Chapter 16 - Broken Pedestal

  The neighborhood had no proper name, or at least not one people actually used. In Klynos records it appeared as an intermediate residential zone, with stable indicators and no strategic relevance. To Lin, it had always been something else: a place where things neither worsened nor improved, they simply repeated themselves with an almost kind neatness.

  The streets were clean, too straight to be old, too discreet to be new. Artificial trees aligned every twenty meters cast soft shadows, programmed not to look perfect. Some windows showed lights on even though it was not yet night; others remained dark, as if their inhabitants had chosen to retire early from the world. No one walked in a hurry. No one seemed to be running from anything.

  Lin slowed his pace without realizing it. Not out of nostalgia. Out of inertia.

  His mother’s and grandfather’s house stood halfway down a short block, with a light colored fa?ade and no ornaments. It was not large, but not cramped either. The kind of house someone chose because they did not want explanations. The door still had the same old opening system, a mechanism that jammed just before yielding, as if it needed to remember who was on the other side.

  When he placed his hand on it, he felt the cold metal.

  The door opened before he could knock.

  “Lin?” the voice said from inside, a second before the body appeared. “Is that you?”

  “It’s me.”

  His mother was barefoot, wearing light socks and an apron that had seen too many washes. Her hands were damp, perhaps freshly washed, perhaps simply busy. She smiled when she saw him, a small smile, without surprise, as if his arrival had been expected even if not announced.

  “Come in,” she said, stepping aside.

  She did not ask why he had come. She did not say what a surprise. She did not comment on the hour. She let him in as if he had always been there, waiting for him to remember.

  The inside of the house was warm. Not because of heating, but because of the smell. Something was boiling in the kitchen, and the steam, heavy with simple herbs and vegetable broth, drifted into the hallway like a silent invitation.

  Lin left his coat on the first chair he found. He did not hang it. He never did there. He sat directly at the table, resting his forearms, letting the exhaustion run down his back all at once.

  She looked at him a second longer.

  “You’re very pale,” she said, without alarm. “Are you cold?”

  “No,” he replied. “It’s the trip.”

  She nodded, as if that explanation were enough for anything. She returned to the kitchen and lifted the lid of the pot. Steam rose with a soft sound.

  “I made soup,” she said. “I didn’t know if you’d come… but I made it anyway.”

  She did not ask if he was hungry.

  She served a bowl and set it in front of him carefully, as if the bowl might be fragile, or as if he were. Then she served herself a smaller portion and sat across from him.

  For a few seconds, neither spoke.

  Lin took the spoon. The first sip was hotter than he expected. He said nothing. He blew on the second.

  “Are you staying long?” she asked, looking at her own bowl.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Oh.”

  She ate slowly. She always ate slowly. As if every bite were a decision that should not be rushed. Lin, on the other hand, ate with an irregular rhythm, fast at first, slower afterward, as if his body did not quite know what to do with something so basic.

  She looked at him again.

  “You have dark circles,” she commented. “Do you sleep?”

  “When I can.”

  “Well,” she said. “That’s something.”

  There was no irony in the phrase. No comfort. Just a statement.

  Lin finished the soup and left the spoon inside the empty bowl. He felt, with some surprise, that the knot in his stomach had loosened a little. Not completely. But enough to notice.

  She stood up immediately.

  “Do you want more?”

  “No, it’s fine.”

  She took the bowl anyway, carried it to the sink, washed it, dried it, and put it away. Every movement was gentle, almost automatic. There was no hurry and no clumsiness. Only continuity.

  “Your grandfather is in his room,” she said while drying. “He’s been watching things all day.”

  “What things?”

  She shrugged slightly.

  “Old news. The kind he likes.”

  Lin nodded. He stood up.

  “I’ll go see him.”

  “All right,” she replied. “I’m going to… water.”

  There were no real plants in the yard. There were pots with decorative substrate and an automatic system that handled everything. Still, she took a watering can and went outside. It was not an excuse. It was a habit.

  Lin stayed a second in the hallway, listening to the sound of water falling on something that did not need it.

  Then he walked toward the back of the house.

  The door to his grandfather’s room was ajar. From inside came an oblique, bluish light, projected from a floating transmission. Before entering, Lin heard a young voice, too confident, too clear.

  “…internal sources confirm that Delegate Jong had been planning the activation of Omnis in parallel with the Council…”

  Lin stopped in the doorway.

