What have we been doing?

  Vertan continues to stare at the man before him, wide-eyed in disbelief. He appears not much older than Vertan himself, even if his face may be marked with scars and tissue damage.

  This is it?

  That is all?

  But the evidence of his eyes could not be denied.

  That is indeed all he would get.

  The same emblem. The circle enshrined within the wreath. The star and its diamonds up top. The same symbols marking the presence of a distinct language. The Tank. The city ruins. The fortress complexes. The artifacts. By the cosmos, the artifacts.

  “Who are you?”

  “...”

  “What are you?”

  “...”

  Vertan looks back at his Daero Counter, still crackling and beeping with a wild fervor and madness unlike anything he had previously seen.

  Daero Level: 100%

  Log ID: ###-000001

  Switching it off and on again, the device displays the same reading. Pointing it away, the reading immediately fluctuates; pointing back at the man, it returns to its maximum reading.

  He looks back at the broken man.

  Tentatively, Vertan reaches out, and feels his face before quickly pulling his hand back.

  Real skin and flesh.

  What have we been doing?

  Vertan’s mind began to race. Who or what is this? What have they been extracting across every planet out here?

  What have they been really fighting?

  The man’s eyes continued to seemingly drift in and out of consciousness, tracing the dim stars in the sky above. Continuing to inspect him, Vertan moves towards disarming the fallen individual, his mind slowly registering the man in front of him less and less as paranormal.

  Struggling, Vertan manages to unclip what appears to be a bladed weapon within its scabbard. It was impossibly dense and heavy, and he almost drops the thing onto himself as it slips out of the scabbard. Though appearing to be a normal bladed weapon, the moment it touched the ground, it cut straight through like nothing, the handle poking out before the thing dropped and cut through the entire building down as low as it could go.

  Proceeding with heightened caution with the next weapon, Vertan heaved with all of his and the combined suit’s mechanical might to lift what appeared to be an advanced rifle. It too was impossibly dense and heavy, even if its mass may take up the same space as his. Lugging and dragging it a fair distance away, exhausted, he finally lets it drop to its side.

  As a misfire, a misplaced piece of debris triggers the weapon, causing it to launch off a shot that leaves a physical trench through the ground, the projectile instantly collapsing a surviving tower in the distance. In the opposite direction, the weapon launches itself from sheer recoil, also collapsing multiple buildings in its wake from pure physical force as it ran through the ground. A tremendous bang! and shockwave nearly throws Vertan back, sending him scrambling backwards in shock.

  Turning back to the fallen man, Vertan sees him grimacing quietly in agony. His hand attempted to reach towards the gateway directly above him.

  “...Lym…” his voice barely musters.

  “...What?” says Vertan.

  “...Lym…”

  “You can speak? What are you saying?”

  “...Alzie…”

  “I can’t understand you.”

  “...Rugen.”

  “I don’t know what you’re saying. What does that mean?”

  The man continued to gaze upwards at the gateway, his hand outstretched.

  Vertan looks back up, wondering what he must be thinking about.

  Suddenly, Vertan falls down to his knees. His suit flickers for a moment before shutting down most of its key components. It had become too damaged to keep sustaining itself. As a last push, the suit had automatically configured itself to prolong Vertan’s survival as much as possible, putting every last bit of energy left into bringing breathable air to his lungs. Each movement felt heavier now that the suit’s motors didn’t provide any aid, and Vertan moved his arms lifting the dead weight.

  The man slowly pulls something out from beneath his armor.

  Vertan tries to move in anticipation, but exhausted from everything, a part of him merely accepts whatever will be coming. If this was it, so be it.

  But once again, nothing happens.

  The man struggles, as though the movement of each millimeter caused him agonizing pain, even if he may do it all in silence. He brings up to his face what appears to be a kind of picture. A photo, perhaps, if his kind has those.

  From his angle, Vertan could see the man in the picture alongside another individual, both as children. Unfortunately, that part of it had been damaged, burnt, and torn off. It’s a wonder the rest had survived at all.

  Reminded of his, Vertan pulls out the photograph his mother had given him, of which he had carried with him all of these years.

  And there he was too, once more as a young boy next to his mother and father. But much to his despair and dismay, so too has this photo been damaged; the face of his father had also now been torn off somewhere along the way, leaving only him and his mother.

