CHAPTER X23: FüR ELIZA

  There was so much that Eliz had not known about Kazuki, her so-called friend.

  "Hmph," Eliza mumbled. The doors closed behind them, then Eliza peeked over at the presents. Chloé had gotten her a new holotop for the next year of university, and Nate just gave some nice cookies...

  Eliza was still eating them as she sat on Kazuki's bed, wiping her fingers on the fabric of her skirt. “Say it…”

  Kazuki sighed. “I’m sorry?” He sounded in mental pain when he said that. “The cookies. Good? Nate’s brother owned a bakery.”

  ”They’re great!” Eliza turned the grimace to a smile, not really able to stay mad at someone for long – especially against someone as stubborn as Kazuki, what’d be the point in that? “You know Nate’s brother?”

  “Sort of. Owed him,” Kaz noted. ”It’s complicated. Got his brother into Sarimba High.”

  Eliza patted Kazuki on the shoulder. “Aww, and here I thought you’re a cruel mercenary, you should be nicer more often, you know? I remembered how bright you looked when that kid asked to touch Pi.”

  Kazuki let off a long and low-rumbling groan. “I pity him. His mother was awful…” Kazuki sighed, placing his face in his hands.

  “Well… at least he was able to see it,” Eliza replied, trying to find the silver lining in this mess that was Kazuki’s memories and thoughts.

  “I always thought it’d just be Archius teasing me,” Kazuki remarked. “Now I have you.”

  “It’s not so bad, aren’t I right?” Eliza poked at him slightly before sitting back down at the table. It was quite fun to mess with Kazuki from time to time, alleviating the stress for everyone involved.

  “Your teasing is the third worst thing I’ve heard…” Kazuki sarcastically jeered. “Before behind my sister’s voice and Archius’ voice.”

  Jumping up, Eliza did some stretches before landing on the single bed, embedded into the wall. Kaz didn’t seem to mind that she stole it from him, given that it was his quarters, though Eliza knew he probably didn’t use this bed as much…

  Or any bed of the kind.

  “You should be kinder, you know?” Eliza suggested. “It makes you feel better, it made me feel better, and I’m sure basic human… psychology would work on you.”

  Kaz sat down beside the bed.

  Eliza grabbed one of the extra pillows and dropped it on him. He caught it mid-air, placing it behind his head.

  Then, he shook his head.

  "Reputation, Elizabeth. I have a reputation to maintain. Let them believe what they want. Free galaxy, after all. To you. To them. What does it matter? It’s all good enough for me. Archius is loved. I am feared, despised. And that is good enough.”

  “But couldn’t it be better?”

  “Better…” Kazuki paused, taking in a deep breath before grinding his teeth. Eliza couldn’t see his face, even as he took his aug-glasses off and wiped them with his shirt. The long pause only gave way to confusion… and an indication that Eliza had hit him in one of his few weak spots.

  “You don’t need to answer that, actually,” Eliza murmured back.

  Kazuki nodded in thanks.

  ”But you do talk quite a lot,” Eliza remarked. She turned to the presents on the table.

  Kaz probably vomited a fortune to get a retro guide on historic-cybernetics…

  A sense of glee swelled inside her chest at the sight of something so old… something so wrong and right and interesting! It piqued her interest greatly, the topic, the history, the nitty-gritty, before she realised she was being a total eccentric savant in her own mind over this, and it seemed like Kazuki took note as well, simply giving somewhat concerned glances over at her meandering smile.

  Archius… he probably skimped out, knowing him. Chloé probably didn’t skimp out either. It was nice to have friends on the top of the wealth spectrum, Eliza thought, very cushy…

  "Are you sure you're... not haemorrhaging too much money?" Eliza asked, feeling the fiscal responsibility burden upon her shoulders momentarily.

  "Maybe you’re right,” he said with a deadpan face. “I’ve probably used up just up to a single per cent of my Imperial allowance. My financial situation is ruinous.”

  The two paused before Eliza burst into a chuckle. Kazuki seemed to smile for but a moment before the shining face fell to a cold metal stare.

