30.1 Who is Forrest

  Being contracted with the Secret Operatives Commission requires the Users to install an online interface on each of their pads. The ‘SOC Interface’, so it’s called. An all-in-one for encrypted communication, intelligence dispatch and general administration. The main page contains a call grid made up of squares that light up when someone speaks. As opposed to her real name, Maeven’s square is indicated by the code: OCEAN15, using her old assignment number.

  “Test,” says Maeven, as she sits behind the driver’s seat of an Echelon setting up a square of pad pixels to float by her ear, and a small cluster of mic pixels by her mouth.

  “We can hear you,” answers Victor. His voice lighting up the square within which says: SKY5.

  The reveals of the pre-mission briefing that concluded over an hour ago have been quietly digested in the hum of setting up the SOC equipment. Eyeshot’s habit of brevity might be efficient, but the horrors of the carelessness exhibited by the VR and others responsible continue to leak out as Maeven cycles through those moments of explanation; finding the questions addressed sincerely by the former captain yet spoken with such short factuality it prompts her to continuously ask herself: was that it?

  Over the interface, Hara greets her. “Helloo Maeven!”

  “Hi Hara,” Maeven says back.

  Hara, like other Users, has decided not to dwell too deep. Envisioning all the possible sequences of events that led them here is an endeavour she probably thinks ends fruitlessly. It’s understandable. Maeven’s thoughts is a perpetual machine that she struggles to find the off switch for, on the other hand. She wonders if anyone else is experiencing the same thing.

  “What do you call a camel with no humps?” Hara then asks.

  Maeven’s thoughts actually entertain this question, too.

  Humphrey?

  “No jokes over the interface!” Eyeshot shouts into the grid. Maeven drags her finger down the volume slider. She definitely doesn’t need that in her ear when she’s killing the Nesters.

  “Geez Cap’n I was just testing the mic,” says Hara.

  “No Captain,” says Eyeshot.

  “Eyeshot,” Hara re-addresses. “Hey, if it looks like a duck and quacks orders like a duck that’s why I’m callin’ you Captain, Captain—Ouch!”

  A flare of searing Resonance, then Eyeshot climbs into the front passenger seat of Ocean’s Echelon with a wrinkle between her eyebrows. This time Hara shouts not over the interface; they hear it raw out the crack of Sand’s Cargo Echelon door:

  “She Resonance-pulsed me!”

  Maeven turns her mic to mute.

  They’ve divvied up the Echelons as such: Ocean driving front, Sky driving middle, and Sand driving the big Cargo Echelon at the back. It only made sense that Eyeshot sits in Ocean’s Echelon, front of the Congo line, especially since Sky is the only company who’s retained all their members after the VR boot and doesn’t have a spare seat.

  The black interiors of the SOC vehicle are cool to the touch. The door panels and floor a lightweight metal, the seats a smooth, padded leather with arm rests that sink down with the press of a button. One of the most interesting features, in Maeven’s opinion, was their ability to stow away the back middle seat. She realised that with the extra room and a click of a dial on her armrest, she can rotate her seat until she was facing the rear window.

  She turned the dial back though. She wasn’t about to spend the whole campaign ride like that.

  Echelons are in a sense the satellite GPS to the Humvee’s atlas. Eyeshot works with a touchscreen at the centre of the dashboard, its screen a pad in itself and comprised of a configuration of pixels. She detaches a piece to use as a keyboard over her lap.

  “Does this thing drive by itself?” says Win.

  Eyeshot lets out a terse hum in affirmative.

  Win and Forrest have been cloaked in Victor’s Synergy. Maeven can feel his beaming Resonance with her Intuition, emanating from her teammates.

  At the sound of a machine whir she glances at Forrest sitting beside her. A weapon rack has risen from the floor by his feet displaying what appears to be a matte black semi-automatic with a curved magazine.

  He must have found a button for it.

  Maeven swats her hand.

  Forrest hurries to relocate the button, feeling around the door and his seat. Eventually he finds it. The rifle sinks back into the floor panel after which Forrest quickly and politely clasps his hands.

  “The posters Forrest, did you distribute them?” asks Eyeshot.

  “Yes ma’am!” he says. “There were a few extra copies left so I put them in the back.”

