I.
WHERE IS YOUR HOME
What is your name?
Do you know where you are?
What do you remember?
Do you know who you’re fighting?
How old were you when you came to the war?
Where were you when the war started?
Where is your home?
Where is your home?
Where is your home?
Where is your home?
Where is your home?
Where will you go after the war?
Who is waiting for you after the war?
Are you scared of the war?
What if the war kills you?
Tell me a secret you’ve never told anyone else.
What is your name?
Wake up.
II.
THE LADY DEATH
By the books, Kristin’s callsign changed four years and six months ago. This after two dozen failed attempts to copilot, three months of rehabilitation, and one month of retrofitting. You’ll need a new name as a solo pilot, Dream said. As though she wouldn’t have needed a new name if she had found a new copilot. Can’t be callsign: Mine-Craft without the Craft.
In reality, her callsign changed four years and eleven months ago. She lost her husband two days before that.
(Lost in the literal sense, not the metaphorical one. Lost like a dog gets lost, not lost like a dog gets hit by a car. It sucks that she needs to remind people of that.)
She had been lost too. The two of them, so far down in the Deep Dark that the tech started to glitch out. No visual, no audio. The drones could only follow so far. The SOS beacon made it through miles of earth, but it would lead the rescue party to DC-04’s corpse, auxiliary unit missing from its chest, ribcage cracked open where Kristin clawed her way out.
There was a search. Not a long one. She doesn’t blame them for that. No reason to think either of them could have survived outside of DC-04 for more than a few minutes. And Skulk Management and Prevention has never been particularly sentimental.
DC-04 was hauled back to the surface by IC and GC mechs. 04 was functionally useless without its auxiliary unit ( spyplane , Phil calls it), but they likely hadn’t given up on finding that yet. And while it was completely useless without the ancient weapon at its core, they could always siphon off a little of its larger twin to make another one.
Not a terrible loss, all things considered. Two skilled pilots. Not a dime a dozen, but not irreplaceable. New pilots with passable sympathy rates were being tested within hours. Standard practice.
Kristin crawled from the earth two days later, a revenant, right around the same time what little footage the drones captured was leaked. Her scythe dragged behind her. She shambled back to base bathed in greenish gold ichor, where a jury of her peers laid her new callsign on her head like a crown of laurels.
Basic triage, and then Administration carted her off for questioning. She felt sick, dizzy. There was still golden blood pulsing from her nose and an IV dangling out of her arm. She had the foggy expectation of a court martial. They did ask why she and her copilot went into the Deep Dark unsanctioned, and why there was no audio or visual from DC-04 or her suit, but the questions felt perfunctory. They didn’t question her fumbling excuse that they simply went too deep. What they really wanted to know how she’d done it. Done what, she said.
They showed her the drone footage. She remembered none of it.
She asked after her copilot.
No news yet. They were truly so very sorry for her loss. (They meant the hit by a car kind.) But to the matter at hand—that footage, that outpouring of EXP, completely unprecedented—
Most of the base stayed clear of her. She and Phil had been liked well enough before the incident, but she could admit the footage was unnerving. There wasn’t much love lost there, anyway. Administration encouraged strict compartmentalization between departments.
Base had no trouble whispering, though. Less trouble staring. She didn’t mind eating most of her meals alone, but that got annoying quick.
“Administration has granted approval for you to decide your new callsign,” Dream said, all those months later, when the SMP standard callsign: Mine-Craft was officially hung up. “Given your unique situation.”
Like a consolation prize. He smiled like a doll. This before he took to wearing his suit and helmet off duty as well as on. ( Creepy f*cker, Phil would have said.)
“Thank you,” Kristin said, as was expected of her. “I already picked it out, actually.”
She told him. His eyes narrowed above his grin.
“Are you sure about that?” he asked. “Administration might wonder if that sends the right message. You know. To the base. MOJANG. The world.”
“I think it sends exactly the right message,” Kristin said. She grinned right back.
Base ducks their eyes when she passes now. No more whispers. She eats her meals in peace.
(Phil would have gotten a kick out of it. He would have pointed out that in Japan the number four has a double meaning for death. Weeb.)
All to say that when DC-04 is trapped in the Deep Dark and swarmed by skulk a second time, Lady Death is not surprised that no one jumps to her aid.
III.
WHAT DO YOU REMEMBER?
The things she remembers from the day she lost him, in order:
- Phil wanted to show her something.
- You’d come find me, right?
- Wet flesh between her teeth.
IV.
DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOU ARE?
She’s not about to say it’s all Dream’s fault, but. Well she is. It’s all Dream’s fault.
She should have known something was up when she and Dream both were sent for the job. Typically, street cleaning—colloquial term, on-base—is a task for Iron and Gold Class mechs, with one Diamond Class for protection. It’s as necessary to the Management part of Skulk Management and Prevention as mowing skulk down when they breached the surface. Relative to that, though, street cleaning is harmless. Just standard maintenance of already well-maintained entrances into the Deep Dark.
If skulk veins are found, they’re torn out at the root. (And clipped and shipped off to Research, not that Kristin knows what they do with them.) If skulk sensors have bloomed, they’re mined. (And shipped to Research.) If something does attack, it’s usually small and easily dispatched. Rare that a Diamond Class needs to intervene at all.
The other Diamond Class mechs are scattered across the region, accompanying their own GCs and ICs. The nearest one is on the other side of the city. Kristin stands on the lip of a pit in the heart of what was once the L’Manburg district. When the tunnel was first burrowed, half of the neighborhood collapsed into the gaping maw, and the other half evacuated inland. Skulk crawled the ground and climbed the walls. It took years to regain this much ground, months more to scour all the skulk that took root. And the people never came back. SMP put it under quarantine and barred civilian entry. All that’s left now are crumbling warehouses and shelled out clubs and restaurants, and the ghosts that people leave when they slip through the cracks: flowers and photographs, candles and teddy bears. The tunnel itself is well-kept and well-lit. Sterile. When you’re inside it you can forget, for the most part, the creeping feeling that the land surrounding remembers its tragedy. For the most part.
She should have known. Maybe she did. But it’s been a while since she scoured the area. The tunnel she and Phil took is across the city, but it’s always worth it to check if there are any clues she’s missed, or new ones to suggest he’s crossed this way.
Street cleaning goes without a hitch. Skulk veins are weeded. No trace of Philza. Dream goes deeper.
Over comms Lady Death says, “Nightmare, this is as far as we’re sanctioned. We should head back up.”
And Nightmare says back, “New orders from admin. We keep going.”
“I didn’t receive any new orders,” Lady Death says.
“Then you must not have the clearance,” Nightmare says.
Compartmentalization. Personally Kristin thinks she’d be more efficient if she were in the know, but knowing isn’t her job. Eradicating skulk is. (Finding Phil is.)
Nightmare leads the way. Lady Death guards the rear, while the IC and GC mechs trundle along between. Their body language bleeds through their mechs, clunky and nervous. The floodlights stop all at once. They do not.
Down and down. Into the deep. Into the dark.
Off the main tunnel, into one of the cramped, branching paths. She can picture them from the outside, like the cross section of an ant colony. Over comms she can hear the GC copilots’ shuddering breaths. The IC pilot has stopped breathing entirely. Diamond Class mechs are too big for this. Nightmare folds into some animal contortion and slips onward. DC-01 has always been the fastest mech, slick and shadow silent. Lady Death brings 04 into a crawl.
On the map inside her helmet, the dot labeled CALLSIGN: NIGHTMARE starts breaking away.
Lady Death sends a message to CALLSIGN: NIGHTMARE. This far down silence is vital.
CALLSIGN: LADY DEATH
Nightmare. Slow down. The IC and GC can’t keep up.
Nightmare’s dot blinks farther and farther away. Impersonal text across her HUD:
CALLSIGN: NIGHTMARE
Then keep them quiet.
She can’t keep them quiet. Gold and Iron Class weren’t trained for quiet, they were trained for the surface and the shallows of the Deep Dark. Their mechs rattle and so do they. They’re afraid.
Nightmare’s dot blinks out.
Kristin’s stomach lurches.
The path takes a sharp turn and blooms open into a space that is cavernous, crumbling, and eerily blue. Every inch is crawling with skulk veins. Skulk sensors everywhere. The toothy outcroppings of shriekers erupt from the earth like stalagmites.
She thought ancient cities were beautiful, when they were first discovered. She still does.
“Impossible,” whispers the IC pilot.
They’re far down. Not far down enough to discover a new city. The Deep Dark has been mapped for miles and miles in every direction. This city does not exist.
She messages the IC and the GC to hunker down. Wait for Nightmare to return. He clearly has his own interests, and she won’t risk all their lives trying to follow.
They wait. The world around them is soundless and alien. Kristin can track her pulse in the quiet. She slows it with her breathing. Slow. Slow.
In the dark, a shrieking begins.
V.
DO YOU KNOW WHO YOU'RE FIGHTING?
They sound like children, lost and frightened in the dark. Distant. Plaintive. Screaming.
She sends the message again to keep still but the Iron Class is already running. It disappears back the way they came. Another shriek. Another. A third and a fourth.
Another piercing scream—the Iron Class pilot, crackling through the comms. Horrible metallic shearing, echoing down the tunnel.
The ghostly blue lights go out.
CALLSIGN: LADY DEATH
Do not move repeat do NOT move
The Gold Class auxiliary unit detaches. Kristin can hear the pilot sobbing.
A sonic impact threatens to blow out Kristin’s ear drums. The auxiliary unit crumples like sheet foil. The pilot’s screams turn to gurgles and pleas in her ears.
In the dark she sees it.
It’s horrendously alien. Uncanny in a way that made her nauseous the first time she saw one. The soft and porous flesh that isn’t flesh. The fungal growths. The bipedal, almost human shape. The gaping pit of a mouth. The gaping pit of a chest. The teeth.
The Warden peels back the aux unit’s shell. It reaches inside. Lady Death swings her scythe and shears its head from the stump of its body. Another shrieker activates.
She says to the Gold Class, “Run.”
The gold class goes for the tunnel. Little red darts spark to life on her HUD, but more than that she feels them—a prickling sixth sense in 04’s limbs, under the armor plating through the half-organic skin, and through her real skin too, encased deep down beneath layers of tissue and muscle and bone. Skulk burrow out from the walls. From beneath them. From above.
A warden swipes for her—she cleaves it in half and dives into the tunnel. Up ahead the Gold Class is crawling, scrambling, digging frantically. It’s not as fast as 04, and nowhere near as fast as 01. Nightmare’s dot still hasn’t reappeared. She messages him and gets nothing.
Something closes around her foot. 04’s ankle mangles. Lady Death chews the pain between her teeth. She’s faster with her repairs than perhaps any other DC pilot, but seconds are deadly here. There’s the adrenaline of EXP welling up inside her and the static rush of blood being drawn. Lapis sparking around her as the enchantment takes. Her ankle realigns. She caves a spongy head with a swift kick.