  The transmission broke into fragments of light and disappeared with a delayed flicker. The room sank into a soft penumbra, broken only by the slanted light coming through the high window. For a few seconds, neither of them spoke. The silence was not uncomfortable. It was old. It was used to them.

  Hiriam snorted, clumsily adjusting the blanket over his legs.

  “It gets harder every time,” he murmured, without looking at Lin. “Before, those screens… you thought something and it happened. Now the body lags. The hand won’t go. The head stays behind.”

  He raised his right hand, observing it as if it were a foreign object.

  “Sometimes I know exactly what I want to say… and when I open my mouth it’s already gone. It disappears. Like someone turning off the light just before you enter the room.”

  Lin leaned his back against the wall, crossing his arms. There was no impatience in the gesture. There was exhaustion.

  “I know,” he said. “And I also know you hate hearing it.”

  Hiriam let out a dry laugh.

  “I hate feeling it,” he corrected. “Hearing it is the least of it.”

  The old man remained silent for a while, breathing with difficulty, as if each inhalation required a small negotiation with his body. Then he spoke, without looking, without preamble.

  “Santiago betrayed me.”

  He did not say it with anger.

  He said it like someone listing another loss.

  Lin did not move.

  “Yes,” he replied. “And to make matters worse, you work for him.”

  Hiriam turned his head slowly. An uncomfortable, piercing lucidity appeared in his eyes.

  “Not for him,” he said. “For what it was supposed to be. For an idea that still mattered.”

  “Today there’s no difference,” Lin replied. “Ideas don’t rule. People do.”

  The old man shook his head, tired.

  “Always so certain,” he murmured. “Tell me, Lin… why did you come? Don’t look at me like that. You didn’t come to visit me. You came to use me.”

  Lin let his arms drop. He straightened slightly.

  “I need help,” he said. “I need votes to approve Operation Bastion.”

  Hiriam did not react immediately. He stared at the floor, as if the tiles held memories.

  “Is what they’re saying true?” he asked at last. “That you’re going to isolate Tau Ceti IV?”

  Lin hesitated for barely a second. Just enough to be noticeable.

  “Yes.”

  The old man closed his eyes, slow and heavy.

  “Then you’re going to draw every possible rebel there,” he continued. “You’ll lock them in. No routes. No real supply.” He opened his eyes. “Millions will starve to death before anyone fires a weapon.”

  Lin denied nothing.

  “Yes.”

  The silence stretched. Hiriam took a deep breath, as if the air weighed more.

  “I’m not going to help you with that,” he said finally.

  It was not a theatrical refusal. It was a boundary.

  Something in Lin’s chest tightened.

  “After everything you did?” he asked, with a crooked smile. “You’re talking to me about moral limits?”

  “I’m talking about not lying to myself anymore,” Hiriam replied. “I’ve lied enough in this life.”

  Lin took a step forward.

  “Look where that honesty got you,” he said, pointing at the room, the blanket, the defeated body. “Look at you. You’re a former delegate watching old files as if they were your own memories. Locked in. Forgotten.” His voice hardened. “Your sin wasn’t Omnis. It was that they caught you.”

  For an instant, Lin thought he had gone too far.

  Then Hiriam placed both hands on the chair.

  The movement was slow. Painful. Awkward.

  But he stood.

  Lin remained motionless. He had not seen him do it alone in years.

  The old man stood before him, hunched but upright through sheer will. His eyes burned with an uncomfortable clarity.

  “You think you’re something special,” he said, his voice broken but firm. “But everything you’ve built, every step you climbed, was because I opened doors first. Because I got my hands dirty. Because I carried things you still don’t understand.”

  He took a short step toward Lin.

  “You’re nothing yet. Shut your mouth, learn… or get out of my house.”

  The silence fell like a block.

  Lin took a deep breath. Once. Twice.

  “To my grandchildren,” he said, with a calm that hurt, “I’m going to leave a better legacy than the one you gave me.”

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  He did not wait for an answer.

  He opened the door and left. He did not hear whether Hiriam sat back down or stayed there, holding himself upright against the air through sheer stubbornness.

  He crossed the house without looking toward the kitchen, without searching for his mother. The door closed behind him with the same old sound as always.

  Outside, the neighborhood remained intact.

  Warm lights. Clean streets. Nothing broken.

  Lin walked without hurrying.

  At least he no longer felt like vomiting.

  Spectral light of the visors was beginning to weaken. Not because the devices were failing, but because the environment itself was becoming denser, more unstable. They had been marching for hours without pause. The tunnel had changed texture. Now the stone seemed to swallow sound, and the air carried that thickness that announces proximity to the surface.

