wasn't it magic?" Again she faced me, but I stared at the storm in front of us, my jaw set and my arms crossed over my stomach.

Hugging myself desperately.

"They panicked," she continued eventually. "I don't know what they found out when they investigated you, but it freaked them out completely. Messages were sent, and orders given. Then, madness followed. I think--" she dragged in a breath, "I think we all fell down a great abyss." Her eyes set on the blind horizon, she added in a soft, soft voice, "It was hell, perhaps."

From the corner of an eye, I got a glimpse of a trembling smile on her lips, and closed my hands into fists. "Then a miracle happened when that tape made it through to the global network back on Earth. With the beginning of the peace talks, the military administration remembered it had disciplinary cases to process. I'm quite sure I was about to face court-martial when that bastard Cain Zwilling came to visit."

I hissed air though my lips, and closed my eyes tightly shut, fighting down a sudden bout of nausea. I hadn't eaten anything for breakfast, so there was nothing for my stomach to heave out. Slowly, reluctantly, the deep, sickening pain retreated.

"He told me Planetary Aid was in need of honest, sincere idiots like myself," Essiah Jacarande was saying, unaware of the effect her words had had, "and that if I was stupid enough to be interested, he'd find a lawyer to get me out of the rat's hole I was rotting into. What could I say?" she let out a bitter burst of laughter. "He's a bastard, but he was also right all along. That, and he's always done everything he could and more for the refugees. So, I agreed, and here I am."

Here she was.

Here we all were.

Because I had decided I couldn't bear to watch this war be carried out until the two sides were ready to bow to the necessity for peace.

Because I had wanted to impose my vision of things, to force it on all those people. It didn't matter that I had been driven to do so because I sincerely believed it was necessary, because I had been intimately convinced it'd be better for them, help them and bring an end to their suffering. The only thing that mattered was that now, coffins were being shipped over from Earth so they could pile away their dead and lay them down to rest.

What mattered were the hundreds of soldiers who'd be hounded all their lives by nightmares in which they felt my power smashing them down.

Tearing their helpless souls apart.

Impossible to heal.

I....

"I'm sorry." My ludicrous whisper resounded in the cabin. Hollow. The words hurt when I forced them through my lips, and they hurt even more when the Marslander's hull echoed them back to me.

"Don't be." Essiah Jacarande was watching me, her face an unreadable mask. "You tried. You failed. You're no god."

Was I not? Had I not deluded myself into believing I was? Had I not become the evil that Gabriel had dreaded? Hadn't he been right all along? The question haunted me.

"You have changed." I froze, then looked into her eyes. "Like a snuffed out candle. As if you had thinned into a shadow," she said, ever so softly.

I turned away from her, in a slow motion, and stared at the raging storm outside.

"Yes, that's everything we requested. Thanks for the delivery," Selene Apfelbaum smiled--a beautiful, easy smile that sparkled into her deep blue gaze, "and for the chocolate. That," she chuckled, "won't even last the day, I'm sure."

I shrugged. "Good things are meant to be eaten, the more so when it's extra-dark chocolate. Don't worry," I smiled back, "I'll find a way to smuggle some more out of the staff's secret storage place on my next visit. All right," I heaved out a sigh, and sobered up. "How about we go one last time over your list of requirements?"

"Sure," the plump, middle-aged woman nodded, sending waves through her shoulder-length, curly red hair.

Selene Apfelbaum was the head of one of the many orphanages set in the gigantic refugees camp of Terra Cimmeria. When we had reached our destination, Essiah Jacarande had explained how most of the survivors the relief agencies had found beyond the Rim were children. Be they orphans or simply lost, they were all gathered here, fed and protected while everyone waited for the situation to settle completely. Over the weeks, I had found a place in the insane, chaotic organization of the camp. Planetary Aid shared its supplies with the other agencies before distributing the whole lot to the orphanages according to drawn lists and agreed upon priorities on all sides.

Work had drowned my days and my senseless regrets. This place hadn't left me with much time to wallow in self-pity or guilt. There were too many things to coordinate and get done. Here, I was useful and needed. People didn't know the meaning of my name, didn't know it had become a lie--but even if they had, I was certain they wouldn't have given a damn. Essiah Jacarande had never brought up the past again after our discussion on the way from Stella Marineris. Anguish and depression were simply meaningless in the face of all that had to be done. Everyday, new refugees arrived at the camp.

More mouths to feed.