  “They know what to do if they ever find a manifesto?”

  “Cover it, hide it, and report to the special SOC hotline for collection.”

  “Good.”

  Forrest had just finished the important task of informing the Surabad residents about the Nester manifestos. He knocked on their doors and handed out warning posters while the rest of the unit were setting up the equipment.

  “They seemed—I don’t know,” he says. “They sort of laughed at it. It took a while to get them to understand.”

  “That’s weird,” says Win.

  “Why didn’t I hear about the manifestos in Tesset or Jurn?” says Forrest.

  “Another stupid decision. Whether it was from government or The Reserve Mills always encouraged we tell Mortareste the VR had everything under control. Nesters haven’t reached the southern half of the country so the cities we visited were ignorant of the scale,” says Eyeshot. “Split the VR into two, delay dispatch of the campaign details, keep half of the Reserve in fairy land.” With every one of Mills’ apparent ideas revealed, Eyeshot gets angrier. She finishes with the Echelon console and calms down. “Ready.”

  Win presses engine start. “You didn’t do anything about it though,” he says.

  “Yes,” says Eyeshot.

  “So it’s your fault.”

  Eyeshot speaks into the interface. “Leaving now.” Then, on mute, she answers him, “I know.”

  They hear Henri reply. “Copy that.”

  “Right behind you,” from Ina.

  Then they’re off, the sandy roads feeling slippery smooth under the Echelon tyres.

  89.7 kms to Nester Site 1, according to the centre console. Maeven glances at the Optimist in the passenger seat. Elbow on the window, head on her knuckles and sniper rifle leaned against the door. She looks like she’s itching to kill somebody.

  Maeven pulls out her manifesto copy.

  “Have you read it?” says Forrest.

  “I haven’t really made sense of it,” she says.

  “Me neither,” he says. “Can you read it to us out loud Maeven? I want to see if I understand it better.”

  With over an hour until they reach Site 1, she doesn’t see why not. She smooths the paper. “Lost One,” she begins unexaggerated. “Read this if you want to escape from a world that only seeks to hollow you out.”

  I've seen you. I’ve felt what you’re feeling, had your quiet moments, where you escaped to solitude and toyed with the idea of what your real self might be. Alone with your vision. Stuck with that loss of childish vitality never so prepared to have it stolen from you.

  Let me give you some clarity. I have lived half a lifetime. Throughout that life I hoped and believed that the world would make some space for me. But allow me to spare you some time by giving you the tragic, yet vital truth. We are worthless.

  You may have breached the wills of your parents and come out of it stronger. You may have breached the laws of the systems that seek to mould you and come out of it more refined. But you may never breach the stubbornness positioned by a species that only seeks to make you indistinguishable, then throw you into a savage, unforgiving battle. And you may never breach your skin. Or the flesh that ties you to the earth. Or the promise of temporary liberty for inevitable, permanent rot.

  If this reaches you. Forget this reality and follow the manifestos. Make a new home of real freedom. For the while, a nest for your transcendence.

  She stares at those last five words before folding the paper.

  “That just gives me the creeps,” says Forrest. For Maeven, it takes a while to formulate a tangible thought. “It’s a bummer,” she says.

  She thinks about the manifesto User’s state of mind as he wrote it, thinks about what he looked like. Chest hunched, eyes filled with loathing as he typed in a dark room. She thinks about how he felt. Rejection, resentment, low self-esteem, sadness. A noxious lack of perspective, and the emotions compounded. He was already a User. He wanted something more. He felt like the world owed it to him. He didn’t get it.

  She puts the paper in her tacticals pocket.

  For a moment she misses the unbreaking white noise of Callum and Gunner conversing between the front seats. At times she’d use it to get out of her own head, tune in. The things they talked about ranged from mundane to outrageous, but it was so different from the conversations she’d hear in Larosa that it an odd way, it was kind of entertaining.

  Here, the only white noise is the subtle crunch of the sand road under the Echelon tyres. And soon enough, her mind will drift back to South Sarafiyah, to Majid’s hut, to dead assignees.

  “Hey Forrest?” she says, for once, preferring the conversation. Something that takes their minds off the campaign, even if for a few minutes. “Do you remember in Jurn when I asked you whether you wanted to become a User?”

