76°00'08.2"S 53°43'31.2"E - Nuevo Trujillo, Spanish Antarctic Colonies

  26.05.2024 09:30, UTC+03:00

  “Are you real?” I asked and Gitana nodded.

  She raised her hands and approached me slowly, bringing them near my head.

  “There is nothing to fear,” she said, coaxing me to repeat my unfortunate catchphrase.

  “There is nothing to fear,” I said, and I was not worried anymore. Soothing myself is something that rarely worked, but I was sure I would need it. I leaned forward and everything went grey, grey like a paper covered with pencil scribbles, as her hands touched my temples.

  The scribbles took shape. I was in a drawing, I was myself, but everything around me was quickly drawn by an invisible hand. Gitana’s hand. I was on a train.

  Where is this? Gitana’s voice echoed.

  I smiled. “I was just thinking about the hot boiling mess you landed on.”

  I was sitting on the Transantarctic Rail, just where I was almost a week ago, before the incident, before the Breach.

  Everything around me was being sketched as I thought. It was a combination of me remembering and Gitana creating.

  I heard him laugh a bit, and that improved my mood.

  “Oh I will be media dogfood once the news reaches N. T.” Marcelo responded through my earpiece, “but we have quite a while before that happens. I gave a gag order.”

  “You should be sleeping,” I added.

  “I can’t.”

  With whom are you chatting? The Prince? Gitana’s voice echoed.

  I was reliving my conversation before the Prince vanished, on board the train to the Colonies. Everything played out as I remembered. The train slowed down, Agents panicked over all the channels, as we got the news that Trastamara’s Domain had collapsed in Nuevo Trujillo.

  “Marcelo!” I yelled but got no answer. I pulled my gun off my belt. I was alone in my wagon, and I was ready to sprint towards the action.

  “Marcelo, do you hear me?”

  The pencil drawing grew darker and rougher around me. It was not me recreating the scene anymore, Gitana had the reins. You could see the edges of items getting sharper and having uncertain edges. But the sound was clear.

  “I wish I didn’t have to explain all this and ask this of you, but I have no choice.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The Sagrada will intervene… And are on their way. I need your help. The crew can’t tell anyone what they have seen and learned.”

  Do you personally know the Prince? Gitana’s voice echoed.

  “On their way? Here?”

  “We don’t have much time, unfortunately. You know I would never ask anyone else. I only trust you. You can make things better.”

  What did he ask you to do? Gitana’s voice echoed.

  I resisted and the pencil drawing around me grew erratic and darker. This was not what happened, or at least not what I remembered. Gitana must have been messing with my mind.

  I can’t fake images, I can only draw them. What did you say next, Elena? Gitana’s voice answered my worries. The drawing around me remained fuzzy but it became more confident.

  “Anything for you Marcelo, of course,” I said, as the train was pulling to a halt.

  A crackling sound echoed in the earpiece.

  “I am bringing you all together. Repeat after me,” he said, “there is nothing to fear.”

  “There is nothing to fear.” I repeated.

  I felt the sensation of my Soothsaying, and I saw something bizarre: greyish hue emanated from me and pulsated around the wagon. It was Gitana sketching my Curse. I always imagined it more like a command, rather than a wave spreading around me.

  “All went well.” Marcelo said.

  “All went well.” I repeated.

  “Lose it all. All went well,” he said finally.

  I hesitated, and a tear ran down my left cheek. The pencil scribbles shaping the scene around me became increasingly unclear. I could feel Gitana struggling to dig up me memories and recreate the images, but sensing my worry, she stopped focusing on the image and let me focus on the discussion I had with the Prince.

  “Elena, please, you know this is the only way.”

  “Lose it all. All went well.” I said finally.

  Is the Prince making you lobotomize the whole train?

  “Now for you. Please it is better this way.”

  “But then I will forget Marcelo! Then how will I know?”

  “We will see us in Santiago and I will tell you everything first thing. Now for you, Elena!”

  “Lose…” I tried to say. “Lose…”

  “Elena please, I love you, just do it.”

  “I… it is too painful!” I whimpered.

  All the scribbles finally hid everything, and I was now in a dark hidden page of my memories. Marcelo’s voice echoed, unhinged:

  Stolen novel; please report.

  “I don’t fucking care! I command you! SAY THE FUCKING WORDS-

  “Lose it all!”

  The scribbling stopped, and I could see again clear pencil lines, back into the memories I had never lost.

  I was sitting outside Wagon 5. Miguel ran out of his wagon.

  “Miguel, what happened with the hostiles?” I yelled at him, as soon as he exited.

  “There were people outside the train, approaching,” he explained “One moment they were there, the next moment they were gone.”

  “Enough!” I yelled. Not in Gitana’s insight, but in reality. This was a fabrication. A trick. I had no such Curse to hypnotize people. And Marcelo would never talk to me like that.

  The drawing got scrapped, as I felt like a page crumbling and redrawn.

  “Enough I said! Let me out Gitana!” As I pushed her, we fell through the pages of my mind.

  The shapes reformed.

  I was young, very young, in one of the many courts of the Towers, dressed in formal attire, and playing with a terrier.

  “Mordedura…” I whispered. A young and harmless puppy, named quite ironically by me. She was a cute and subservient pet, even though I always wanted a hunter.

  “I was trying to teach her to bite that day,” I said to Gitana.

  I was no longer experiencing the Insight from the perspective of myself, I was rather watching the drawing unfold like a stop-motion film. I knew Gitana was watching.

  A woman screamed, somewhere near the scene. I could not tell. I saw young Elena rise from the ground and stop the biting game.

  “Come one Mord, go Mord!” she coaxed the puppy to run ahead, while she followed clumsily.

  “No fuck, why this,” I said and yelled, “Wait!”