There’s no room in the tunnel to maneuver. She’d have better luck holding her ground in the ancient city, where she can dispatch as many as possible and then lie still, but the Gold Class can’t do that. The only chance the GC pilot has is making it to the surface. The only chance Lady Death has, too, now that they’re in the tunnel. Getting bottlenecked here is a death sentence.
No one is coming for her, she knows that. Her SOS beacon already went out. The other Diamond Classes are too far away. No GC or IC pilots would risk their lives for her by choice. Base could order them, but by now they’ll be running the numbers. She’s one of the best fighters the SMP has but they’ve already lost an Iron Class and half of a Gold Class. Waste more mechs rescuing them or let the fight play out and retrieve the remains? Cost-benefit analysis. She’ll be found wanting.
A sonic boom from behind her. 04’s left leg pulverizes just beneath the hip. Repairs: a rush of adrenaline and a rush of blood and a rush of fatigue. They keep going.
The remains of the Iron Class lie ahead, with the warden that killed him digging through its insides. It lifts its eyeless face. The GC pilot whimpers. Lady Death can’t reach her scythe. She grabs the GC by the ankle and drags it underneath her just in time for a sonic boom to stove in 04’s face. Inside the mech Lady Death’s head snaps back. Blood in her mouth. Enchantment. 04’s skull pieces back together, and she reaches forward with bare hands to push the warden facedown into the dirt long enough for the GC to scramble over it and away. Sonic cries shake through the earth and through her bones. She crawls over it, kicks it, and tries to catch up to the GC before the warden catches up to her.
They’re almost out. Moans behind her, more and more. Each cry triggers another. The tunnel shakes and shudders. She bleeds for each attack that clips her, and bleeds to keep 04 intact. It’s never failed her. They’ll get out.
The tunnel is widening. Just a little more. Just a little more. She’s out of a crawl and into a crouch. The glow of the floodlights lies just ahead. She reaches for her scythe.
Earth explodes around her as a warden bursts from the wall and catches the GC in its teeth. The pilot screams. Blunt teeth grind and the scream cuts out.
Lady Death roars. Gold floods her eyes. She spears the warden with her scythe, draws it back, rips it through. She does it again. Fluorescent fluid splashes the earth. Again. Again. Skulk starts to bloom.
From behind her, the wardens descend.
VI.
WHAT IF THE WAR KILLS YOU?
It won’t. She will not die here.
She gets her scythe behind a warden and kicks it into the blade, lobbing its head off. Another claws onto her back, and she hooks it with her scythe and drags it over her shoulder and onto the ground to pin its skulless head with her knee and drag her scythe across its neck.
She crawls a little more and then another is on her. She rolls it like a crocodile and grabs her scythe close to the blade, stabbing repeatedly. It gets a sonic shot off before it’s mush, crushing 04’s torso until she she pays in blood and precious seconds to mend it. She tries to rise to her knees and two more sonic attacks knock her down. There’s so little room. She rolls over and there’s a warden above her, swinging its arms down like hammers on 04’s chest, again and again until it goes concave. I just fixed that, she thinks.
Lady Death feels each blow in her ribs. She feels it in 04, slowly crumpling around her. She feeds 04 and 04 drinks. The mech mends itself. The warden attacks. The mech caves. More blood. More. She’s dizzy. She’s angry.
She finds her scythe and jabs it through the warden’s belly. Rips up. Gold pours down onto 04’s faceplate. Lady Death tastes it on the back of her tongue. She gags. She pushes through it.
The warden crumbles to the side. Another takes its place.
She goes to slice with her scythe but 04’s shoulder is smashed before she can. She tries to repair it. Blood loss hazes her. She feels sick. She feels like she’s drowning.
She will not die here. If she dies here then Philza dies here, alone in the dark.
In the cracked screen of her HUD, a blinking yellow dot approaches rapidly. It’s not Nightmare. It’s the nearest DC, no longer across the city. The distance closes rapidly.
CALLSIGN: BLOOD GOD.
VII.
TECHNOBLADE
So. Let’s talk about Technoblade.
Legendary pilot of the northmost Skulk Management and Prevention base ( Hypixel , to anyone on the job). More confirmed kills than any other pilot in the world, though Kristin is catching up. He exploded onto the world stage shortly after the war started with the callsign Blood God and a black broadsword in one hand.
He’s as much myth as mystery. No one knows his age and no one knows his last name, if he has one. He doesn’t take photos and he doesn’t do press conferences. There’s plenty of footage of the Blood God in the field. He fights with the efficiency of someone aware of and invested in not wasting a single movement. He’s calculating, clever, logical. That’s only half of the equation. The other half is the captivating, raw edge of passion that he brings to each battle. Not quite a flare for the dramatic. Just that when he rips a skulk’s head in two by the mouth, he really seems to be enjoying himself.
The only media that exists of him outside his mech is a short video from early in his career, and even that is shoddy, filmed from a distance. His voice is flat and his hair is short. He has rectangular glasses. He’s explaining how to better fight the skulk to a crop of new pilots, and his body language is stiff and awkward. Like his fighting style, his lecture is a mix of technical jargon and unreplicatable intuition. He plays a clip of one of his own fights and says, “Point in the skulk’s favor: they’re not going to attack you one at a time like a bad action movie. They’re going to swarm you and brute force you to death. Here you can see the skulk make their second mistake, attacking from the same direction instead of trying to pincer me from the sides. Of course their first mistake was challenging me in the first place.”
He ends the lecture with, “Just don’t be a scrub and you’ll be fine.” It’s clear the video was never meant to be seen. Try as MOJANG might, Technoblade cannot be replicated. He is an army unto himself. Hypixel’s prize pupil.
He transferred to the DSMP base two months ago.
Ostensibly because the Hypixel base was doing so well that MOJANG thought it would be a good idea to lend some of their pilots out to bases that needed it. Kristin isn’t paid to call bullsh*t so she won’t. Suffice it to say that the DSMP base is home to the next two pilots on the global leaderboard in Kristin and Dream, so. Make of that what you will.
Dream had all the Diamond Class pilots line up and stand across from Technoblade in the hangar and introduce themselves like it was the first day of grade school. There was tension and a general pissed off air to the whole thing; Dream, technically, was none of their superiors, and had no right to coral them. But Dream had a thing about control and a mysterious absentee dad who founded the base—thus the Dream SMP—so he did what he wanted.
(Phil used to roll his eyes and mouth nepo baby whenever Dream got on a roll.)
They introduced themselves in order. Dream first, solo pilot of DC-01. Callsign NIGHTMARE. Bad and Skeppy next, old guard, the only pilots DC-02 has ever had. Callsign SKEP-HALO. DC-03—a tank, third mech discovered in the region but newest to the field, too massive to operate properly even with two pilots. Shelved until Robotics retrofitted it for one primary pilot and two auxiliary, leading to its current team, callsign QSK.
Kristin in DC-04. Callsign LADY DEATH. She shook Technoblade’s hand and grinned. “First solo pilot.”
Dream twitched.
DC-05 last, piloted by Puffy and Foolish, with identical smirks. Callsign: PUFFY-FOOLISH.
Technoblade was taller than any of the pilots apart from Kristin herself. His hair, short brown in that one grainy video that everyone on base has seen, was now long, pale pink, and loosely braided. He still wore rectangular glasses. His posture was stiff and awkward.
And he was young. Midtwenties at most. This struck her.
Standing in a furred bomber jacket with HYPIXEL embroidered on the back, Technoblade lifted one hand. “Yo.”
Dream showed him around. The Diamond Class pilots dispersed, some to patrol and some to sleep, each sticking close to their copilot. Lady Death and Puffy-Foolish were on deck, ready to hop into their mechs at a moment’s notice, so all three pilots trailed behind the tour without much better to do.
Dream showed Technoblade his sleeping quarters, med bay, mess hall. Technoblade observed and occasionally offered dry quips, but otherwise didn’t speak.
When Dream relayed his daily schedule, he seemed surprised. It was only there in a twitch of his eyebrows. “Four hours of sleep?”
There was a beatific smile in Dream’s voice, as there always was. “Like all Diamond Class pilots.”
The schedule was this: every four hours, two DCs patrol opposite ends of the region. Two other DCs are on deck back at base, in case an attack hits a blind spot between the two patrolling mechs, or in case one or both mechs are overrun and needs backup. The last DC team takes that time to sleep. Shift ends, rotates, starts again. Rinse and repeat.
Kristin could attest to the way this melted the borders of time. Four hours of sleep per twenty hours was not a circadian rhythm-friendly schedule. You slept when you could, morning afternoon or night. It doesn’t help that the base is underground. No sun or sky. Days don’t end, here. There is only one day, ever, going and going and going until it all stops.
“That’s not standard at Hypixel,” said Technoblade. His voice was a rumble, not quite disapproving, but certainly not impressed.
“This isn’t Hypixel,” said Dream.
Kristin expected Technoblade to let it go. He didn’t. “Is it smart to have sleep deprived pilots operatin’ heavy machinery?”
She snorted. She never heard the mechs referred to as heavy machinery . Technoblade’s eyes flicked to her, then back to Dream’s helmet.
“This schedule allows for a full rem cycle and for our pilots to stay alert at all times,” Dream said. “Our Research team has found that consistency is the most important health factor in regards to sleep. This schedule is consistent, and allows for peak performance.”
That certainly hadn’t been true when Kristin was on the Research team. She rolled her eyes. (In her head Phil did too.)
“What does Medical think about that?” Technoblade asked.
“Medical has their hands full.”
Technoblade puts his hands in his pockets. “And which of you are supposed to be on patrol now?”
Kristin snorted again, louder, and covered it with a cough. Again Technoblade glanced between them.
“I’m guessing you?” he said to Dream.
“Admin has given me other orders,” was all that Dream said, and he moved on.
Puffy and Foolish snickered and elbowed each other. Technoblade looked at Kristin. He sort of raised his eyebrows. She raised hers back.
VIII.
THE BLOOD GOD
Despite her reputation on base, Kristin wasn’t a complete friendless loser. All the DC pilots got along well enough. She wouldn’t call them close—their schedules didn’t really allow for shared meals or down time—but there was an unspoken solidarity there. Kristin might be the most feared, but all DC pilots were their own brand of unsettling. Bad and Skeppy, who were warm and welcoming, with the gleam of agelessness in their eyes that came from outliving everyone on base. Quackity with a string of dead copilots behind him. He wore his scars proudly, and he wore the rumors that he killed one primary pilot after the next so he could graduate from aux the same way. Foolish was friendly and well-liked by all, but the specter of his last copilot hung over him like a living funerary shroud. Dream and his…everything.
But Kristin had a friend in Niki, a GC pilot. She even managed to befriend Puffy, which was a feat and a half given their schedules. Niki and Kristin ate together. Kristin and Puffy worked out in the gym when time allowed. Both their copilots were nice. Kristin could tell Jack was uncomfortable around her, though, and Foolish—Kristin and Foolish had seen too much together to be friends.