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  “Yeah,” says Forrest.

  “Have you thought about it since then?”

  He rubs his forearm. “I’ve thought about it.”

  “Do you think you’re closer to an answer?”

  The boy hums, long with his lips pressed. The response tells her he’s still far away from a yes.

  A little disappointed by this, Maeven decides to try her luck extending the discussion. “Being a User is pretty great,” she tells him.

  Forrest replies, “Really? Why?”

  It surprises her to realise she doesn’t actually know how to answer that question.

  Maeven opens her mouth only to struggle for words. The boy is calling for a very wordless feeling, turns out, she feels like she’s going to undercut it if she doesn’t think carefully first. Maeven presses her lips. Hums, long. She turns to the passenger seat.

  “Eyeshot?” she says.

  The Optimist jerks. “Me?”

  “What’s so good about being a User?” helps Win.

  Interrupted from what might have been silent brooding, Eyeshot deliberates drawing out a long, tight breath. “It is our best answer to human fallibility,” is the answer she comes up with, settling into her seat again. Forrest goes, “Huh.”

  Should have known that was a bad idea.

  How can she convince Forrest it’s worth training his Will? That is, not Win (he didn’t need convincing), not someone like Hunter (want to make anything you want and the world be better for it?), but Forrest.

  Who is Forrest?

  One of the few assignees to make the journey all the way from the Empire just to join The Voluntary Reserve, whose family runs a wildlife sanctuary and travels the world to spread knowledge about the animals, who’s a prodigy for languages, who seems to want nothing but to make the people around him happy.

  “Forrest why did you join the Reserve?” Maeven asks.

  He says, “I don’t know. It felt…big.”

  “Why big?”

  He’s playing with his hands. “Like—you know when somebody drops their bank card on the street, and you need to pick it up and give it back to them?”

  “Okay?”

  “Like that, except, big.”

  Translation? Why, to Forrest, does that make sense? Out of all the values the VR tried to purport in their commercials, their brochures, perhaps what gripped Forrest the most was that of duty?

  “You wanted to do good things for people,” Maeven replies.

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  She dials the chair to rotate towards him. “Maybe Forrest, this isn’t really about becoming a User. I think we might need to reframe the question. Let me ask this instead. Forrest: Do you want to be better at helping people?”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you want to be the best you possibly can at helping people?”

  “That sounds—good.”

  Maeven opens her hands.

  Forrest doesn’t respond.

  “I think you just answered the question,” she says.

  “Which question?”

  “Being a User isn’t just about being stronger, or better. It’s about being more you. If you want to do big things and help people in big ways, being a User will help you do that in the biggest way,” she says. “How does that sound?”

  Slowly, he nods. “Yeah, I like that.”

  “But it’s not easy, okay? Being Willed means you have to accept an uncomfortably close relationship with danger for the rest of your life. The reward, though is—” She lets out a whoosh of air, tilts her head, trying to elicit the wordlessness. “Unimaginable.”

  “Users kill people though,” he says.

  “True. Only if we really want to,” she replies.

  He doesn’t say anything.

  “My brother, his name is Hunter. He went to the same academy as me. I went to Larosa Girls’, he went to Larona Boys’. While I was at the gym all he wanted to do was model ideas for public parks. He couldn’t imagine laying a finger on a person. Combat Users are just one type of User at the end of the day. You could be a Willed anything, really. A Willed—Tax Accountant.”

  Forrest drums his fingers on the armrest. “Well, in a world where I did say yes. How would you help me become a User?”

  “In that world I would probably start by asking you to think of a mantra.”

  “What’s that?”

  She smiles. Just the response she was waiting for. Maeven is an impulsive thought away from rubbing her hands like a cartoon villain.

  She says, “I’m so glad you asked.”

  30.2 Cabinet glory

  Two automanifested Users, and a Larosa student encumbered with over a year-long case of Will Block. Ocean Company, Eyeshot thinks as she exits the Echelon, couldn’t be more of an oddity.

  Once in the past, Eyeshot had encountered the automanifested. Twice in the past, a slightly different situation, she bore witness to the aftermath of automanifested Will (the victims, unwilled prior, had spontaneously combusted in their living rooms leaving nothing but pieces of clothing in the ash).