  “Seriously, though?”

  Kazuki scratched at his hair, tying part of it into a small ponytail. “Do you know how fucking rich I am? If it weren’t for my grandfather, my father would probably block every Standardi sent my way. Even without my family, I’m rich…”

  “So… you’re self-made?”

  That seemed to tick Kazuki off, as he turned to face her, staring with knives. “There are many things said about me. Sure, I bled. I fought. And I won. But don’t you ever… think I am self-made. Luck. Allies. And if it weren’t for what I am, I’d be dead a long time ago.”

  Such a heavy response silenced Eliza, who rested back down on the bed, as she clipped her uplink off, gently placing it beside the stacks of pillows next to her head.

  Kazuki did the same, clipping his uplink off. Whereas Eliza felt a wave of relief from the disconnect, it looked as if disconnecting had only shifted Kazuki’s worries.

  ”I really didn’t expect you to flex your coffers,” Eliza admitted.

  Kazuki shook his head. "I'm not flexing. I'm stating the truth. I have my household reserve that's been gaining interest for all my life. I have Clandestine’s shareholder worth. I heard Hosea’s teams had fun pilfering the private equity investors… Something about a grudge.”

  “But isn’t that wealth… owned by the people?” Eliza asked. “Well, investors, at least.” She mumbled and fumbled, but got her words in order. “You didn’t just steal money… right?” Eliza chuckled near the end, but knew full well that Kazuki had done worse…

  Pressing one knee up to his chest, Kazuki stretched before standing up. “Yes.” Kazuki didn’t seem to care for the ramifications, as he poured himself a drink before downing it. “And I’d do it all over again…”

  “Did you… Just drink alcohol?” Eliza inquired, pointing to the cup Kazuki had.

  He checked, then analysed the jug which he had just poured from. “Fuck.”

  “Fuck… You’re drunk, Kaz,” Eliza felt an arrogant swirl in her chest as she spoke. “I think you should explain this later.”

  "No." Kazuki placed his uplink on his desk before flicking a dozen screens online. "Firms and shareholders had perks. Protection by their own operatives.”

  A small screen displayed a massive list of people under private protection…

  “Once the Directors fell, the operatives were out of the circle. They wanted in.”

  Eliza knew it, but did not like where this was going.

  "The solution was simple and efficient: they killed their clients. We’re all Contract-Breakers; it’s just that I attract the most attention. It was the one move that Archius and Sato both agreed on," he said. "They were chalked up as… suicides.”

  Eliza kicked her heels off before rushing off the bed as she grabbed onto Kazuki. Was he just another murderer?! “I know you’re a killer, but… innocent people? They weren’t the Directors, were they?”

  “Aye!” Kazuki snarled back. Despite their similar height, each passing moment made Eliza feel small. Then, Kazuki sighed, and he seemed to stand shoulder to shoulder with her. “It was cold, callous. Who do you think forced Director Jessica to make Clandestine what it was?”

  The AGENCY cared for munitions and armour. Clandestine did not.

  A shimmering diamond of an answer awaited on Eliza’s lips.

  Kazuki sighed. He took Eliza's glasses off before gently folding them, placing them on the desk beside his uplink. “I’d say we’re surrounded by murderers, but that wouldn’t really be too special, would it?” Eliza asked.

  “It would not.” Kazuki patted her on the shoulder, gently pushing her back on the bed as he walked around the room. "Analyspec calculated that they would fight back," Kazuki said. "They’ve invested billions into Clandestine. Then… Ceased to exist. They’d fight back. Loyalists… Imagine if they had more support.”

  It was not something Eliza could find any grounds to fight on. Fighting it with emotions or empathy would not work; after all, this was a cold and brutal galaxy. Too brutal to allow for such niceties to persist.

  “This… feels wrong, but I get it…” Eliza said. Then, a spark of her ice-cold past shone up again. “You did what you had to do because there was no other choice.”