  Reis noticed it first. He slowed his pace without warning, like an animal that senses something before it sees it.

  “We’re close to an exit,” he murmured.

  Dossian nodded. The kid had leadership, without a doubt. The squad knew what to do. Visors to minimum. Weapons ready. Steps firm but contained. When they reached the end of the passage, they found a half open side hatch. Behind it, an uneven ascent, carved by hand, led them to a broken plain where rock gave way to desert dust.

  They were outside.

  Or at least on the edges of the surface.

  The sky held that dark blue tone that precedes night. The wind blew with an almost artificial calm, as if the planet were holding its breath. No one spoke at first. They only adjusted filters, shifted to night vision, and reconfigured formation.

  Reis walked point, attentive to the atmospheric pressure reader. Since they had chosen the alternate corridor, Dossian had silently yielded leadership of the march, though not his authority. The gesture did not go unnoticed by anyone.

  Alis followed behind, eyes sweeping wide spectrum, rifle held in an almost relaxed position. Jevin and Bren exchanged whispers, one joking, the other restrained. Miren, for her part, did not speak. She never spoke on the march. She paid more attention to the group’s breathing rhythms than to any landscape. It was her way of anticipating a fall, a crisis, a weakness.

  It was Reis who raised his hand with a short gesture.

  “Movement,” he said.

  The squad stopped. In the distance, a man advanced in a stagger, clothes in tatters, face sunk in grime.

  “Separatist clothing,” Alis warned, lifting her visor.

  “But no insignia and no visible weapon,” Bren added, already aiming.

  “Could be a trap,” Jevin murmured.

  “Or a lost idiot,” Alis replied.

  Dossian stepped forward calmly. His voice was low but sharp.

  “Contact procedure. Bren, Alis, left flank. Jevin, right flank. Miren, aerial watch. Reis, stay in formation.”

  Reis did not answer. But his eyebrow lifted slightly. Just enough for Dossian to see it. And ignore it.

  In seconds, the three soldiers surrounded the man. He offered no resistance. He dropped to his knees, hands raised.

  “Please. I’m not a threat.”

  They subdued him easily and brought him before Dossian, who observed him as if evaluating a broken tool.

  “Name,” he ordered.

  “Akhven. I’m a signal technician. Second surveillance brigade. But not anymore. I deserted days ago. I swear.”

  Jevin frowned.

  “And you survived alone in this area?”

  “No. Not exactly. I hid. Then a few hours ago a group of Balmoreans found me. They said I could share fire with them. That they made no distinction between believers and non believers.”

  “And you agreed?” Alis asked, incredulous.

  “I was starving. I thought I could buy time. But once night fell, they changed. They started talking among themselves, touching their chests, murmuring things I didn’t understand. One said they were going to mark me. Another said they needed a warm body.”

  “Ritual,” Miren said quietly.

  “I escaped. I don’t know how. I ran until I collapsed. And then I saw you.”

  Dossian looked at his squad. No one seemed fully convinced.

  “Can you locate the place where they were?”

  “Yes. More or less. There was a fissure with some kind of broken arch. Symbols carved in stone. I didn’t understand them.”

  Reis stepped forward.

  “We could use him. Have him guide us to the first camp. Understand how connected the points are.”

  “And if it’s a trap?” Dossian replied without looking at him.

  “Then we fall anyway,” Reis answered. “But with open eyes.”

  A brief, heavy silence.

  Dossian turned toward Akhven.

  “Zinerman, check him. Tracker, transmitter, internal injuries. I want to know if he’s breathing on his own or if someone is giving him orders from a distance.”

  Reis moved closer. The prisoner tried to speak, but Bren sealed his mouth with tactical binding tape.

  “Done,” the soldier said with a barely visible smile.

  Alis walked up to Dossian.

  “What do we do? If you say execute him, I’ll do it now. But if he has useful data, it’s better to keep him alive a few more hours.”

  “He has something,” Dossian murmured. “I don’t know what. But it’s not information. It’s something else. There’s something in the way he looked at us.”

  “Fear?” Jevin asked.

  “No. Resignation. If he has information, he’ll give it to us. But it has to be here. We need everything clear before moving on.”

  “And what does that imply?” Bren asked.

  Dossian watched the horizon. The sky was already completely black. The first stars flickered through gaps in the polluted atmosphere. Far away, very far away, a column of smoke seemed to rise without a visible source.