  For Win and Forrest to land simultaneously in The United Land’s Voluntary Reserve, be similar-aged, both men, both under the leadership of Maeven Riel. June Everolt had reason to call the series of coincidences a case for divine intervention. Maybe she shouldn’t have scoffed at the comment back then, when he was still around—he wasn’t just making a point about providence, obviously, he was also making one about improbability.

  Eyeshot glances at the two boys as the companies gather outside of Nester site number one.

  It was a fair point.

  “I want to help people,” she hears Forrest recite. “I feel like there’s too many words. You know, if I did make a mantra, which I’m not doing.”

  “Well if you did make a mantra, would it be more natural if it was in Chinese?” says Maeven.

  “I don’t think it really matters. Oh—what if I did something cool, like, For Justice!”

  “For justice?”

  “Justice is good right?”

  “Do you care that much about justice? Hypothetically? Like—what about truth or love.”

  “Hypothetically, I don’t know.”

  “That’s probably not it then, hypothetically.”

  Playing pretend, that was a smart move. Forrest is struggling to perfect his ‘hypothetical’ mantra after an Echelon ride of lessons about introductory Will theory. In effect, there’s nothing hypothetical about his deliberation.

  Eyeshot turns her back to the SOC unit to take in the sight beyond, where about a hundred metres from where they stand, a vast city sprawls with despair.

  Black soot pillars up to a dark sky. She can see its perimeter gate pockmarked and stained with ashy starbursts left by explosives, and within, smooth-topped buildings that look like skeletons, with their rows of arched windows like hollows to blackness, emptied of life.

  Optimising vision, she sees a Nester, dragging its toes along the sand between the buildings. His clothes are ripped at the ends, a rifle rests on his shoulder with its leather strap dangling by the magazine. He staggers exactly the way she could imagine a zombie would. Skin pale, eyes sunken, mouth ajar. Dead.

  “Users,” she says, after doing a full scan. “This is one of eleven.”

  She turns around to face the unit. “Everybody check the map on the interface.” They call their pads and open to the SOC main page. “You see what I’ve done? I’ve split it up into quadrants.”

  On the screen and next to the call grid, a satellite overview of Nester Site 1 is doodled with Eyeshot’s hand-drawn notes. A jagged, bright-red cross roughly divides the entire city into four sections.

  “E for Eyeshot, top right quadrant. Ocean top left. Sky bottom left. Sand bottom right. Understand?”

  A couple brisk yeses.

  By the left and right ends of the cross’ horizontal, she’s drawn a mark of a star and a circle. Then, a few inches to the right of the circle, there’s a down arrow.

  “Arrow is our regroup point. Your goal is to clear every Nester and collect every manifesto in your assigned zone—also IDs, if you can find them. Expect gunfire,” she tells them. “Sky Company I want your Echelon parked at the star, Sand Company I want your Echelon parked at the circle. This is our two options of escape if we spot the Will Beast. If anyone sees it, you tell us on the call grid. Escape via. the nearest Echelon.”

  In all likelihood, it’ll be Eyeshot who spots the Beast, because she’s keeping her vision far and her hearing strong and even if it drives her mad she won’t turn it off until she finds it.

  “Rain, Forrest. Take Ocean’s Echelon I need you to check some villages nearby and make sure they’re aware of the manifestos. Bring the warning posters. Bring care packages. Tell them we will have IDs of the deceased to give them when you reach Rimalat. But they cannot enter Site One until my confirmation that it is safe. Understand?”

  “Yes Eyeshot,” Rain says.

  “One volunteer goes with them,” Eyeshot commands.

  Nobody from the unit answers immediately. A few seconds go by and she sees a hand raise.

  “Henri. Good,” says Eyeshot.

  The broad-chested Sky User joins the duo, and Eyeshot walks over to place a hand on the back of Ocean’s Echelon.

  “These vehicles, they have been Will-enhanced by a User from the SOC Deputy Chief Taylor Alston. They’re strong. Not invincible, but, they will last,” she says. “At the back” –Eyeshot opens the boot—“You see? Boxes under the floor?”