  Vertan tried to play back his memories. He swore he saw his father earlier in the chamber of Base Seven. He remembers his face so clearly. Did he remember him clearly? Some details began to elude him. What were the proportions of his nose exactly like again? The color of his eyes? Was his ring finger as long as his middle finger?

  Vertan looks back to find the man looking at him now, his eyes still swaying between consciousness and unconsciousness.

  In that moment, Vertan felt a strange sympathy for him, the only other living being in a sterile world, yet also someone else’s young boy dying far from home.

  “Do you have a name?”

  “...”

  “You? Who you?”

  “...”

  Vertan, with all of his strength, lifts his arm, still within his suit, and points towards himself repeatedly.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “Vertan,” he says. “Vertan.”

  And with great effort, extends his arm back out to point at the man. Exhausted from the exertion, he lets his arm fall, the suit’s motors whirring inactively at his shoulders.

  The man, with an expression of surprise hidden behind his eyes, struggles to whisper out:

  “A—A—A-ru…”

  “Aru?”

  “A…A-ru.”

  Struggling with the weight once more, Vertan first stretches his arm to point to the stars, before reaching his arm back to himself.

  “Ulminh. Ulminh.”

  For a moment, the man remained silent, before his eyes widened slightly as a signal of understanding. He too, with his surviving arm, slowly points to the stars, before pointing back towards himself.

  “Hà…Pi…Yá…”

  The sound fades from his lips, and the eyes stare off into space.

  “Happia?” Vertan whispers, mispronouncing the words.

  The Daero Counter no longer reads 100%, having moved down to 92%.

  Vertan now kneels there in quiet stillness as the only living being left on a dead planet.

  From within him, perhaps as a manner of coping, he begins humming the same tune his mother would as she cooked his meals.

  *****

  Even as damaged as it is in its lowest settings, Vertan’s exosuit continued to meticulously maintain his vitals, filtering and recycling waste, closing different wounds, and doing everything in its capacity to keep him alive, even if it could not alleviate his pain.

  For the equivalent of three days, he knelt there in suffering.

  Very soon within those three days, the first arrival of reinforcements entered orbit, but it quickly became clear that they were all bound for a different part of the world. The devastation wrought to all the gateways around Thoma meant only a slow trickle came through.

  Eventually, one of the satellite gateways surrounding Base Seven’s main gateway was brought back to running order, and more followed suit. The gateway, though survived intact, remained heavily damaged and disabled without its needed repairs.

  One of many gunships descending upon the site of Base Seven detected Vertan as a survivor, and the crew went against direct orders to leave him, opting to retrieve him instead. Vertan was brought on board, and soon transported to a mobile medical base, where he was carefully removed from his suit and immediately transferred to life saving care.

  Throughout the entire ordeal, Vertan hallucinated in and out of consciousness. Sometimes, he would see his mother. Others, his father. But mostly, Hilgo. Somehow, even if only for a moment, he manages to convince himself that Hilgo was still there with him.

  Voices could be heard here and there to him as he underwent their medical procedures.

  “Holy hell, this guy is fucked.”

  “This guy’s lucky his suit lasted as long as it did.”

  “So is he the only one? Where are the rest?”

  “He’s the only survivor they found.”

  “In all my years, I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone come out of something like this, and this one has been far worse.”

  “Unbelievable.”

  “By the cosmos, it’s nothing short of a miracle.”

  “Did you see who he was with?”

  “Unluckier one?”

  “Not one of ours.”

  “What's up with that?”

  It had been a week before Vertan was able to wake up. Though his vitals are stable, his arm and leg had been amputated, replaced with temporary prosthetics meant to be swapped out by higher quality ones later on. It should have taken at least another few months for a full recovery, but here, a speedy process is instead prioritized to save funds and resources.

  Though he is once more conscious and definitively alive, the events that soon came went by in a blur to him. People seemed to recognize him more. Strangers would beg to ask him questions. His name circulated virally.

  Word had gotten around about the legendary Vertan Zviedal.

  And yet, upon such rumors reaching his ears, Vertan couldn’t comprehend the wildly inaccurate or blatantly false stories of him being spread. Stories of him leading the last stand against the horde. Names calling him an underdog in different languages. Rumors of him in multiple different, often conflicting relationships. Tales of his valiant backstory. Legends of him pulling off the unthinkable.