More broken lives torn out of the chaos of escape tunnels, freed from the eternal darkness deep below Mars' surface. It was in those terrible places that the survivors were found, huddled together in small groups of mindless animals keeping close to each other out of sheer instinct. Most of the kids brought to Terra Cimmeria would take years to regain even a semblance of humanity--if they ever healed at all. As to the adults, the pieces of stories told by the children were incoherent patches of misery and despair. It seemed that many had died, futilely attempting to strike back at the atrocity striking at them from the sky. Others had gone north to join the terrorists hidden among the Earth-born workers. And many, many had simply been slaughtered in the bombardments while making way for their children to be evacuated first.

There was talk of a special tribunal being set on Hellas Planitia itself, to judge those responsible for this carnage on the charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. Sometimes, when nightmares awoke me in the night, I thought that my name ought to be on whatever list the judges were drawing.

"You know, I really think you should work here full-time," Selene Apfelbaum told me once we were done checking the manifest I'd bring back to planetary Aid's small office building. "The children like you, and you know how to say no to them. They know that constant whining and harassing won't change your mind. That's extremely important. It gives them a stable beacon, an anchor to steady themselves."

"'No is part of life,'" I replied with a small smile, reflexively quoting the words of Master Atalante. "They'll encounter it sooner or later, whether I'm there or not." This was an old argument. We had been over it countless times before, but no matter how I tried to explain that I wasn't qualified to help taking care of children, most of all of kids in shock or suffering from severe trauma I didn't have the foggiest idea how to even apprehend, Selene refused to give it up.

"So you say!" she snorted. I could have added that I was hopelessly unsuited for the task but the last time she had swept that aside as ludicrous. "I say your talents are wasted as coordinator between the agencies. I'll have another talk with Essiah," she finished with a firm nod.

I heaved out a good-humored sigh. "If you feel like--"

"Mrs. Apfelbaum! Mrs. Apfelbaum!" I turned around to find that the owner of the shrill, youthful voice was a boy no older than seven.

"Yes, Gregory," Selene squatted down to be at the kid's level, "what is it?" she asked in an ever-patient voice.

There, patience. I had another argument to oppose the stubborn woman. I didn't have any patience, ergo I couldn't possibly care for kids who required endless amounts of it. "Ninya disappeared again.. She ran off after the midday meal, all because Thomas pulled her hair and said she was a dim-wit who should have died with her parents."

Cruelty, even harsher when it came from children who hadn't had time to develop a set of ethics and limits that bound them. Her mouth drawn in a taut line, Selene bowed her head for a fraction of a second, then she forced a smile to her lips. "Thomas is a mean boy who'll be punished, and will apologize to Ninya. Let's go find her, all right, Gregory?" As the kid nodded at her, Selene straightened and offered him her hand. He took it at once, and she drew him out of her office, calling to me from above her shoulder in the same time. "Sorry about this, Cendre. Please don't wait for me. Go. The manifest is correct, we've checked it enough as it is."

"Okay," I called back. "I'll just drop by the storage hangar on my way out to make sure everything is fine." I didn't tell her I hoped she'd find the missing girl quickly. She knew that, and besides incidents like this one happened often, unfortunately. With a sigh of my own, I stepped out of the orphanage's central building.

The sun was setting. Its light had already started to wane, which meant that I was late. Ah well, I decided as I made for the storage hangar set a hundred meters to the building's right, two or three extra hours of work wouldn't kill me.

Something stirred in the hangar's semi-darkness, a shadow darker than the others--small. "Hey," I called as gently as I could. It looked like the fugitive girl had found refuge here of all places. Again, the little shadow stirred.

Moved.

Ripples.

Warmth. It rose from Mars' dark reddish ground, spreading through my body--claiming me.

Light.

Tiny.

Almost imperceptible.

It was the weakest of sparks at first, then it grew. In waves, it reached out to me and embraced me.

Touched me.

Touched something inside me that was dead.

Gently.

So gently that I couldn't move away, not even when it thawed the walls of ice that had kept my despair at bay until now--not even when it wove itself to savage flames which set fire to me, burnt me.

Hurt.

Hurt...so much.

I blinked, unable to prevent the absurd reflex, even as shards of crystal tore at my lungs, and as my heart felt like it was bursting apart. The cry that rose in my throat won through my lips in a croak-like sob. From very far away, I felt myself falling to my knees in the dust. There was no escaping that light, I knew it with an absolute certitude that scorched my mind. What had unfolded before me, touched me, intertwined itself with the dead ashes of my soul--

It was the sun.