The interns liked her. Dream started the program on Admin’s orders. Tommy and Tubbo, raucous sixteen year olds attached at the hip, tasked mostly with busywork and occasionally piloting IC mechs for clean up. Only after the fights are over, of course. 100% safe. (Nothing about this is 100% safe, she and Phil would commiserate.)
Also, Conner always said hi to her? She wasn’t sure if that counted, he said hi to everyone. She also wasn’t sure which division Conner worked in. She’d seen him kicking it with Research, Medical, and Robotics. She’d even seen him chatting with Callahan in Admin. Who knows.
She used to keep a rapport with her old Research team. The only one left now was George, and she couldn’t remember the last time he looked her way.
With Technoblade’s arrival, Kristin’s meals were taken alone. He didn’t solo pilot like Kristin or Dream, but he didn’t have a regular aux pilot either. His EXP output, while not as high as Kristin’s, was too much for a single person to handle consistently. Thus the atypical callsign. Back on Hypixel he had a rotating roster. Here, he had Niki and Jack.
It was like having a celebrity on base. Kristin’s schedule didn’t often overlap with his, but when it did, she watched people crowd around him in mess, fawning, gawking, whispering, asking questions. He didn’t exactly look comfortable. When he was on patrol and she was on deck, people crowded around the screens Admin had installed all over base. (God forbid we not think about the war for a second, Phil would say. That doesn’t sound like team player talk, Phil, Kristin would say, now I gotta report you to Admin so they can 1984 you.)
Technoblade’s first few patrols were uneventful. He bantered with Niki. Lightly intimidated Jack. Anticipation grew.
Kristin was sleeping when the alarms started blaring. A swarm of wardens were rising from the east coast. She meant to go back to sleep. But what the hell. She was curious.
The whole base stopped to gather around the screens. That was how it felt. Callsign SKEP-HALO, on deck, was rushing to provide backup, but wouldn’t be there before breach. Technoblade was facing the oncoming horde alone. Base went silent. They had all seen footage of the Blood God on the hunt.
It was different seeing it live. His laughter echoed over the speakers, raw and vicious.
After that, he ate alone too.
She set her tray down across from him.
“Hey. How was your weekend?”
Technoblade blinked at her. “You don’t get weekends.”
“It’s a joke on base. We ask each other that on Mondays,” Kristin said. Not much camaraderie to be found on the DSMP base, but they have this. Dream doesn’t like the joke, which is probably what brings them together.
(She and Phil used to make up elaborate weekend plans. I went to the beach and got criminally drunk. And you didn’t invite me? I took my other husband, it would have been awkward. Oh yeah, I ended the war actually, everyone here is actually just packing up and going home. No way, that was you? )
They ate quietly. Kristin had a protein shake and a cling-wrapped sandwich. Technoblade had a protein shake and a paper bowl of unappetizing potato soup. All pilots were required to drink them with each meal. Dream always knew if you skipped, like a freak.
Technoblade said, “I took my mech up to Antarctica on Saturday. I rule there now.”
In her head, Philza laughed.
“Sounds like a productive weekend.”
IX.
HOW OLD WERE YOU WHEN YOU CAME TO THE WAR?
Their schedules rarely lined up. When they did, they ate together. Usually in silence. Sometimes not. Kristin found both tolerable.
“So, uh.” Technoblade squinted like he was trying to read a handbook on social interaction. “How old were you when you joined the war effort?”
Kristin laughed around her shake. “Hi? How’s your day going? How are you liking your protein shake?”
“I’m the world leader in skulk bashing, not icebreakers,” Technoblade said. He added, “Hullo. How’s your protein shake.”
“Pretty good. I like the taste of whey, and today’s flavor is chocolate, so that’s a plus. They make my husband gag, though.”
“Weak,” said Technoblade. He downed his shake and grimaced. Kristin laughed.
She didn’t know what time it was, but by the freeze-dried chicken tenders on her tray, she was guessing lunch. Technoblade had potato soup again. “Why do you want to know my age when I joined up?” she asked.
“There is a distressing amount of children running around this base,” Technoblade said bluntly. “They’re calling themselves interns. Having trouble figuring out if that’s normal or if I should be calling CPS.”
Tommy and Tubbo. Since Technoblade’s display in the field, they might have been the only ones on base even more starstruck by him. They seemed unfamiliar with the concept of fear. Kristin would chalk this up to being teenagers, except she was well into her thirties and as fearless as she had ever been.
“That’s normal here. You didn’t have interns at Hypixel?”
“Nah. No other SMP base, either. Surprised you didn’t know that.”
“Why would we? We’ve got our hands full here.” And Admin discouraged comparison to other bases. They said it lowered morale.
Technoblade made an ambiguous noise. His expression didn’t change.
“You don’t approve,” said Kristin.
“Don’t get me wrong, MOJANG’s still a pseudo-military operation, so I’m not saying Hypixel is exempt from corruption,” Technoblade said. His eyes were intense on the foamy bottom of his shake. “But they make sure their pilots get days off. And eight hours of sleep. And they don’t really do child soldiers.”
Kristin stared at him. Technoblade resolutely did not address how young he must have been when he joined up. It was ballsy enough that Kristin decided, magnanimously, not to mention it.
(These were the kind of things she and Phil used to talk about. They kept their grievances quiet, between themselves. Not worth the risk of getting overheard. But at least they could joke about it with each other. Easier to bear between two people, Phil would say.
Maybe it shouldn’t be. Maybe it should be so bad that you have to do something about it.
Maybe, if Phil were dead instead of lost, she would have.)
She started in on her chicken tenders and said, “Any other critiques you want to make in the middle of mess?”
Technoblade sat back. “There a reason I shouldn’t?”
Kristin shrugged.
Technoblade took this for what it was. Then he said, “What’s Dream’s deal?”
Kristin fought a smirk. She would give him this: he didn’t seem to know fear either.
(This too: Phil would like him.)
“Nepo baby,” said Kristin. “That’s the short story. Long story: who knows. Ninety percent of his file is redacted. He piloted with Sapnap first, then he requested Punz as his aux pilot with no warning, so that was the hot base gossip for a while. But he’s a competitive little sh*t, so when I started solo piloting, he figured out a way to do it too. One day Punz got injured, and instead of finding a new copilot, Dream started solo piloting. Now Punz is head of Research and Sapnap is aux piloting for Quackity, with Karl. Right around then is when Dream stopped taking his helmet off.”
Technoblade scoops up some lumpy potato. There’s no steam coming off it. “How’d he do it?”
“How does he solo pilot?” Technoblade nods once. Kristin shrugs. “No one knows. All his numbers are redacted, like I said. His sync rate, his EXP count. Hell, even his heartrate. None of his vitals show up on screens like ours do.” She gestured vaguely with her fork, indicating the various large screens in the mess hall, on the bridge, in personal quarters indicating the status of the DC pilot on patrol. For safety, Admin said. A good way to ensure pilots knew they were always being monitored, also, though Admin wouldn’t admit that . “Technically we don’t even know if the base founder is his dad, but it’s pretty obvious when you see them. Not that XD shows his face too often.”
Technoblade chewed on his potatoes. This is the most they’ve spoken, Kristin realized.
Technoblade asked, “How do you do it?”
Bold of him. Okay. Let’s go there.
“I got lost in the Deep Dark about five years ago,” she said, as though he didn’t already know. Everyone knew. “Came out of it with a higher EXPC. Tried to make it work with some other copilots for a while, but the EXP kept overloading them. Retrofitted 04 for solo piloting, and here we are.”
Technoblade’s eyebrows matched hers. “EXPC can’t change.”
“You’re telling me. Research has been creeping on me for years.” Turnabout’s fair play, so she asked, “What’s your deal? Why are you here?”
Shockingly, Technoblade didn’t seem to anticipate having his questions turned on him. “Uh. Just. You know. Helpin’ out.”
Kristin flattened her mouth. Technoblade fidgeted and avoided her gaze. More than he already did.
“…Right. But we don’t really need you? Dream’s a piece of sh*t, but he’s good at what he does. I’m better.”
Technoblade looked hilariously uncomfortable. Kristin took mercy, and said, “Tell you what. I’ll tell you how old I was when I came to the war if you tell me first.”
Technoblade huffed. “Touche.”
They ate the rest of their dehydrated chicken, potatoes, and carrots in silence.
X.
HOW OLD WERE YOU WHEN YOU CAME TO THE WAR?
Twenty six and top of her class in biochemical engineering. Near the top of her class in linguistics. She was confident that if she had pursued history past one third of a triple major in undergrad, she’d be top of the class there too, but even she could admit that juggling three masters programs at once would have taken a decade off her life. She liked her life too much for that.
Ancient subterranean cities had been discovered a year before, and they lived in her mind the way they lived in most peoples’ minds: idly, as a topic of fascination, fear, casual conversation and civilian speculation. They made for good first date discussion back when she met her pilot, but otherwise they had nothing to do with her.
She’d been dating an airforce pilot for a year. He was competent in his field, and he wasn’t intimidated by her successes or aspirations. She liked that. He was shorter than her and chill about it. She liked that too. He was goofy and kind and got her sense of humor. She was dangerously close to liking everything about him.
This was, counterintuitively, the most direct path to the career she wanted. Despite enchantment having been integrated into everyday life for decades, the studies behind the magic were still rudimentary. Enchanting tables could be found all over the world, in every culture, predating most human civilizations. It baffled her that millions of people could use them every day without needing to know more. Where they came from, who made them, what they could do. The potential was endless. The mysteries too. Anyone who wanted to work in the enchanting field needed both a firm grasp on the dead language inscribed on every table and the ability to dissect the biochemical enigma that was EXP, and that was just to start. In her opinion one couldn’t possibly fathom the future of enchanting without first diving into its past, hence the many history and anthropology courses she’d taken.
Of course, it was unreasonable to expect one person to master so many fields of study. Most research labs hired large teams of experts in each field, working tirelessly and flawlessly in sync. But Kristin liked a challenge.
The day after she graduated with two masters degrees she was tapped by a shadowy new government branch. Maybe not so new. The man who recruited her said they were an international cooperation. She’d never heard of them either way, and they didn’t tell her what MOJANG stood for.
They’d found something in the ancient cities. Colossal mechanisms, alien and hollow, not quite organic but not all machine. They had mighty weapons and mighty mouths, and were entombed in the Deep Dark like terracotta warriors. They excavated all they found and brought them to a facility deep underground, just outside the city, beneath the bay. The base was a sprawling and industrial hive. buzzing with people in masks, hardhats, and lab coats. The man who recruited her led her to a bridge. On the other side of a large pane of reinforced glass was one of the colossus.
Kristin believes in love at first sight, though not because of Philza. With Phil, love was cultivated, compromised, and fought for. They’d been together for a year and she could barely call it what it was because she thought she’d been in love before and it felt nothing like this. It was so impossibly real. It was earned.