  Eyeshot pulls a loop handle to a compartment under the base of the boot. Inside is an array of black cases. She takes one and unclips it to reveal a handgun sitting in custom-cut foam. She takes it out.

  “This,” she says, holding one above her head with her finger on the trigger guard. “They run on electricity. They deliver a localised electric surge upon impact and do not pierce the skin. Short range. 25 shots per magazine. If you want to use them, good. We want to avoid collateral damage, yes? There’s no point collecting ID’s if we render them unrecognisable.” She puts the energy gun back and shuts the case.

  “Per person, aim for fifty Nesters per hour, OK? Best way to draw them out is with loud noise. Yelling, banging,” says Eyeshot, closing the Echelon. “I will wait for questions. If you don’t have any, go.” She nudges her head to the city.

  Users leave in blurs of Optimisation, including Jackson and Doom of Sky Company as well as Ina Kotel. Others retreat to their vehicles to prepare and inspect the energy guns, making sure to set the Echelons to self-park at Eyeshot’s markers on the flanks of the city.

  Towards the end of the pre-mission briefing, Eyeshot had instructed each User to keep a small set of pad pixels connected to the SOC call grid at all times. So when she swipes her pad away, she makes sure to leave a square with a speaker and mic to hover by her right ear.

  She tends to the few remaining queries for clarification, informing Victor and Maeven that their goal is to finish Site 1 by the end of the day. After everyone’s happy, she heads for her quadrant on the north-east chunk of the burning city.

  Having dismissed the energy guns as shit-ranged glorified tasers, Eyeshot’s weapon of choice is the light machine gun she keeps secured on the left side of her back. With a practiced pull of its stock, the LMG unlatches from a custom-clipped holster she wears with her regular bodysuit. It rolls over the crook of her shoulder and is caught at a position ready-to-fire. She looks through the magazine cover to see it filled with Will-manifested bullets. As she strides through the city road, she tests it on the door of a broken-down hatchback.

  BRR!

  The door craters in and the car flings back so easily you would think it weighed paper. Overkill. Because its bullets are made with Creation Will, and Creation is Eyeshot’s lowest-ranked specialty, her LMG is the least lethal firearm in her current arsenal. She wants to tone it down further for the purpose of damage-management, to the point where its recoil feels to her like that of a hot glue gun.

  Eyeshot uses a combination of Weaponist Will and Optimisation to tune down the oomph. A little off the firing coil, the cyclic rate, the muzzle velocity, she should be able to make it slightly weaker than the gun’s default, unwilled state.

  She tries a few more times on the car, until it produces puncture wounds seemingly no larger than its 6.8mm calibre.

  Then she keeps moving.

  She reaches her quadrant. Nesters are shot with short bursts to their chest region as they come alert to the sound of her gunfire. They’re standing up, trudging out of the ways and cracks of abandoned stucco buildings, stumbling out of low-hanging windows, and slowly amassing.

  “Eyeshot, there’s a group coming towards you from our quadrant. They’re hearing the noise,” says Jackson through the interface.

  “Fine,” Eyeshot replies.

  There’s nothing joyful about it. Eyeshot birrs them down with the vigour of a factory worker. The Nesters raise their rifles and shoot at her, and their unwilled bullets are not only imprecise but feel immaterial on the rare occasions of impact.

  Hara comes through saying, “How do I know they’re like—dead?”

  “They die like any normal person will die,” answers Eyeshot.

  “But you said they were already dead?” says Hara. “How do I make sure they’re dead-dead?”

  Eyeshot’s vision breaches the skin and clothes of the Nesters in front of her, revealing to her a sight of dirty, sludgy organs still pumping in antemortem. “You see?” She says this out of habit. Hara could never see an organ through unbroken flesh even if she were here standing next to her. “Their vitals are force-functioning. What does this mean? If we render their vitals unfunctionable then we have deceased them.” She burns another chain of ammunition.

  “Think of them like they’re brain dead, Hara and we’re sort of turning off the life support,” Maeven suddenly broadcasts to the call grid.

  “Yes,” says Eyeshot.

  “Okay. Well that makes me feel a little better,” says Hara.

  The unit goes back to mute.