  ”Cruelty can be mercy,” Kazuki elaborated, speaking not with a demeaning tone, but with a calm, understanding voice, yet Eliza knew not what hid beneath the Contract-Breaker’s shattered visage.

  Eliza pushed her legs up against her chest, leaning on the backrest. The lights of the quarters had dimmed a bit. He turned on a small screen along the ceiling. Slowly, the lights of the galaxy shone in the room… It rang with memories of childhood, and of mum… and Victoria.

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  “For you,” he said. “Well… For me as well.”

  Except… this was real, sparkling and moving endlessly to the beat of gravity and natural law.

  "Analyspec… I've seen that thing before... That metal... thing," Eliza tried to explain it, but found herself lacking in vocabulary. "It was living... but it didn’t feel like it. It was a machine, but it felt like it had a mind of its own… What is it, Kaz?”

  "It's alive," Kauzki said. "Krystalink cannot communicate with it. Analyspec is made from dead brain batter. It was an Imperial Supercomputer used by the Empress.”

  Those words seemed to choke out of Kazuki, and Eliza gently placed a hand around his neck.

  " Visualisation and computation. It took Clandestine five years to fix this vessel. Ten to fix the Analyspec. Lucky, they just got the vessel from a graveyard… It had many brains to spare.”

  "Oh..." Eliza said. “Where did they find it?”

  “Anagora…” Kazuki remarked. “The Phoenix’s Fury is not just any large Dreadnought. It’s an Imperator-One. It’s the Imperator-One. And Director Jessica of National Intelligence had many dead Imps to fuel its belly.”

  Eliza commented, “Morbid.”

  "Sato can use it for a while. She's the exception. I could. I always could. The voices get louder eventually, but you forget the moment you disconnect.”

  "And that's the problem," Eliza commented. "You always remember."

  Kazuki nodded. "It is my curse. And that of my father’s." For a moment, Eliza couldn’t see Kazuki as a killer, as a mercenary, in that brief space in time, what she saw was a teenager…

  "It's not yours alone," Eliza affirmed.

  Kazuki sat down, sitting by the desk, looking forward at Eliza. The lights of the galaxy shone upon him in its endless rays.

  Offering just something, an olive branch, no matter how small it was, to Kazuki was the best she could do. Understanding him completely was something Eliza could only ever hope for, but it was something that she hoped to strive for.

  "Fuck's sake...” Kazuki took a breath from his exospine, smoke slowly leaving his mouth and nape. “Eliza?”

  Eliza heard the gears and mechanisms shift in place along with the rising bouts of steam.

  ”I think you may need some extra repairs,” suggested Eliza, perhaps on the fence about whether she missed something in her recent repairs. “I may have… missed something.”

  Kazuki shook his head, scooting over to Eliza, still dressed as if a battering ram would hit the door at any moment. "You're doubting yourself. It’ll fix itself. It always does.”"

  “Better safe than sorry?” Leaning forward, Eliza slowly peered down from the bed at Kazuki.

  Kazuki paused, blinking several times as a dozen emotions flashed on his face. Then, he gave a very firm nod. Eliza patted him on the head as he took a deep breath and rested his head for Eliza to do her work. His exospine had already dug in quite a lot compared to what Eliza was used to working in the Cybernetic workshops.

  "You're right...” he said.

  Eliza could feel that something was up with Kaz; he seemed… too occupied. Her freckled face and pale skin contrasted greatly with his burned and marred body.

  "What doesn't kill you makes you strong, right?" Eliza suggested. Controlling a probe, Eliza got a few of her tools before she got to work unscrewing components and fixing the circuitry. “You know, I can’t even fathom half the things in here…”

  Eliza had to keep yanking Kazuki’s head forward so she could get a good look and prod at the numerous components comprising Kaz’s nape. Kazuki, despite his stone-cold nature, seemed vulnerable, even if his words had not said it: Eliza could feel it… The way Kazuki composed himself was not of a mercenary, but of a friend…

  “Good thing you can fix it. Someone probably wants it… But they’ll have to take it from my cold, corpse…”

  “Is that really all you can say about this?”