At first sight was the love she felt when she saw her mech. Her mech, sleek and cosmically dark, not quite black but something deeper, lusher, mesmerizing. The regal white crest of the skull, the pauldrons, the fingers. The aquiline beak. The accents in red. The radioactive eyes that seemed to follow her. It was the size of a highrise. The shape was humanoid but the proportions inhuman, with spiked spine and too-long limbs. A bloody crown of laurels hovered at its brow. In one ancient fist was a reaper’s scythe, wickedly curved and deeply red.
It was ancient. Centuries old, maybe millenia. There was still earth between each joint and plate, and it was hers. Waiting for her.
“This is DC-04,” said the man who recruited her. “We classify them by size. Iron Class are the smallest, and the most abundant. About the size of a semi-truck. Then there’s Gold Class, about three or four stories tall. Iron Class seems to be utilitarian, Gold Class too, though they might have some offensive capabilities. Diamond Class are the most rare. In our region we’ve only found five. Their purpose seems to be entirely offensive.”
She was awed in a way that felt almost religious, and honesty was compelled from her. She wasn’t a robotics engineer. She wasn’t the right person.
The man who recruited her—the head of their base’s Research division, with flannel and beard instead of lab coat—said that she was.
They autopsied the mech in front of her. A laser saw to open the chest. Ribs flayed apart, and there was wet, and viscera, and steam. A hot smell like ozone and gasoline. Where a heart should be was a cavity, dripping golden ichor. It looked like a great fist had reached in and scooped out its heart and sewn it back up—it looked like it was waiting for it back. And as the golden blood drained, Kristin saw two things: another scythe, suspended in the cavity in miniature, and the inscriptions carved into the strange, inorganic muscle surrounded. She knew it.
The golden ichor was EXP. The writing was Galactic.
“It’s powered by enchanting,” she said.
“It’s powered by a pilot,” said the research head, “who knows enchanting.”
She stared at the mech with starry eyes. She was just short of pressing her nose to the glass. “How do they get in?”
“Our best guess for now is you’re meant to cut yourself in and out every time. A drop of blood, and the mech repairs. Not exactly graceful, but it works.”
Kristin didn’t answer. She was being bowled over, again and again, by the vastness of this. What this discovery meant for humanity’s future. What it meant for their understanding of human history.
Or inhuman.
The man turned to her.
“Ms. Mine, you’re one of the foremost minds in the field of enchanting. I’ll bet you’re being courted by every research facility and enchanting startup in the country. Overseas too, no doubt. We won’t be able to offer you as much as some of those, but I’ll make sure you get a fair wage and fair treatment. In writing, of course.” His eyes crinkled when he smiled. “There’s a spot for you on my team, if you want it. We’d be honored to have you.”
There was nothing that could have stopped her. She didn’t know what MOJANG planned to use 04 for—she didn’t care. She wanted to understand it inside and out. She wanted to know it in every way it could be known. She was in love.
Two months later, the world ended.
XI.
HOW OLD WERE YOU WHEN YOU CAME TO THE WAR?
Barely fifteen. Eighteen on paper. Clawing out of his skin for a chance to enlist, less because of all the gungho propaganda MOJANG was spewing and more because the thought of fighting those monsters in one of these monsters made his blood sing. Hypixel sussed him out, but not before he got in a mech. Afterward, they didn’t care what age he was.
And yeah, it’s a little awkward now, looking back and knowing that he was for sure exploited at an age when his brain was too soft to say no. But he can’t deny that he loves it. Once the war is won he looks forward to vanishing off the face of the earth, but if they came to him today and said, hey sorry for the whole child soldier thing, here’s a full retirement package and an untraceable ticket to wherever you want to go, he’d probably just get in his mech and brutalize some skulk about it. Otherwise, Hypixel was good to him. It’s something like home.
Sometimes things are complicated. What are you going to do.
The whole thing is relevant now because, his own messy relationship with Hypixel aside, child labor laws are still a thing, and the DSMP base is toeing the line real hard. These “internships”, and he’s putting egregious airquotes around the word, are about as ethical as army recruitment booths in highschools. Maybe it’s hypocritical of him but as far as he’s concerned, if a society starts resorting to child soldiers then maybe it deserves to get kaiju’d.
That’s not even touching how the DSMP treat their personnel. The whole base is on a knife edge. Rat-on-your-neighbors levels of paranoia. The schedule they have their pilots on is untenable. There’s the weird chokehold Admin and the Research division have on the rest of the base. The way they isolate everyone on both the micro and the macro level, limiting contact and information from other bases as much as they limit interaction between pilots. Dream’s entire creepy and pathetic deal. The constant, suffocating weight of anxiety, and fear, and grief. The tension is so thick he would need his ancient sword to cut it.
And worst of all—worst of all, he thinks there is worse . He just hasn’t found it yet.
But he’s going to.
XII.
HOW OLD WERE YOU WHEN YOU CAME TO THE WAR?
What a stupid question.
Dream’s whole life is the war.
XIII.
MEATS OR GREENS
Tommy slammed his hands on the tabletop. Kristin’s protein shake wobbled. Technoblade’s potato soup dripped over the side. He frowned.
“Settle a bet for us, big man.” Tommy tilted his head to Kristin and Niki. “Big men , I mean, non-genderatorily. Are the skulk meats or greens? Animal or vegetable, like?”
Tubbo groaned. “That’s not what I—”
“They’re fungus,” said Niki. “Like a mushroom.”
“I told you!” said Tubbo, at the same time that Tommy crowed, “Eat sh*t, Tubs!”
They stared at each other.
“They’re fungus,” Tubbo said slowly. “Like I said.”
“No, you said they were meats. I said they were veggies, with weird f*ckin’ teeth, and that’s what mushrooms are.”
“I did not say there were—mushrooms aren’t even—” Tubbo looked like he might blow a gasket.
“Sure you did,” said Tommy, nonplussed. “’Cause I said they were vegerterbles, and you disagreed with me, which was mighty stupid of you, so you must have said they were meats.”
“Mushrooms aren’t vegetables or meat, Tommy,” Niki laughed. Tommy balked.
“What? No. Mushrooms are vegetables, not some secret third thing.”
He looked at Niki, and Tubbo, and Technoblade, who was eating with supreme focus. Finally Tommy looked to Kristin for confirmation.
“Fungus is a secret third thing, Tommy,” Kristin said. The look Tommy gave her was one of utmost betrayal. She shrugged. “Sorry.”
“The Hermits discovered that the skulk are mycelium,” Technoblade said.
Kristin’s eyebrows rose incrementally. She wasn’t expecting Technoblade to contribute. He got quiet when things got too loud. And as for the Hermits—she hadn’t thought about the Hermits in a long time. One of the first SMP bases, located further west. They earned their moniker for the way they kept to themselves and their skulk studies. Kristin remembered them making great strides, in the early years, when they bothered to update MOJANG on their findings.
It’s crazy to think that they were the only base dedicated to learning more about the skulk back in the day. Everyone else was focused on blind offensive, DSMP included. As a scientist Kristin admired that. Phil, who had always had a passion for architecture, admired the way they embraced the new structure of their city. The last photos to come out of the area were beautiful and unsettling: a skyline woven through with glowing veins of blue, like the nervous system of a sleeping beast. They had been on the brink of some discovery, Kristin remembered. They were so invested in their research. Too invested, some used to say.
No one spoke about the Hermits anymore. They don’t like to think about bases that go dark.
“Mycelium can have miles and miles of hyphae branching out under forests,” Technoblade said, and didn’t seem to care whether anyone was listening or not. “They pass nutrients to each other, develop a symbiotic relationship with the trees. Nerds used to call it the Wood Wide Web.”
“The mycorrhizal network,” said Tubbo. Tommy, furious at being ignored, dragged him into a noogie. They started to wrestle. Niki, halfheartedly, told them to stop, then gave up and sat at the edge of the table to referee.
As if nothing had happened, Technoblade said, “Hermits taught us a lot, but the fact that the skulk can communicate through their own mycorrhizal network was probably the second most important.”
No one else was listening. Technoblade took a massive bite of his sandwich. Kristin took a bite of hers.
“Fine, I’ll bite,” she said, tonguing her food into her cheek. “What’s the most important thing the hermits taught us?”
“Not to isolate.” Suddenly Technoblade’s eyes were on her. They pinned and flayed. “MOJANG changed up all its inter-base communication after that. Mandatory check-ins. Transparency. Share information, like the skulk do. We have to communicate to survive. If we don’t, then we die in the dark.”
Kristin considered this, and him. “Your file is almost as censored as Dream’s. What’s transparent about that?”
Technoblade’s mouth twitched. The tension eased. “Hey, personal privacy is a whole different thing. When this thing’s over I’m off the grid. The government will be like—” he affected a nasally voice, “ oh, where’s Technoblade, we want to give him the key to the city and also microchip him so we know where he is at all times. And I, in my bunker off the coast of Redacted , will laugh.”
Kristin laughed loudly. Technoblade’s mouth threatened to grin. Tubbo’s head briefly popped up from where he had Tommy pinned, but Tommy uses the break in concentration to flip their positions. “Ha! Got you, bitch!”
XIV.
WHERE WERE YOU WHEN THE WAR STARTED?
In the months that followed the first attack, MOJANG—presiding over hastily built Skulk Management and Prevention bases, divided by region—suffered an overabundance of pilots. Brave and noble volunteers who insisted on feeding themselves to the skulk. What Kristin and her team tried to tell them, and what they eventually learned for themselves, was that while anyone could pilot a mech, not everyone could pilot it well.
Compatibility with the mech mattered—Kristin and her team took to calling it the synchronization rate, and the sync rate depended on a number of factors. How well one could enchant, for one. Some took to it intuitively. All others benefited greatly from crash courses that Kristin helped design. The better the understanding behind the guiding principles of enchantment, the better the sync rate.
While understanding of enchantment could be improved, the same could not be said for EXPC. The EXP count was a number that varied from person to person but did not change throughout one’s life. Enchanting required EXP, and EXP was stored in the blood. (Enchanting was, in Kristin’s opinion, a romantically vampiric practice.) Any pilot with an innate talent for enchanting likely had a high EXPC. Any pilot with a low EXPC didn’t last long.
What mattered, too, was disposition. Fortitude. A pilot had to be able to fight, fall, bleed, stand back up, and then keep fighting and falling and bleeding until they were the only thing standing. And then they had to do it again. And again. And again.
(She once overheard Schlatt say that all pilots who stuck with it had to be some kind of f*cked up. He said it around a bottle. Schlatt is dead now, but Kristin thinks he was onto something.)
Even then, a hypothetically perfect candidate with a 100% sync rate wouldn’t be able to pilot most GC mechs alone. Certainly not a DC. The rush of EXP was too much for any individual to bear. The load had to be halved—a concept Kristin helped to realize, in conjunction with the Robotics division. The mechs were carefully retrofitted, and the two-pilot system was born. The primary pilot controlled the body of the mech; the auxiliary pilot controlled a detachable section, sharing the burden of EXP and providing air support when necessary.