  Even a slick talker like Candy Mills couldn’t sugarcoat it. This is the kind of dirty labour that added paragraphs of mental health disclaimers to the Reserve contracts for the unfortunate non-Willed who’d bear witness to the infection’s gruesome visuals. For Users like Eyeshot, the scenes presented by Site 1 may be grim, but they aren’t hard to swallow. She’s witnessed plenty worse. Hara is obviously new to this.

  Knees buckle as Eyeshot ruptures through rotted hearts. She hears one staggering up behind her, and she pulls a combat knife from her tacticals to shove it through its ribcage.

  She wipes both sides of the blade on her pants. That’s the first mass done. She scans straight through a blocky apartment spotting the next cluster migrating from Sky’s quadrant, and makes a break for it.

  She’s present. Her shots are precise, never an overreaction. If a Nester or two gets close she switches to the combat knife or strikes a blow to the head or chest with a front kick, a high kick, a punch. No matter the method, each kill is rendered in a smooth, calm progression, where Nester blood escapes only in clean arcs and tight-knit splatter.

  Eyeshot lowers her LMG as another group drops dead. She moves on to the next checkpoint, a three-storey teeming with Nesters on each abandoned level. For now, she decides that she’ll collect manifestos and IDs only after she’s finished killing all of the infected in her quadrant.

  Though it may be easy, a task as simple and menial as this leaves one with room to think. If someone were to watch her on the battlefield and had enough discernment to look behind her face of constant non-expression, they might be able to see it too. Eyeshot, no matter how verbal her apologies have gone, still feels ashamed about the decisions she made when she was part of the Voluntary Reserve. She swallows an undying ache, a sickness in her stomach, and she turns, slowly, with fingers over her eyes towards the blinding consequence of her search for Cabinet glory; an honest-to-Will truth, that she’ll never be able to forgive herself again.

  General notes:

  Character notes:

  Specialty: Creation-Subjection

  Concept: Minionist

  Visuals: Round eyes, a little baby-faced, black hair slightly dishevelled, tall. If he and Maeven stood-by-side, you could tell they’re siblings.

  Specialty: Optimist-Weaponist.

  Concept: Super hearing, super sight (including x-ray vision), and indomitable firearm enhancement.

  Visuals: Long silver hair clipped behind her ears. Red eyes. Red-and-white bodysuit with quad gun holsters. Currently wearing SOC tacticals (black).

  Sky Company:

  Victor Stendahl - Leader

  Specialty: Optimist

  Concept: Uses Synergy to enhance the power of others.

  Visuals: Muscular. Red hair. Side-swept fringe.

  Other: Friendly and charismatic.

  Specialty: (?)

  Concept: Combines Will with boxing straps.

  Visuals: Short black hair that stands straight up. Broad-chested. Kind of looks like Ryu from Street Fighter.

  Specialty: Intuitive

  Concept: Radar

  Visuals: Yellow hair in a loose bun. Clear, wraparound glasses.

  Specialty: (?)

  Concept: (?)

  Visuals: Long face. Lean. Medium-brown long hair.

  Other: Maeven filled in for him during the thief syndicate campaign (12.1)

  Specialty: Transformist

  Concept: Enhanced and re-textured physicality.

  Visuals: Broad, compound, somewhat robotic figure with a brick-like exterior.

  Sand Company:

  Ina Kotov - Leader

  Specialty: Subjectionist-Creationist.

  Concept: Summons snakes that subject different effects/ailments/enhancements on herself or her opponent, depending on the snake's species.

  Visuals: Long blond hair tied up in a high ponytail.

  Specialty: Optimist

  Concept: The more she dodges, the stronger she gets

  Visuals: Short orange hair and uneven bangs.

  Specialty: Weaponist

  Concept: Heals wounds with her breath.

  Visuals: Blue shoulder-length hair. Busty. Usually smiling at least a bit.

  Ocean Company:

  Maeven Riel - Leader

  Concept: (??)

  Visuals: She's the cover of Arc 1

  Specialty: Creation-Subjection

  Concept: Minionist

  Visuals: Black hair. Sometimes wears a cap. Lookalike is Fushiguro Megumi from JJK.

  Other: Aloof. Draws a lot.

  Visuals: Slightly curly orange hair. Dog ears, round eyes. Short.

  Other: Empathetic & friendly. A knower of animals and languages.