  Kazuki nodded. “We live in a grim galaxy. Not as grimly. In the Crusades, it’s said that humans resorted to cannibalism on Terra, for the breadbaskets were scorched.”

  Once again, Kazuki was spiralling into morbid thoughts. Eliza rolled her eyes, feeling a bit annoyed that it was practically half of what Kazuki had to offer most of the time.

  “I guess we’re lucky we live in a civilised time, then?” Eliza suggested. “A… modern time.”

  It wasn’t lost on her how brutal the past was, even during the Intergalactic Crisis… and perhaps some of that brutality had not left, and most of it had adapted – and remained.

  “With modern knowledge…” Kazuki added on, seemingly getting distracted as he looked elsewhere. Eliza grunted before holding Kazuki’s head in place.

  “Well, you know, fixing and understanding aren’t the same thing; there’s a triple gas-pistol re-clocker attached to… I think your overclock?” Eliza inquired. “It works, it works, right?”

  “If you say so.”

  Eliza kept poking around until she finished the repairs. “I think half my cybernetics class would faint if they had to work on this… and Chloé too…”

  “She takes Cybernetics?”

  “No!” Eliza sighed. “We share an elective module, though.”

  For Eliza, this felt calming. It felt as if the gathering storms were but looming overhead. But for Eliza, here, in the now, she couldn’t feel the growing waves and tides.

  “Oh… This will have to suffice for the She-Wolf.”

  But that moment of calm died, washed away for Eliza at the mention of the She-Wolf.

  "Well... you may or may not have fought against Lady Antiar, right? She’s Heptagia, isn’t she?" Eliza had full confidence, but Kazuki did not reply – Eliza knew they were different…

  Whereas Lady Antiar was respected, in esteem, everyone seemed to fear this She-Wolf.

  This whole topic was making Eliza uncomfortable. This Freyja Beamont person, whom Eliza knew little of, yet everyone around Kazuki seemed to hold her name with high fear… or regard, or perhaps both? “Who was she?”

  Kazuki instantly shoved a few pills of Halolazil into his mouth.

  He tapped his phone, setting a timer for two hours.

  Eliza grumbled and grabbed it, turning the timer to six, at the very least, whilst also placing a hand over the pill jar to stop him from chugging pills.

  Kazuki glared at her. "Hey."

  "Six hours," Eliza demanded. “And stop eating so many pills! For me, please?”

  "Fine," he said. “I won’t...” He paused. “You want to know the She-Wolf?”

  Eliza sighed, throwing all her tools back onto the probe before it hovered away, nodding, applying some heat paste on Kazuki’s exospine before tugging his shirt back up.

  "Freyja's a bitch. A traitor. She’s too much. At times… I wonder what my father would have done…” Kazuki scoffed. “He hates me… Of course he does. I’m a Contract-Breaker. He knows I hate him, but…” Kazuki ceased to speak. He glanced up, and for Eliza, he had a calm glare – not like the regular golden stare.

  The two had an immediate understanding.

  Eliza shuffled backwards a bit till their backs touched each other's. "Well, what about her reputation? Everyone seemed to freeze at her mention.”

  Kazuki froze. It worked… even on him? Kazuki spoke, “For you, once… I’ll tell you once.”

  A nod signalled to Kazuki that Eliza was ready.

  “The She-Wolf survived the Archreaper, she fought Hartius and lived to tell the dead tale…” he said. “You don’t… survive the Archreaper.”

  “Dead…” muttered Eliza. The idea of surviving someone with a legendary status akin to Hartius Juun seemed impossible…

  Everyone knew the stories, even Eliza. Hartius destroyed a Dreadnought singlehandedly; he destroyed a whole mercenary fleet by himself to claim his title…

  "Dead. There will be more," Kazuki stated. "If we do not deal with her. She was a mentor, just like Svenn and Hartius. Svenn taught survival; Freyja war; Hartius death itself.

  “How did you all survive?”