It didn’t take long for the bodies to pile and the deluge of volunteers to dwindle to a trickle. Cannon fodder was well and good but what the SMP needed was good pilots, lasting pilots, or the region would go dark. They wouldn’t be the first.
Three months after the first attack, running low on volunteers, Kristin offered to sync with DC-04. It had just lost its seventh set of pilots. Her EXPC wasn’t terrible. Her sync rate was decent.
04 sung around her.
Philza didn’t hesitate to volunteer as her copilot. They found a courthouse after their first mission.
XV.
WHO IS WAITING FOR YOU AFTER THE WAR?
Once a month, DSMP pilots get shore leave. Staggered, obviously. They’re not exactly encouraged to take it. That doesn’t stop Kristin.
There’s a club called THE COMMUNITY HOUSE. A maze of rooms stylized like a house party, a dining room with tables to dance on, a kitchen with a bar and fleets of vending machines, a game room with pinball and claw games, a living room with couches and beanbags and TVs, an attic with a skylight. Pounding music. Each room lit up in different colors. Crowded with people celebrating being alive, day and night.
Beneath all that is a basem*nt, little known and softly lit. There are tables and stools and a wall-length bar. Behind the bar is a mirror, and tucked into the edges are countless pictures and letters and candles for those that have been lost.
It’s quiet. The music above is muffled. Would Kristin call it a pilot bar? She couldn’t say for sure, given the DC pilots’ disparate schedules, but she’s seen some Gold and Iron class down here. She thinks Quackity comes by, sometimes, to dance up top or drink himself into a stupor below. She knows Foolish does. They drank together once. She thinks it must have been a scheduling error that let them have the same day off. Foolish had just come from the hospital. She heard that Eret’s injuries were so severe she doesn’t know who Foolish is anymore. That doesn’t stop Foolish from visiting.
What Kristin and Foolish share is too raw and too vulnerable for words, let alone friendship. Getting close to him feels like striking an exposed nerve. Neither of them can afford that. They sat on opposite ends of the bar and didn’t say a word. It was the closest Kristin has gotten to crying in years.
Today she sat on a stool at the bar, sipping a glass of merlot. She wasn’t grieving. She was remembering, a little, but mostly she was just drinking. The wine was good, and the lighting made for a mellow atmosphere. There were a couple candles flickering in front of photographs of a man she knew. Of course she did—she took the picture. Him in his flight suit, grinning, one hand on Spyplane’s hull. She didn’t give news outlets permission to spread it around when he was presumed dead. That didn’t stop them.
She didn’t light candles for people. If she did, though, she had a short list of who she’d light them for.
Hbomb. The man who recruited her. Her first and last good boss, before the war or after. Encouraged things like a healthy work-life balance, time off with pay, a friendly office culture. He believed in what they were doing, and believed that you had to get three square meals and proper sleep to do it right. He wore flannels Saturday through Thursday and on casual Fridays he came in with cat ears and a maid dress. Shortly after Kristin left the research team to pilot 04 there was a skulk attack. Hbomb went missing. Punz took over. She didn’t think Research did casual Fridays anymore.
She’d light one for Michael McChill. An amateur podcaster and conspiracy enthusiast. Laidback and funny. Another candle for Tina. Sweet, artistic, brilliant at research. She quit without warning and without goodbye. Michael was transferred to another base shortly after Hbomb went missing. They said he was transferred. Kristin didn’t ask where.
She might have lit one for Wilbur. She wasn’t all that close to him, but Phil was. As a pilot Wilbur was ambitious, and too clever by half. Too passionate. Too sad. Phil would be hurt to hear that he died, though he wouldn’t show it. He was as good at controlling his emotions as she was. Is.
She would never light one for Phil. Not ever.
Technoblade slid onto the stool beside her. Kristin didn’t feel like talking, so she didn’t. She sipped her wine, and after Technoblade ordered something fruity and pink, he sipped too. When the bartender’s back was turned, Kristin stretched across the bar and pinched out a candle. The next time he poured a drink for a customer, she did it again.
When she sat back, Technoblade was side-eyeing her around the little yellow umbrella in his glass. “So. You sure are doing something.”
“People Phil saved like to put up candles for him, sometimes. I like to put them out. It’s like a game we play, that they probably hate,” she said.
Technoblade chewed on that. At length he said, “Sorry about your husband.”
They’d known each other for two months, and Kristin still wasn’t sure what to make of him. He balked at the DSMP base’s workplace culture but he wasn’t exactly jumping to make friends. He had no interest in base gossip but he asked prodding questions about the departments and the other DC pilots. He’d been very interested in Quackity’s pipeline to primary pilot, though he seemed to have no interest in Quackity himself—rather, he’d been interested in how Admin handled it. How they let him jump back in the mech after Schlatt’s death, without a single day of leave. How it happened again after Wilbur.
One of the only times Technoblade ever made eye contact with her was to talk cryptically about the importance of transparency, as though his secrets didn’t have secrets. He definitely knew Skeppy from somewhere. He seemed to have befriended Niki. Kristin may have even seen him speaking to Conner, of all people. And the idea that he came here to help them with the skulk, when they already had Dream and Kristin?
He was talented and passionate. He was awkward and socially bereft. He was funny, when he bothered to talk. She knew nothing about him. She wondered if he chose his callsign. She wondered if he chose his sword. She wondered if his mech called to him, like hers did. She wondered if they were friends.
Phil would like him. Phil would really like him.
And when he said sorry, he didn’t sound it. He sounded stilted and forced. It was terribly endearing.
She put on a voice. “I miss my husband, Technoblade. I miss him a lot.”
Technoblade snorted. “Aren’t you supposed to be grieving?”
“I’m not grieving because he’s not dead,” she said.
“I think every missing person case just cried out in outrage,” Technoblade said.
She waved a hand. “Fine. Even if I was grieving, which I’m not, does grieving mean I can’t joke?”
“I mean, I don’t think so, but I’ve been told my sense of humor is. Macabre.”
“My callsign is Lady Death,” Kristin said.
Technoblade snorted again. “Fair.”
They drank.
Technoblade said, “You know something is wrong on your base, right?”
It was the most directly he ever said it. It didn’t matter. Kristin saw what Technoblade was implying back when the implication was indirect. She saw it before he did. She’d see it after he was gone, back to Hypixel. She’d see and she’d keep her mouth shut and her head down. She wielded a scythe, and knew what happened to people who dared to lift their head above the chaff. Hbomb was gone. Michael was transferred.
She was not blind. She was not an idiot. She was not afraid.
What she was was selfish. If she protested the inhumane practices on base, or questioned Admin’s motives, or asked what they were researching in the Deep Dark or why they were so invested in keeping their pilots threadbare and miserable, she would be transferred or vanished, which was the same thing. And Philza would finally, truly be dead, because no one would be around to remind people that he wasn’t.
She couldn’t let that happen. She would find him. She promised.
“I know my husband is missing,” she said. “And I know this base is the only place I’ll be able to find him.”
“Fair,” Technoblade said again.
They finished their drinks.
XVI.
IN THE DEEP
Callsign: Blood God thunders down the tunnel like a train. Lady Death watches from flat on her back, head tilted up, staring down the upside-down barrel of the gun and he doesn’t falter, doesn’t slow, comes at them at speed and tackles two wardens off her.
Over comms, she can hear him laughing.
The tunnel shakes and shudders. She flips onto her knees. She shivers and sweats and breathes. She taught Phil how to do this. How to enchant, how to bleed, how to make the most of every liter, ever drop. How to offer only as much as necessary, because a mech was your partner but it would take more than could be spared if given the chance. If this is how she dies, she’d never live it down.
She closes her eyes and bleeds only as much as mending requires.
Her eyes open. There’s a message waiting for her.
CALLSIGN: BLOOD GOD
yo
you alive
She laughs. Then she spins onto her knees and drives a double hammerfist into the grotesque softness of a warden preparing to attack Blood God’s back. The sonic boom goes wide; the tunnel shudders again. With only enough room to use her scythe as a carving knife, she cuts away at its mouth and hands. EXP gloves her up to the wrist. 04 absorbs it, and so does she. Her vision clears. Just a little. Just enough.
CALLSIGN: LADY DEATH
yup
A skulk catches her in an ugly embrace, and she stabs at its back eight times. Unable to swing properly, Blood God uses his sword as a rapier. Lady Death inches backward toward the floodlights. Blood God does the same. Two steps back. One step forward. Skulk and more skulk. Blood and more blood. EXP. Mending. It’s painstaking. Neverending. Each sound brings more. She feels like she’s been injected with tranquilizers and adrenaline both.
Once they’re out of the tunnel—once they can stand, use their weapons properly—
A warden burrows down from above, lands on Blood God’s shoulders and unleashes a sonic blast straight down. Blood God’s head accordions into his shoulders. Lady Death hears a grunt of pain. She drags it off him and onto her scythe, and as it dissolves into the dirt, a sonic wave looses from its body like a final breath.
Lady Death dodges. The ceiling takes the impact. The tunnel collapses.
XVII.
TELL ME A SECRET YOU’VE NEVER TOLD ANYONE ELSE
She has several. Call her a lady of mystery. Here are two, just for taste.
First: Sometimes Kristin is angry at Phil.
Not for going missing. Not for putting the onus of rescuing him on her shoulders. Sometimes she’s furious because it feels like her whole life has become a black hole, with him at the center. Everything else churned up for this question that might have no answer. He’s all she thinks about. All she fights for. Half her conversation is defending that he’s alive or demanding the higher ups let her go out and look for him. Whenever she sees herself on the news, it’s beside his name. Her first thought when someone speaks to her is what Phil would say to that, what he would think, how he would roll his eyes or purse his mouth or laugh. She replays his laugh all the time, watches back old mission logs to see the way he thread the needle when he flew, because she’s scared of forgetting it all.
There was a time Phil was barely a footnote in her life. There was a better time when they were partners. Functioning alone and together. Equal.
He haunts her now. She haunts herself. Sometimes she feels like a ghost in her own life. Sometimes she’s angry. Sometimes she’s furious.
She feeds it to her mech. Her mech pays her back in gold.
Second: Kristin hasn’t cried since Phil disappeared. If she did, she doesn’t think she’d ever stop.
XVIII.
IN THE DARK
She’s been here before. Miles underground, in the dark. Trapped. Alone.
CALLSIGN: BLOOD GOD
how about now
Her helmet is cracked. 04 can’t move, pinned under thousands of tons of earth. She can hear the wardens crying. She can hear herself hyperventilating.
CALLSIGN: BLOOD GOD
man please don’t be unconscious that’s going to make my job so much harder
CALLSIGN: LADY DEATH
Can’t a girl die in peace
CALLSIGN: BLOOD GOD
bruh you need to reevaluate what peace looks like to you
Phil would find that funny. She finds that funny. She swallows bile. She breathes.