  “It implies that tonight, nobody sleeps,” he said at last. “We’ll set camp on the upper rock. Visors on. Double shifts. Alis, you’re with me. Reis, you have central watch. Jevin, Bren, rear positions. Miren, biological watch. We’ll rotate.”

  “And the prisoner?” Bren asked.

  “At my side. I’m going to talk to him. And if he tries anything strange, I’ll handle it.”

  Reis looked at him one last time.

  “We’re going to lose time. We could be advancing. We must be little more than two kilometers from the second tunnel.”

  Dossian held his gaze.

  “We’re forty three kilometers from the objective, soldier. If we’re not cautious, we all die.”

  The squad moved toward the elevated rock. No more words were exchanged for several minutes. Only measured steps, the soft crunch of loose stone, and the certainty that on that moonless night, the unknown was not beneath the ground.

  It was outside.

  And it was waiting for them.

  The night had grown heavy, as if the air itself had coagulated around the improvised camp. From his position, Reis had visual on almost the entire perimeter. There was no movement. Only the occasional hum of visors in spectral mode and the intermittent glow of an electrical spark among nearby ruins.

  He turned his head. Dossian was still with the prisoner.

  The interrogation had not ended, though it had already lasted more than an hour. From his elevated position, Reis could not make out the words, but he could count the pauses. At first there were two seconds between question and answer. Then four. Then six. After that, more silence than voice.

  The breathing had stopped. Not the prisoner’s. Dossian’s.

  It took Reis a few seconds to notice. The tunnel’s echo, which until moments ago returned the monotonous murmur of the interrogation, had fallen into a solid, dense silence. He stood immediately. Bren glanced at him from the perimeter but said nothing. She knew Reis was going down.

  The scene greeted him with unnatural stillness.

  The prisoner lay to one side, curled up. Neither bound nor cuffed. Just broken. There was moisture on his cheeks, but no visible blood.

  Dossian stood with his back turned, both hands braced against the wall. His shoulders shook. His head hung low. It wasn’t exhaustion. Not the usual kind.

  Reis stepped closer.

  “Dossian?”

  The man didn’t respond. His breathing was irregular. Muffled. As if something invisible were crushing his chest from within. Reis recognized it immediately. A panic attack. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen one in others. But it was the first time he’d seen it in him.

  “What happened?” he insisted, this time more firmly.

  Dossian turned slowly. His face was pale, his gaze lowered. His voice came out rougher than usual.

  “I didn’t order you to come down, Reis.”

  Reis clenched his teeth.

  “I heard the prisoner stop talking. You too. I thought something had happened.”

  “You thought wrong, soldier. Silence.”

  Dossian turned away. His eyes did not hold their usual ferocity. They were empty. Or worse. Full of something that refused to show itself.

  “With all due respect, sir, it didn’t look like you had it under control. You seem affected. Do you need help?”

  Dossian’s eyes snapped up like a blow. He didn’t shout. He didn’t raise his voice. But his body tensed like a coiled spring.

  “What do you know about control, kid?”

  That hurt. Not because of the tone. Because of the word.

  Kid.

  Reis felt it in his chest. A subtle degradation. Like a category he could never quite leave behind no matter what he did. No, Reis was not a kid. After all this time, he was not a kid.

  “Dossian, I’ve been here since before you arrived,” he said very quietly. “And I’m still here. And many of my soldiers are still here.”

  Dossian let out a dry laugh.

  “So what?” Dossian replied. “You want a medal?”

  A thick silence followed.

  Dossian took a few steps. Slow. Not toward him, but close. The tunnel barely allowed movement without facing each other.

  “No. But maybe a little more respect from you, commander.”

  “Why? Because I called you kid?”

  Reis nodded.

  Reis laughed again.

  “That proves exactly my point.”

  Dossian turned halfway, as if to leave. Reis grabbed his shoulder. He wasn’t going to stay quiet. Not when everything around him was turning red.

  “I think I’ve suffered and fought enough to deserve some respect. While you were in asylums, I was the one holding this together. I was the one who paid for this.”

  Dossian looked at him steadily. So steady and calm that Reis began to feel smaller and smaller, until he felt like an ant beside him.

  “Listen carefully, Reis,” he began. “You fought. You suffered. I know that. But you still don’t understand what matters.”

  Reis did not answer.

  “In war there is no justice. No legacy. There are only two kinds of people. Those who survive, and those who don’t. Everything else is decoration to sleep better. You want my respect? You get it when I make sure you survive.”