  Kazuki remained somewhat silent, yet she could see that his lips tilted slightly in a frown, and his eyes shifted to the floor by a degree… Something so subtle gave enough information to Eliza. “We didn’t. We endured.” It seemed he paused, stopping his gob from speaking for Eliza… “It is my curse. I’m cursed, all of my family is cursed.”

  “And mine to help you bear,” the reply came instantly to Eliza, and she spoke it without a second beat. “It’s just a myth, is it not?”

  Kazuki weakly nodded. “A myth that proved itself true so many times. My uncle died on P-1. My aunt was tortured to death. My grandmother…” Kazuki paused; he dared not tread. “I never told you about how I got my… inhuman body.”

  Eliza waited for Kazuki to continue.

  “When your father carried Noah… a gas explosion sent shrapnel into me.”

  Eliza paused, her eyes becoming beadier. “My father didn’t protect you?”

  “How could he? It all happened in under a second. I nearly died, but… if I didn’t block it, it would have killed your father, killing all three of us.” Kazuki scoffed afterwards, but it felt hollow, and filled with more regret than Eliza could ever hope to process…

  Something stirred for Eliza to push onwards, but she knew Kazuki had his limits. He already looked like he was straining for words, so Eliza relented.

  Eliza leaned over slightly, turning in the bed as she lazily petted Kazuki on the head. "One thing at a time, Kaz. Just get some rest, alright?" Closing his eyes, he was gone instantly.

  She noted a patch of Kazuki’s ear lobe was missing, on the exact spot that he had his uplink shot off from near the start of the year… It felt so calm compared to now, she thought.

  Eliza's mind started to doze off as she muttered, "Thank you... for not leaving me..." Her hand dangling over the bedside, she grabbed his hand. It was… warm, tough and coarse but soft underneath.

  ‘He won’t,’ a voice said, the projection of Synthia along her shoulder jumped down, sitting on the edge of the bed, and I believe that is a problem...’

  “I know... You know... But—”

  ‘—Kazuki is willing to die for you,’ remarked Synthia. Eliza nodded, unable to refute that. ‘You’ve snatched yourself quite a good ally. The only way you can push him away is if you do it yourself.’

  Eliza’s eyes tilted away in embarrassment.

  ‘May I?’

  “What?” Eliza asked, sheepishly softening her voice.

  ‘There’s something wrong with him, something very wrong... If I may, your friend is keeping some things from you.’

  Probably... Absolutely, Eliza thought. “He spoke his secrets already, and I know how much it pains him to utter even a word of it. With time, I think he’ll say more.”

  ‘I hope you are correct, Miss Elizabeth,’ Synthia commented, before her projection faded.

  ? ? ?

  Kazuki heard it all. His eyes remained shut.

  Barging back into the quarters, he could hear Archius grumble at the dim lights.

  "Alright..." His footsteps approached the bed.

  He let off a groan.

  "Not in love, my ass..." he commented, smirk growing as he turned and walked away. “He trusts you that much…” Maybe this trust was of substance, Archius mulled it over. “Guess I have more cake to myself…”

  He took his own jacket off and threw it onto Kazuki, who was slumped against the embedded bed. He caught it.

  His eyes snapped open, and Archius’ mouth opened. It was met with a silencing finger from Kazuki.

  Archius nodded and left…

  He was now alone. He stood up, walking to a side cabinet, hidden from most eyes amongst the steel and grated walls.

  It opened. His uplink connected to the interconnected channels linked between him and his quarters.

  Within was an incense burner. Dust was within the compartment… The truth was, he thought, this was his aunt’s quarters too.

  Long ago…

  He took one of the sticks from the cabinet’s interior and placed it within the burner.

  Rubbing the stick, the self-igniting incense activated.

  Kazuki stared at the burner, his mind burning with his old friends. Noah and Victoria.

  One estranged. The other is dead.

  “Happy birthday, Victoria,” Kazuki murmured, before walking away, clinging to Archius’ jacket as he slumped back down against the sleeping twin.