She will not die here.
CALLSIGN: LADY DEATH
f*ck it. I’m going hand to hand
CALLSIGN: BLOOD GOD
let’s gooo
Her vision washes gold. In the pit of 04’s chest she bleaches her knuckles on the handle of her scythe, twists sharply, and cuts the sympathetic link between the weapon in her hand the twin in 04’s. She wrenches. Muscle parts smoothly. Wires and needles snap from her suit and her skin. With two, three, four hacks, she bursts bloody from 04’s chest.
The tunnel pinned 04 face down, forearms braced like hers were, leaving a scant few feet between its chest and the dirt. Flat on her belly she has just enough room to wriggle forward, inch by inch, nail by nail. Her mech presses down on her. Her blood leaves blooms of skulk, caressing and soft.
Technoblade meets her as she’s crawling out from underneath 04’s head. He’s balanced on his forearms, his sword latched to his back, his breath controlled. His mech was crushed nearly on top of hers—04’s head leads into his foot, leaving the length of another highrise to crawl until they get out from under. Meaning he crawled all the way from its chest to come back for her.
It’s slow going. Kristin is sweating all over. Her lungs burn with labored, silent breaths. She hocks golden blood from the back of her throat. Her helmet drains it.
CALLSIGN: BLOOD GOD
so do you have any weekend plans
Kristin grins with bloody teeth.
By the time they’re free of their mechs, the wardens’ growls have softened to reverb, but they’re not silent, and they’re not gone. Through her cracked helmet she can see them roving, aimless and slow. They keep crawling, unnoticed. That won’t last. The way back is closed—the only way out now is through. Find another tunnel leading to the surface. Kristin gets both hands on her scythe. Technoblade unlatches his sword.
Kristin jerks Technoblade to a stop just before a freshly bloomed skulk sensor. Technoblade drags her out of the way of a warden’s lumbering trunk-like foot. They hold their breaths. They crawl. They lie still. They crawl.
Admin messages for an update, an hour after their mechs went radio silent but their vitals did not. Kristin nearly laughs out loud. Technoblade messages wow.
She reaffirms that they’re still kicking, and that the SOS beacon is very much still in effect. Admin doesn’t answer.
They’ve crawled past four wardens when their luck runs out. Up ahead, two of them run into each other; they start to lob meaty fists. Then they start the sonic attacks. All the wardens left in the tunnel stir. The tunnel shakes again. If it collapses they won’t have the protection of their mechs, and even if it doesn’t, a stray sonic will still reduce them to pink mist.
Kristin messages on three. Techno doesn’t ask for any more than that.
They run.
A warden barrels right at them, doll-like jerky movements and gaping mouth, and they leap apart. Kristin rolls out of the way of the next blow, and then chops the stalky arm at the wrist with two clean strikes. The black hole of its mouth vibrates with a groan. A sword comes down and hacks at its neck. The head lobs off. The body disintegrates. More are coming.
EXP roars through and from her. She tastes it, smells it, hears it pounding in her skull. Skulk veins creep out beneath feet. More are coming. More and more. Technoblade is at her shoulder, sword up. She can hear his laughter, smothered in his throat.
Common sense says that fighting wardens hand to hand is suicide. It isn’t. She’s done it before, whether she remembers or not. And if anyone else could survive—
If anyone could, it would be Philza. But Technoblade’s not a bad second choice.
A dot sparks to life on her HUD.
It’s coming right for them. Faster than a warden. Faster than Technoblade. Faster than Nightmare.
The dot is labeled CALLSIGN: Z.
XIX.
Z
A mech bursts into the tunnel. It carved its own path.
Its eyes glow violet. The silhouette is skeletal. It is midnight black. Light does not reflect.
It has no weapon. Its fingers are long, spearlike, tipped into claws. Enchantment sparks off of them. It thrusts a hand forward and punches through a warden’s chest, reaches for another and rakes it into ribbons. It leaps onto a warden’s back and crushes it under digitigrade toes. A sonic attack hits it from behind—how the mech twists to face it makes Kristin shudder with revulsion. It seizes the warden and swings it like a club, and bludgeons two more to death. Three. Four.
It’s a massacre. It’s a horror.
The way the arms twist. The way the head co*cks. How the knees fold backwards. How far the spine bends. There is nothing human in how this mech moves. It grabs a warden with its hands and rips it into wet chunks. It moves like an animal. Like it’s alive.
The brawl quiets as Z dispatches the wardens before they can release their sonic attacks, before they can roar, before they can moan. Technoblade grabs Kristin’s arm and they stagger further down the tunnel. The dark burns her eyes, but she can’t close them. She can’t even look away, stumbling blindly toward backward. Z crawls up the walls, descends from the ceiling like a spider. It wrings their necks and shakes them to death like a dog.
The last warden it takes in its hands. It stares into its eyeless face as it crushes and crushes. The warden fights, and then it writhes, and then Z unhinges its jaw into mandibles and it eats the thing alive.
It never makes a sound.
Silence in the aftermath. Z hunches, shoulders hiked higher than its dog-hung head, knees bent, weight balanced on the balls of its clawed feet. Its body heaves like it’s breathing. Gold slathers from its maw.
It drops to its haunches. It drops to its hands. It stills.
“Wait,” Kristin says. Her voice is too loud. She feels detached from it. Technoblade pulls at her but she digs in her heels. “Wait. The pilot—”
The mech hasn’t moved. The pilot hasn’t ejected. It’s just…sitting there.
“Why isn’t it moving?” Kristin whispers.
“Why aren’t we moving?” hisses Technoblade. “That guy is fine. We’re the ones who need to move.”
Kristin whips to him. She jabs a finger at the mech. “What is that? Who is that? Don’t you want to know?”
“Heh?” She can almost see Technoblade’s face through his visor, his eyes adrenaline-blown and his nostrils flared. “I want to not die . That thing’s not a ghost, it’s a mech. Where can it go but back to base? We’ll find out later.”
Words blot Kristin’s view of him.
CALLSIGN: NIGHTMARE
do not engage CALLSIGN: Z repeat do not engage CALLSIGN: Z
Technoblade stills.
CALLSIGN: NIGHTMARE
return to base immediately admin’s orders
Kristin throws up her hands.
Technoblade sighs, deep in his chest. He takes off his helmet and drops it. “Guess we never got that message.”
They edge back the way they came. Night vision does nothing—the mech is visible only in its light-eating outline. Kristin waits for more wardens to crawl from the walls, for the mech to move, for it to turn on them and grab them and eat them screaming—but it doesn’t. Nothing happens at all.
When they’re at Z’s knees, it shivers. The ripple of its skin is visible in its faint silhouette, and Kristin feels a sweep of goosebumps under her suit. The blood in her nose and eyes is drying.
Z’s chest pulses. Any second now the pilot will open the chest from within, surgery in reverse. Kristin sees a swelling in Z’s rib, and then she sees the swell crawl up, and up, climbing the bonecage, up to the throat, a tumor, a lesion. She’s horrified and fascinated. The lump bulges in the soft of the mech’s lower jaw, and then the teeth crack open, and the pilot spills out of Z’s mouth, screeching.
Kristin and Technoblade run to them, shushing frantically, but the pilot doesn’t seem to hear. They’re shouting, clutching their helmet and kicking their legs and twisting from side to side. Scrabbling hands find the catch under the chin. A flood of EXP-rich blood pours out of the seal. The screams turn sharp and piercing.
“What is this? Where am I? I don’t know where I am, I don’t know who—”
He stumbles back from their reaching hands and into his mech. He sees it over his shoulder. Screams. Trips and falls and clutches at his head. Gold smears under his fingers, all over his face. He’s bleeding from the eyes, as richly gold as Kristin has ever seen.
“Who are you? What’s happening, what’s—what—what is this?” He sees his hands, gloved in gold. He touches his face deliberately. He gags. “Oh god, what is this? Is this coming out of me? What’s happening to me? Oh god, oh god, help me, someone help me—”
“Shut up, shut up, you’ll bring more of them—”
He claws at himself, his skin, his hair, his suit. Kristin and Technoblade grab him. He twists out of their grip and hits the ground.
“Who are you? Get away from me! Please, don’t hurt me, please!”
“We’re pilots,” Kristin hisses. She removes her helmet, feels cool air hit her wet face. Without the night vision she can only see by the violet glow of Z’s eyes. “We’re pilots, like you! Be quiet!”
For a second the pilot looks stunned. He opens his mouth as if to yell and Technoblade catches him up again. He clamps a hand over his jaw.
The pilot’s eyes roll back. He goes limp.
Technoblade gapes. He lets go. The pilot’s head lolls. Some of the gold has been smeared by Technoblade’s palm, and Kristin sees long, stringy dark hair. The pilot is tall, lanky, and dangerously thin. There’s a tear in the neck of his suit where his nails caught and tore, and through it Kristin sees a smudge of blue.
She’s not sure if it’s her or Technoblade who says it.
“Jesus. It’s just a kid.”
The kid gasps to life. He jerks right out of Technoblade’s arms and onto the ground.
“Kid,” Technoblade says urgently, and Kristin says, “You need to take a breath.”
This time the pilot doesn’t scream. He doesn’t speak. He shakes and convulses. Technoblade takes another step toward him but Kristin is arrested by the way he writhes. Humans shouldn’t move like that. It’s horribly familiar.
His head cracks up. His eyes are pale, haunting blue.
“Kristin,” he says.
Kristin stops breathing.
He says, “Come find me.”
Technoblade says something, and Kristin doesn’t hear it. Kristin is not there at f*cking all. Kristin is away, away, down in the Deep Dark.
XX.
THE DEEP DARK
CALLSIGN: MINE-CRAFT, AUX UNIT:
you’re sure audio and visual are down
CALLSIGN: MINE-CRAFT, PRIMARY:
oh my god phil yes
for the tenth time
CALLSIGN: MINE-CRAFT, AUX UNIT:
lol just making sure dude
CALLSIGN: MINE-CRAFT, PRIMARY:
So
Come here often
CALLSIGN: MINE-CRAFT, AUX UNIT:
jaklds;f is now the time for flirting
CALLSIGN: MINE-CRAFT, PRIMARY:
It’s always time for flirting
;)
CALLSIGN: MINE-CRAFT, AUX UNIT:
<3
CALLSIGN: MINE-CRAFT, PRIMARY:
It could also be time to tell me why we’re down here
What we’re looking for
How you found whatever it is
Just a thought
CALLSIGN: MINE-CRAFT, AUX UNIT:
i would, but i don’t trust these f*cking comms
i’ll tell you when we get there
CALLSIGN: MINE-CRAFT, PRIMARY:
Ignoring the somewhat distressing implication that you intend for us to get out of our mech at some point so we can talk in person, I already told you the messages wipe as soon as they’re sent
CALLSIGN: MINE-CRAFT, AUX UNIT:
still
CALLSIGN: MINE-CRAFT, PRIMARY:
I mean I really don’t see how it could get any worse. If this log IS recovered, somehow, we’re already guaranteed a court martial for even being down here
CALLSIGN: MINE-CRAFT, AUX UNIT:
it’s not us I’m worried about
CALLSIGN: MINE-CRAFT, PRIMARY:
Cryptic!