The heart of everything.

Infinite.

Eternal.

So beautiful that simply beholding it filled my spirit with a joy so profound it was painful.

Slowly the light retreated from me, freeing me before I burnt with it. Then I saw the black-haired little girl. She was small, so very small, and beautiful. She couldn't be more than four or five years old. She was watching me--had been watching me the whole time. Her dark purple eyes were very, very wide. Unable to help myself, I held out a hand toward her--toward the light that she was.

Then I snatched that hand back and clutched it against my chest with the other, fingers squeezing hard enough to stop the blood flow, and I bowed my head in a jerking motion. It was a lie. It wasn't possible. I knew. I was an outcast, a burnt-out criminal doing his time in the hell that Mars had become, and she--how could she be here?

How could she exist?

How could she be one of the children of this war?

Eyes tightly shut, I gritted my teeth and fought down the howl coming up my throat. Something gingerly touched my left cheeks, soft and hesitating--fingertips, the small fingertips of a young child. I opened my eyes to see the little girl squatting down before me and looking up at me. She didn't say anything. Reaching out to me, she wiped my tears away, and smiled.

A beautiful, luminous smile that gave the world meaning. It trembled upon her lips, assaulted by the sorrow and pain festering within me, but she didn't draw back. She shone for me, keeping her light a gentle, soothing one. A pool of moonlight, it enveloped me even as she drew her arms around my neck. I cried, then. I sobbed like the child she was and then wasn't, and she hugged me. "Goddess," I hiccuped through my tears, "oh, Goddess, is this true?" She climbed up into my lap and set her face level with mine.

Her amethyst eyes gazing directly into my soul.

Deep, so deep I sank in them.

Ancient and so terribly young--fragile.

Memories of terror and grief, of dread and things alien.

Shrieks--evil silence that crushed all life.

She touched her brow to mine, then drew back and opened her mouth to speak. No sound came through her lips, but she merely shrugged and gave me a resigned smile. The she pointed toward my cheeks, and gave a shake of her head.

She didn't want me to cry.

She was mute--or at least she had suffered trauma so harsh that it had robbed her of the ability for speech.

She was an orphan, one among thousands.

She was lost here, as lost as I was, but she could be found--I had found her. She mustn't remain here; she didn't belong. There was a single place in the two worlds known to men, where the very stones had been marked with the imprint of her presence--where they waited for her with despaired hope, holding on to faith despite everything.

Where I had waited for her, before throwing it all away.

I knew what I must do. It was simple and absurd both, but there was no denying the reality of her. She was there, she had touched me, and I couldn't forget what I knew--no matter how it hurt to do what must be done. "Do you want to come with me?" I asked her, and she laughed.

Tiny crystal bells.

Happy.

"Still here, Cendre?" I started as I heard Selene's surprised question. She heaved out a sigh. "Oh, Ninya, that's where you've been hiding all this time?"

The little girl gave another shrug, then again looked at me.

Asking without words.

Waiting for my consent.

"Yes," I whispered, and she jumped into my lap with a whoop of sheer pleasure. I held her close, as gently as I could, then lifted her up in my arms before facing Selene. "This child isn't an orphan, Selene. She has a family waiting for her back on Earth, and I'm bringing her home."

"Now?!" The tone of her voice was incredulous.

"Now." I nodded at her.

Selene stared at me long and hard. She searched my face, her expression unreadable, even when she paused and our gazes met. She saw the tears sparkling in my eyes; there was no way for her to miss them. At last, her shoulders sagged and a sigh escaped her lips. "There's no denying you're tied to her. She's never let anyone even hug her before. All right," she waved what were most likely doubts away. "You know how it goes. There'll be a lot of papers to fill, questions to answer and inquiries to bear with--not to mention a spot on a shuttle to find for the both of you." All of a sudden, a smile lit her face. "I thought I'd never see anything else but ghosts and grief in your eyes, Cendre. I'm glad I was able to see life blossom back there." With that, she pivoted on her heels, and left the storage hangar. I followed suit, bearing up in my arms a little girl who was and then wasn't a little girl.

The Goddess Athena, returning to the Sanctuary after more than two hundred years of absence.

The Goddess Athena, born and raised in the heart of the most terrible and gruesome war humanity had fought in centuries.

End of chapter 7.

Note:

Football of course refers to a game played mainly with feet, the one most famous sport in the world, and known as "Football" in almost every part of the world, not to some variation of rugby played by people in weird armor. 0=)

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