  Dossian paused.

  “You want to be a commander? Fine. But don’t come to me with morality, or care, or wounded pride. The dead won’t thank you for having been correct.”

  Reis swallowed. His face did not change, but something in his posture did. His shoulders hardened. His back tightened. He said nothing. And that said everything.

  “If I leave you in command, will you endure one of your soldiers dying in your arms without freezing in combat?” Dossian continued. “Will you watch him be torn apart and keep going anyway? Will you give the order to leave him behind if necessary?”

  The silence stretched. Dossian held it with his eyes. He wasn’t seeking an answer. Only leaving the question hanging like a trap.

  “That is being a commander. The rest is wanting to be seen. And you still don’t have what it takes.”

  He said that last part without anger. And it was the cruelest thing.

  Reis lowered his gaze. Not out of shame. Not submission. Only contained rage. Rage with nowhere to go. Rage that had been building for a long time. Rage he couldn’t release there.

  “I’m going back to the perimeter,” he said.

  “Do it. And splash cold water on your head.”

  Reis turned without haste. He climbed the slope silently, though each step felt as if years were piled in his legs. When he reached the edge, he saw Alis in position, visor on. She didn’t look at him. But she did ask:

  “Everything okay?”

  Reis took a moment to answer.

  “Yes. Everything under control.”

  But as he said it, he felt something break forever between him and the man he had admired.

  And that maybe it had never been his place. Just a provisional substitution.

  A replacement until the real soldier arrived. The real leader.

  Dossian Glass.

  And yet, when he sat beside his pack and adjusted his visor, Reis knew that something in him was no longer willing to wait.

  Dossian’s steps reached him first as a dry echo over damp stone. He didn’t descend in a hurry, but not slowly either. He carried that exact rhythm that only those who no longer owe anything to speed or fear possess.

  Reis had not moved from his position. He was hunched beside his pack, pretending to check his visor. In truth, he was still chewing on every word from the earlier conversation, as if his pride were still bleeding inside. When Dossian appeared, he greeted him with a slight nod, more out of protocol than will.

  Dossian did not return the gesture. He stopped for a few seconds in front of the prisoner.

  “Did he piss himself?” he asked with disdain.

  Reis did not answer. The man on the ground, Akhven, lifted his gaze with sunken eyes, as if he sensed that the worst had not yet begun.

  “We have what we need,” Dossian said, without taking his eyes off him. “There’s a side passage through the forgotten chambers that connects to the central tunnel of the complex. Akhven will guide us.”

  The prisoner swallowed hard.

  “I can do it,” he stammered. “But you need to keep the lights low. There are old sensors, optical ones. If you trigger them…”

  “Yes, yes. Sensors. Noise. Traps. Dead bodies. The usual,” Dossian cut him off. “You walk in front. Slowly. If you do anything strange, I blow your head off. Is that clear?”

  Akhven nodded immediately, several times, like a domesticated animal. There was no dignity in the gesture. Only survival.

  “Miren will escort him,” Dossian added, turning his neck slightly toward the rear. “Five steps back. If he crouches, stops, or breathes wrong, put a round between his shoulder blades. Not the head. We need that walking map with its brain intact until we cross.”

  From the back, Miren raised her rifle with a grimace that could have been boredom or acceptance. No one liked that job. Everyone knew how to do it.

  Dossian looked at the rest of the team.

  “We have a window of less than half an hour. We’ll pass through collapsed zones, exposed structures. At the first sign of a cave in, disperse and retreat to the origin point. If we make it across, we’ll have sight of the core from the subterranean level. There is no margin for error.”

  Reis straightened slowly. He said nothing, and noticed that Dossian didn’t look at him either. It was as if their earlier conversation had been buried under rubble, with no intention of being unearthed.

  Akhven was yanked to his feet by Jevin, who tied a loose rope around his belt, not to bind him, but to mark him as an extension of the group, not one of them.

  Before moving on, Dossian spoke once more, this time without raising his voice.

  “If he gets lost, if he panics, if he tries to escape, don’t execute him out of mercy. Make it hurt. So the next one who betrays us thinks twice.”

  With that, he turned on his heel and began advancing into the narrow passage.

  One by one, the others followed. Reis was last. His shadow dragged along the stone like a fractured echo. He didn’t look at Akhven. But he felt the tremor in the man’s steps, and for an instant he didn’t know whether it was the prisoner’s fear, or his own.