Are we almost there? You’re getting pretty far ahead
CALLSIGN: MINE-CRAFT, AUX UNIT:
that’s what i do, mate. i scout
almost there
eh, kind of
a bit farther
CALLSIGN: MINE-CRAFT, PRIMARY:
Ok, because it would be Pretty Bad if we got separated this far down. Not great even
CALLSIGN: MINE-CRAFT, AUX UNIT:
aw
you worried for little old me
CALLSIGN: MINE-CRAFT, PRIMARY:
Ew no
CALLSIGN: MINE-CRAFT, AUX UNIT:
you are
CALLSIGN: MINE-CRAFT, PRIMARY:
Come on man like you’re NOT worried
Mr please check the audio and visual 1000000 times
At least I have a good reason to worry, if we lose power down here we’d be f*cked
Well you would be
I would obviously be fine
CALLSIGN: MINE-CRAFT, AUX UNIT:
nah i’m not worried. pretty chill, actually
even if i lose power, you’d come find me, right?
XXI.
WHERE IS YOUR HOME?
The kid collapses.
He’s on the ground, dazed, blinking. Technoblade is snapping gloved fingers above of him. Kristin moves closer. She feels like she’s underwater.
“Who are you?” she says.
“What?” The kid’s eyes aren’t blue.
“You’re Kristin,” he says. His eyes well up. “What’s happening to you? What’s happening to me? You need to help me, please—”
She shakes him. “Who are you?”
“Lady Death—” says Technoblade.
“I don’t know,” the pilot sobs. Gold rolls down his cheeks. “Please help me.”
“How do you know me? Why did you say that to me?”
The pilot says, “I dream of someone.”
And then a creature comes crawling up the tunnel.
Kristin throws the pilot behind her. Technoblade brings his sword to bear. Ghostly hands, black and lime green, sweep out of the dark and close around them.
Kristin and Technoblade are thrown together in one fist. The pilot cries out in the other. A shout of surprise and rage builds in Kristin’s throat. She swallows it.
Her body tosses and jars in the cage of Nightmare’s fist, but slowly the light grows. It burns low, and then it burns bright, even with her eyes closed. Against her Technoblade hisses. Tears stream from her eyes. She can’t tell the color.
Suddenly they’re back at base. They’re being set down. Through her tears Kristin sees the scuttling swarm of hazmatted Medical and Research, a few Iron and Gold Class mechs diving into the tunnel to reclaim their mechs, Robotics hovering nervously at the mouth of the tunnel. Technoblade’s aux pilot, Jack, looking simultaneously annoyed and relieved and nervy, demanding Techno wait for him to come back from scouting next time. There are even some Admin goons floating around.
DC-01’s other hand is cracked open. The pilot is nowhere to be seen.
Behind her, the blade of an axe slices through 01’s chest, and Dream drops to the ground in a cloud of steam and viscera. He lands on the balls of his feet and stands smooth and silent.
“I told you not to engage,” he says. His voice is genial. His body is warped. He takes a step toward them. Kristin squares her shoulders.
“We didn’t get that message,” says Technoblade. It pulls Dream up short. “Our HUDs were damaged. Hazardous. We took our helmets off. Sorry, bro.”
Kristin lifts her chin. “If we’d had backup we might not have taken the damage.”
She can feel him looking between them. At length he says, “We all have our orders. We’ll get you new helmets so you can be on top of yours.”
He starts to walk away.
“We want to see that pilot,” Kristin calls after him. Her voice carries. He stops so violently that his body rocks forward on still feet. “You can’t expect us to stay in the dark about this.”
Medical stalls. People look over. Technoblade’s eyes burn.
His shoulders rise. His shoulders fall.
“Of course,” he says. “Follow me.”
They stop at medbay first. Triage and blood transfusions. Some wet wipes to clean up. She and Technoblade don’t speak. She can feel his eyes on her still.
In the business, Dream vanishes. Kristin lost more blood than Technoblade did, so when she insists she’s ready to leave, she’s wheeling an IV along. Technoblade bats off the medics and falls into step beside her. As though they’re in on this together now. Maybe they are.
She intends to hunt Dream down and demand answers, but what she expects is to never see the pilot again. Dream won’t be found until he wants to be, and by that time Admin will descend on her, rank to be pulled, Dream will be armed with enough red tape to hang her with. The pilot will be gone, and Kristin will be transferred.
For once—for the first time in five years—she doesn’t care.
But when they leave medbay, Dream is waiting for them, shoulders rolled against the wall, flight suit and helmet pristine.
“Come on,” he says.
He leads them deeper into the base. Deeper. Personnel thins out. Lights become motion sensored, buzzing on as they pass. Kristin’s ears pop. Technoblade cracks his neck. The wheels of the IV squeak and scrape.
They stop in a room like a concrete box. There is a mirror. There are two chairs. On the other side of the mirror are two more chairs, with a table between them. Dream invites them to watch.
He leaves the room.
“So this is criminal levels of creepy,” Technoblade drawls. He pauses, and Kristin realizes too late that he was expecting a response. “You good?”
“I’m fine.” She exhales shortly through her nose at the doubtful tick to his mouth. “Just some deja vu. This is where they took me after—after I got stuck in the Deep Dark. Asked me about everything but Phil. Except we were on the other side of the glass. Had the IV pole and everything.”
She scoffs. Technoblade stares.
“Could you stop looking at me like that?” Kristin says.
“Like what?” asks Technoblade.
The door on the other side of the glass opens, and Admin leads the pilot in.
He’s offputting to look at. Nearly uncanny. Rail thin and well over six feet tall. His hair falls in greasy lank over his face. EXP is still smeared gruesomely down his chin and cheeks, though he’s wearing a new flight suit. His eyes seem too large for the gauntness of his face. He’s translucently pale. Kristin thinks if she shone a light behind him it would beam through the other side.
He’s not crying, but he was. His eyes are swollen and limned in yellow. He can’t be more than seventeen.
Admin leaves. Dream steps in.
He sits across from the pilot.
Dream asks, “What is your name?”
“I don’t know,” the pilot croaks. He’s shivering, and teary. He looks on the brink of crying again. “Where am I?”
“Do you know where you are?”
“No, I just said—” The pilot falters. He looks around the room, then back to Dream. “Didn’t I just ask that? What’s—what’s happening? Who are you? They wouldn’t tell me, they didn’t tell me anything, please—”
“What do you remember?”
“Nothing.” He starts to hyperventilate. “Why don’t I remember anything?”
“Do you know who you’re fighting?”
“Those—those monsters outside? Did they do this to me? Why can’t I remember?” The tears spill over. He reaches up for his face then jerks his hands back down. “What is this—stuff coming out of me? It won’t stop.”
“How old were you when you came to the war?” Dream asks.
“What are you talking about?”
“Where were you when the war started?”
“I don’t know where I am now! Please, please, I need help—”
“Where is your home?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know, I don’t know—”
“Where is your home?”
I don’t know what’s happening to me, I don’t…”
“Where is your home?” Dream asks.
“I…” says the pilot.
“Where is your home?” Dream asks.
“…the war,” says the pilot.
“Where is your home?” Dream asks.
“The war is my home,” says the pilot.
“Where will you go when the war ends?” Dream asks.
“The war is my home,” says the pilot.
“Who is waiting for you after the war?”
“The war is my home.”
“Are you scared of the war?”
“The war is my home.”
“What if the war kills you?”
“Then I’ll die at home, warm in my bed.”
Kristin can feel Technoblade shaking.
Dream sits back. He speaks slow.
“Tell me a secret you’ve never told anyone else.”
“I can’t remember my parents’ faces,” the pilot says. His face is serene.
Dream nods. “What is your name?”
“Ranboo.”
Dream leans forward. He says, simply, “Wake up.”
The pilot’s eyes close. The pilot’s eyes open.
Dream says, “Let them in.”
There’s the unmistakable shunt of a sliding bolt, and the door to Kristin and Technoblade’s room swings open. Kristin didn’t know they were locked in.
The pilot doesn’t lift his head when they enter. The fear has snuffed out in his face. He looks resigned. Dream has moved to the other side of the table, standing over the pilot’s shoulder like a proud parent. Kristin thinks her lip must be curled in disgust. She thinks she must be looking at the pilot the way base looks at her. It isn’t fair. She can’t help it.
“This is Ranboo,” Dream says cheerfully. “Our newest DC Class pilot. Ask him whatever questions you want.”
Kristin doesn’t think she can speak.
“I’ll start,” Technoblade rumbles. “What the hell was that.”
Ranboo flinches. Dream does not.
“Hypnotherapy,” says Dream. “Ranboo still gets a little skittish after piloting, and the questions help bring him back down.”
“Hypnotherapy,” says Technoblade. He had been shaking only minutes ago. His voice is the same monotone it always is. “Why is this the first we’re hearing about him?”
“Admin wanted to respect his privacy. No pressure until he was ready for the field.” Dream puts a hand on Ranboo’s shoulder, as light as a spider. “I guess he was eager to prove himself. We can all see he’s ready now.”
Ranboo crunches himself into his chair.
“When did you excavate the mech?” Technoblade asks. He crosses his arms over his chest. Kristin can see the knuckles hidden under one bicep, strained white. “Does MOJANG know?”
“I’m just a pilot,” Dream says smoothly. “I can’t tell you classified Admin information that I’m not privy to. I can tell you about Ranboo as my protege. MOJANG is being informed about him now. No one wanted to throw him to the wolves of the world stage before he was ready. I’m sure you can relate.”
Technoblade ignores the jab and looks right at Ranboo. “How old are you, kid?”
“He’s—”
“This some kind of ventriloquist act?” Kristin snaps. Dream raises his hands.
She takes a shallow breath. She looks at Ranboo, who does not look back, and she makes her voice gentle. She tries. She wonders, after what he’s been through, if it’s even worth it to try.
“How old are you?” she asks.
Ranboo swallows, once, sticky. “Eighteen.”
Bullsh*t. “Where are your parents?”
“They died in the first attack.”
“Where are you from?”
“The city.”
“You were born here?”
“I can show you his birth certificate if you’d like,” Dream says. “His foster records are confidential, but I’m sure an exemption can be made. If you think it’s necessary.”
Kristin’s jaw flexes.
She asks, “You volunteered for this?”
Ranboo nods.
“How long have you been here, training to be a pilot?”
“Six months.”
“Six months.” She watches him. “And when is your birthday?”
“I—” He glances at Dream, then back to the table. “My memory isn’t…very good? After I pilot. The questions—help. But I’m still not…”
“January sixth,” Dream says. “He was eighteen when he volunteered, if that’s what you’re implying.”
Technoblade scoffs.