  I ran behind her tracks.

  A woman’s scream echoed from inside the Tower. As I lost my young self from the line of vision, I heard Mordedura cry.

  Elena, I am not doing this on purpose. You are pulling us to this memory, I swear.

  “Why the fuck would I do that,” I yelled as I caught up to my younger self.

  “Bite, bite!” Young Elena was yelling, as the puppy jumped towards a woman dressed in torn grey clothes, in the middle of the corridor. Her hair was raised in a mess, and she alternated between high-strung screams and chuckling. As the dog jumped on her, that changed her attitude, and she flung her arms around, falling to the ground

  The puppy got tangled in her clothes and barked uncontrollably, scratching and biting. Young Elena, half-excited her puppy was showing teeth for the first time, half-terrified at the woman madly fighting with her, started screaming for help.

  “Ah, I can’t watch. Is this supposed to be my first trauma?” I sighed, as I knew what would eventually happen to the puppy. I could now hear men’s steps running approaching the scene.

  The sound of the steps further exacerbated the woman’s panic, and started crawling fast towards young Elena. The drawing became hazy and dark again as if the memory was getting lost in her mind.

  “Wait, wait, wait!” I yelled to Gitana, “Stop it! Make it pause!”

  And as I yelled it, the stop-motion film that was the scene all around me ground to a slow-motion. The men behind the woman were reaching out to grab her, the puppy was lying unmoving and its head hurt by the wall, flung by the woman’s mad crawl.

  But as much as all this was traumatizing, these were not the parts that were dark, or hazy. Everything was as I remembered, up to the detail of the crazy invading woman in the palace causing the scene. However, I could see the drawing of the woman’s face shifting and redrawn, reshaped as was coming closer to young Elena’s face. My boggled mind was fighting Gitana’s skill, but Gitana was better and the image drew clearer. I tried to distinguish her face, and the more I tried, the more I could see and recognize her.

  The scene started unfolding again, not in the way I remembered.

  “Please stop!” The woman yelled to young Elena, “Please don’t do this, please let me go!” She was not begging at her captors' feet but towards the pre-adolescent child. She was begging my young self.

  A man’s voice echoed behind me.

  “Repeat after me Elena: ‘There is nothing to fear’,” said the man. It was an elderly and imposing voice. A voice I had not heard before.

  “I… this is…,” I said, as I watched my young self soothe the woman.

  The drawing abruptly stopped.

  I was back in the alley in San Isidro, with Gitana’s hands leaving my temples. Her terrified eyes met mine.

  “This was the Queen, years ago,” Gitana said the words I did not dare utter. Hidden in my memories, a manic woman, the Queen of the colonies, the stronger Cursed individual of this continent, was soothed by my younger self. “Elena, many of your memories are hidden. Possibly you hid them yourself. You are capable of terrible things.”

  Her voice had a calming tone. It resonated within me. She was not judging me for what she had seen, she was instead reassuring me, looking me deep in her dark eyes. I looked back.

  I felt a shiver start from my fingertips, turning into a violent tremble, as the realization hit me. The Queen, the Prince, myself and reality. Where did the lies extend?

  As much as I wanted to deny the plausibility of all I had just seen, after her mental Cursed surgery, my mind felt more at ease. At peace with this fresh new horror: the paranoia of the past days was being finally confirmed. And as the tingling sensation at my fingertips reached the palms of my hands, threatening to take over me completely, I pushed it away.

  I did not want to give in to fear. I wanted to give to what was beneath. There was this new addictive thirst for uncovering what was shaken and jumbled in my head.

  “You have to show me more,” I begged her, short of breath. I did not care where I was or why I was in San Isidro. I did not care to find out anything about the Survivor.

  She stood still, as her eyes collected tears. Was she unable to do it again?

  A gunshot echoed through the empty and warm San Martin Street.

  Gitana turned around, and my training kicked in. All other thoughts were muted and I drew my gun. I turned on my earpiece, and Miguel’s rumblings and panting went through.

  “-lena, heading down the main street! They are here! They are fucking here!”

  I could feel my eyes vibrating left and right, hoping to catch a glimpse of the incoming threat. I was still disoriented by Gitana’s visions.

  All I could see was the empty alley we were standing in, and Gitana in front of me now in eerie calm.

  And then I heard someone running.

  “Who is here? Miguel!” I responded.

  Gitana turned around next to me, pulling down the hoodie that was previously hiding her features. Only at that moment I realized how intensely roughed up she looked, her nose bruised up and her eyes betraying some kind of pain or fear even.

  She grabbed my hand, the one holding my weapon.

  Oriol Romero. Do it for me, I heard Gitana’s voice in my head.

  “Who is…”

  Gitana’s blood splattered all over me and painted the wall black, as a bullet struck her right in the head. Brains spilled out. I ducked behind a pillar of the building and turned away from the origin of the shooting. I had to convince myself to take my eyes away from Gitana’s body and focus on the direct threat: two men running towards me.

  A tall young man was leading, holding the gun still smoking in his hands, with a younger man behind him.

  That younger man was the spitting image of Gitana’s drawing of the Survivor. Miguel was right. They were right in front of us, and they had just killed Gitana.

  I opened fire as they ran towards me and the alleyway. The boy in the front dropped his gun and raised his fist. Golden light poured from his fist, and both of them disappeared. They were gone in an instant.

  Behind them, Miguel was trying to catch up.

  “Fuck!” He yelled, but I turned around behind me, towards the direction they were running, with my arms tense, and my gun raised. They were invisible.

  “Oriol Romero,” I whispered the name Gitana said before she was shot, and I pulled the trigger. I flew with the bullet and pierced through the street and the mystical invisibility ward that man had raised, and struck right through his heart.

  I did not know I could do that. But then again, I had just learned I did not know much about myself.