  And yet the fisherman’s mind swirled with none of these thoughts. He often thought about his mother, his father, and Hilgo. He thought about home. He thought about the events in his life that led him to this.

  But more intriguingly,

  What is Happia?

  The name rolled around over, and over, and over again in Vertan’s head, the dying man named Aru etched into his mind. Sometimes, a hallucination of his figure would appear at the doorway of Vertan’s patient room, sending him into bouts of panic.

  Happia.

  Happia.

  Happia.

  The conversation had been cut short for them, lasting only as long as it could have, and reaching only a rudimentary level of understanding between two individuals of vastly different worlds. Yet somehow these two words remained ringing in his mind as he recontextualized his years.

  Ghosts. Spirits. Demons. The Abomination. The threat. The noble sacrifice to contain an existential threat away from the rest of the Myriad Worlds. To build a better and safer tomorrow. To bring opportunity not just for himself, but for others.

  Aru from Happia.

  A name and a place.

  The fight against what?

  The banality of this truth crushed down upon Vertan. Everything he had fought, battled, endured, and nearly died for. How many others like Aru are there out there? Who was the person in his photo? What were his last thoughts reaching towards the stars?

  What was he fighting for?

  Vertan internalized and ruminated on these thoughts in the days that went by as he became subject to mental fitness examinations, in which after multiple tests, they found him to be of sound enough mind not to be deemed a dangerous threat.

  Why was Thoma targeted? What was the reason and process?

  At some point of which his memory also mostly blurred, he remembers the voices and message of an important scene. Bored, tired, and mildly annoyed voices of individuals who have only ever spent the duration of the Expeditions in their office chairs—

  “Mr. Zviedal?”

  Vertan’s eyes, a thousand yards away, slowly refocus.

  “Hm?” he mumbles wearily.

  “Mr. Zviedal?” the handler sighs. “Are you here?

  “Oh,” mumbles Vertan. “I am.”

  The handler sighs again. Another crazed one, she thinks.

  “So, I just arrived and was informed of your logs,” she continued, adjusting her glasses. “Good track record, I will say. Very impressed.”

  “What am I here for?” Vertan asks.

  “Well, firstly to be upfront, no, you’re not in trouble, I just want to make that clear.”

  “...?”

  “I see you’re uncomfortable, and that’s understandable; allow me to elaborate further. Essentially, you’ve witnessed something you weren’t supposed to.”

  “What would that be?”

  “I think you know.”

  “...”

  “Now, here’s the deal. What could, and, well, usually would happen is a wide variety of less than pleasant outcomes. But, given your good record and how, dare I might say, famous, you are now, and how much this has boosted morale, we’ve decided to present you an opportunity instead.

  “...”

  “This is a non-disclosure agreement, or NDA, tailored for what you’ve encountered. You’ll notice that it’s more comprehensive than the usual forms, since, well, not to be dramatic, but, you’re the first one in this kind of scenario of which we’ve had to draft this kind of agreement. Most importantly what you need to know is here on Clause 2.1, it prohibits disclosure to family, media, clergy, legal counsel—”

  “—So anyone?”

  “—Yes—that’s precisely right—”

  “And if I don’t sign this?”

  “Then we would have to assume you’re a threat vector; structural threats get contained. Don’t take it personally.”

  “...”

  “Sign here at the bottom, and this case is yours. No tax, no trail, no future involvement. You’ll walk out of here legally forbidden from ever mentioning this, but a richer man than you’ve ever dreamed of.”

  “If I say yes, you just trust I’ll keep shut?”

  “We trust in our enforcement mechanisms. Refer to Clause 5.1 if you will, detailing violation of the agreement.”

  With another sigh, the handler pushes her glasses back up, and stands up from the desk.

  “You can turn this in whenever you make your decision. Though we’d prefer you just enjoy your early retirement.”

  And with a polite nod and wave, she was gone.

  Vertan continues to sit alone in the room as the clock ticks through the day.

  *****

  Later that day, Vertan stares at the amount displayed in his account at the automated teller machine.

  ¤748,654,768.94 Alpharonian dollars.