Kristin says, “I’m asking a question. If you want to talk about implications—” She doesn’t stop looking at Ranboo. “You went into the Deep Dark without Admin permission. Am I reading that right?”
Ranboo bites his lips. His head is craned so far down it looks like he’s trying to peer inside himself. He gives a tiny nod.
“Why?”
His mouth opens and shuts. Dream’s hand twitches on his shoulder.
Ranboo says in a rush, “I heard you were in trouble and I wanted to prove, uh. That I was ready. To pilot.”
He doesn’t look ready. He looks terrified.
“Do you know me?” Kristin asks, and she thinks the kid stops breathing. He shakes his head.
“Maybe you would if you looked at her,” Technoblade says.
Ranboo is so pale Kristin thinks she could shine a light straight through him. He lifts his eyes in juddering starts and stops. They aren’t blue. One is brown and one is pale, pale green.
“I don’t know you,” he whispers.
“Right,” she says. Then, briskly: “My mistake. Introductions. This is Technoblade.”
Technoblade doesn’t move an inch. “Hullo.”
“I’m Kristin. We look forward to working with you.”
Ranboo looks thrown. “Oh. Uh. Nice to meet you?”
She holds out a hand. He takes it, hesitantly. His hand dwarfs hers, his fingers long and spindly and cool, and still she feels she would break him by squeezing too tight.
“Thank you,” she says. “We would have been in trouble without your help. I hope we can return the favor.”
“I’m sure we all hope it doesn’t come to that,” says Dream, clapping his hands. Ranboo jumps, and snatches his hand back. “Well. If that’s all.”
Admin leads Ranboo away—to his quarters, Dream says, he’s had a long day. He twitches once like he wants to glance over his shoulder. He doesn’t.
Dream escorts them back up to medbay. He chats idly about how glad he is they know about Ranboo, what an asset he’ll be to the war effort. He’s a prodigy. Why, soon we won’t need you at all, Techno.
There’s triumph in every sharp line of him.
“You still haven’t said what you were doing down there,” Kristin says. Dream pauses in the medbay door.
“It’s still classified,” he says.
“Three people died today.” Dream is facing her. Staring at her, through the helmet. She stares back. “There was no reason for them to be down there. You could have sent them back. They would still be alive.”
Dream’s head tilts, a reptilian twitch. “I told you to keep them quiet.”
He wants her to snap. He wants to bring her up on a court martial, or worse.
He wanted her to die today. Kristin sees gold.
“Sooo,” says Technoblade. “You two want to get out of the doorway before you duke it out? I’ve had a long day.”
The violence boiling up behind Kristin’s eyes subsides. Dream steps aside. Technoblade walks in. After a moment, Kristin follows.
Medical is happy to see them again and give them a proper once-over. Kristin lets it happen and doesn’t think about—much of anything. Her eyes are burning like she forgot to blink. Long day. Technoblade and Dream both said it. It was. Long day. Five-year long day. If she lets herself feel it she’ll never stop feeling it.
Before they’re led in different directions, she says, “You’re looking at me like that again.”
This time Technoblade doesn’t ask what she means. He doesn’t look exhausted, despite what he said. He looks intense. Determined.
He says, “I have something to tell you.”
XXII.
HE’S BREATHING
For the first time since Phil disappeared, Kristin sneaks out of base.
THE COMMUNITY HOUSE is blasting music at three AM on a Tuesday. It blasts music at all hours every day. Technoblade doesn’t meet her outside, and he doesn’t meet her in the bar on the lower level. He meets her about three dance rooms deep, standing ramrod straight and clinging to a wall, arm held at a right angle and a beer clenched in his fist like a prop for his role as Normal Person. A man physically could not look more out of place.
Well, he could be wearing his flight suit. At least there’s that. He’s even foregone his bomber jacket. Instead he’s wearing a crisp Hawaiian shirt and bermuda shorts. (Phil would love that.)
She stands next to him, gives him a once over, and grins. She thinks he rolls his eyes, though it’s hard to tell behind the fogged glasses.
He hands her an earplug. It doubles as a headphone, and when she puts it in her ear, the whole club plunges underwater, and Technoblade’s voice becomes clear.
“I was sent here by Hypixel and MOJANG to investigate your base,” Technoblade says.
Kristin laughs.
He barrels forward. “They could tell something fishy was goin’ on. After the Hermits, they don’t mess with that. Like, they’re nerds , but they take their Internal Affairs pretty seriously.”
“Wow, we’re really getting into it,” Kristin says. “Could’ve waited until I had a drink first.”
“I’m anticipatin’ that when you hear what I want to tell you, you’d be mad if I made you wait. Retroactively.”
“You being an undercover agent for MOJANG isn’t what you wanted to tell me?” She smirks.
“Bro, believe me, when you hear what I want to tell you this whole thing will seem like small potatoes.”
He offers her his drink as a truce. He clearly hasn’t drunken any of it. Then he rethinks, takes a sip to prove he hasn’t poisoned it, and offers it again. ( My lady, Phil would say, with a sh*t eating grin.)
Kristin downs it. When she comes back up, Technoblade says, “You’re taking this better than I thought.”
“No offense, but you’re not the most subtle secret agent in the world,” Kristin says. “You ask a lot of questions.”
“That’s because I’m not. Dunno what MOJANG nerd thought ganking skulk translated to espionage, but we need to have words. Maybe someone up there wants me dead too. Joke’s on them, Technoblade never dies.” At Kristin’s long look, he elaborates, “Dream wants you dead, by the way. But come on, you already knew that.”
She did. She tips the empty bottle toward him in acknowledgment. “So that can’t be why you needed to tell me.”
His face hardens. “Yeah. Enough stalling.”
Technoblade pulls out what she has to assume is a burner phone. It’s a brick, entirely utilitarian. Attached to it is a little white dongle—a USB converter. Attached to the converter is a thumb drive.
“Where’d you get this?” Kristin asks.
“A contact,” Technoblade says. Kristin snorts, but Techno’s expression remains stony. “We’re going to get to watch this once. Real this message will self destruct type thing.”
She reaches for it. He doesn’t let go. The look on his face is—she can’t tell. She just sees that he’s frowning.
“You’re not going to like this,” he warns.
He pulls up the video. He presses play.
Kristin watches.
The footage is grainy and blue. A drone in the Deep Dark.
There’s a shape, resolving, curved in repose. Crawling with skulk. Buried in them. Blue veins like electric cables plugged into arms and legs and throat. Like the ports in a mech.
A rhythmic rasp.
A voice she doesn’t know says, “Look closely. He’s breathing.”
The date is four years and ten months ago.
Technoblade wasn’t kidding. The video blue screens, and then the brick dies. She couldn’t watch it again if she wanted to.
“You alright?” Technoblade asks, forehead creased in concern. That’s what the look on his face is. Concern.
She pushes away from him. Into the crowd. Bodies writhe and bleed together. They press against her, tumbling and tossing her this way and that, and she feels nothing. She feels five years of nothing.
The music vibrates through her skin. It reaches a fever pitch. Everyone throws their arms up. They scream.
Kristin opens her mouth.
I.
WAKE UP.
“I’m fine,” Kristin hears herself say. They’re on the street outside the COMMUNITY HOUSE. Technoblade is nudging a water bottle at her. She doesn’t remember how they got here.
“Sounds fake, but okay,” says Technoblade.
They’re on the curb. In civilian clothes they might just look like a woman who drank too much and a friend taking care. Technoblade sits back on his heels and takes a swig from the bottle. Kristin stares at him.
“How long have you known?”
“A week,” says Technoblade.
Gold tickles at the edges of Kristin’s vision. “A week. As in the last time we were here a week?”
Technoblade says simply, “Didn’t know if you were in on it.”
Rage rolls though her.
“I mean, I didn’t think you were in on it in on it,” Technoblade corrects. “You just seemed real invested in doing what you were told and not asking questions. And hey, I’m not saying I don’t get it. But I wasn’t sure you wouldn’t turn me in if you knew. Cut a deal to get him back.”
What Technoblade doesn’t say, kindly, is that this is likely why they kept him from her in the first place. As long as she thought he was still out there, she would have done anything to keep searching. Kept any secret. Turned her cheek a thousand times.
Technoblade has saved her life. Eaten meals with her. Looked at her without judgment. It never occurred to that he could be kind.
She’s still so angry she could tear him apart with her bare hands.
“You could clock me one,” Technoblade offers. “If it helps. Right here on the chin.”
Oh, she really thinks about it. But she’d feel like sh*t afterward, and she knows it.
She takes the water bottle and tips it back. “Do you think he’s dead?”
“Have it on good authority that he isn’t. They’ve been monitoring him. The skulk is keeping him alive. Symbiotic relationship. He’s still down there, same place they found him. Wherever that is.”
“You don’t know?”
He shakes his head. “My contact didn’t know that.”
“Your contact.” Someone who knew, and never told her. “Who?”
“Uh. My contact.” Whatever he sees in her face makes him suck air through his teeth. “Sorry, really can’t tell you. That’s like informant rule number one. Otherwise some wrongly—and some very rightly—angry people might want to, you know, kill them.”
Kristin does want to kill them. She wants to be in her mech. She wants to wrap her sleek hands around their soft human body and squeeze until ground meat leaks through her fingers. Who could it be? Niki? Skeppy? Someone high up, someone with clearance for this kind of information.
She stands. The emptiness inside her yawns. She’s seen it, now, and she can’t look away. It’s just this hungry, horrible, aching pit. The music from the club spills out and bounces around inside her, echoing without a bottom. She can’t stand it. Anger fills some of the hollows. Not enough. Better than nothing.
“You wouldn’t have told me if you didn’t have some plan to do something about it.” He’s too practical. She starts to pace. “You said your contact didn’t know where he is. Did you find out?”
“Not exactly.” Technoblade crosses his arms. “But I think I know who does.”
Ranboo. He doesn’t have to say it. Kristin doesn’t either.
Instead she asks, “Why are you telling me this now?”
Technoblade regards her without quite making eye contact. Kristin keeps pushing.
“I could have turned you in, like you said. You don’t need my help. You didn’t need to tell me. You already have a contact. One or more. They could have helped you.”
Technoblade hedges. “There are a couple people here that I trust. Trust is valuable.”
“And you trust me?”
“I trust that you want to get your husband back alive,” Technoblade says. “After today, I trust that you want to take down the people who kept him from you.”
He looks her in the eye.
“You deserve to take down the people who kept him from you.”
Damn f*cking right, mate, says Phil in her ear. He would love Technoblade, she realizes. He would trust him.
And the thing is—so does she.
She closes her eyes. Centers herself around the nova of fury inside her.
“We get Ranboo on our side. We find Phil.” She opens her eyes. “And then we burn it all down.”
Technoblade’s eyes are on fire. He takes her hand and levers himself up. She can almost hear his wild, furious laughter. “We burn it all down.”
In her head, Philza smiles, and bares all his teeth.
:
