8. Riley #3
“She took pictures. Some were pretty good for a twelve-year-old. But she didn’t win any awards. Instead, a stray piece of shrapnel caught her in the eye, and it went right into her brain. It was me who found her hours later when we went searching for her.”
“Aron ... I am so sorry for that. I’m so sorry!”
“Oh, don’t apologise for that.” He waves his arm dismissively.
“I may have blamed you for it then, for a while, but that wasn’t your fault either.
” He takes a deep breath. “But I was still just a teenage Aron Krasnik back then.
I found my baby sister dead, but I was still just me.
As eager to fight for my country as any young idiot.
I enlisted with eight of my friends. A month later, I was the only one of us still alive.
“But I was still just Aron. Just Aron with a broken heart. Our army capitulated. My friends’ sacrifice was completely pointless.
I went back home to find out that after the loss of her only daughter and her youngest child, my mother had started drinking.
Heavily. She died of liver cirrhosis soon after because our medical care system had collapsed, and there was no one to treat her.
“And I was still me, only angrier. And from a distance, I watched that hopeless war unfold through your photos. And I admired you, because you, still just a young girl back then, managed to do a hell of a lot more than I ever did fighting. You made the world not only see what went on but also feel it. You made the world care. I think you were a part of the reason why I joined the resistance. You inspired me. You inspired many of us, all of us.” He pauses, taking a deep, tired breath.
“While I was away, a malfunctioning military plane crashed into our building. Levelled it to the ground. My father and my brothers were all dead.
“Cue in devastated Aron. But still Aron. Then Synechord dropped the bombs. Boom.” He pantomimes an explosion with his hands.
“A belt of nukes, running from the north to the south. Our continent, forever torn apart into two halves. Millions dead. Whole territories poisoned. Well, what do you think? Did that finally do it?”
“Do what? What do you mean?”
“You’ll get it in a minute,” he promises coldly.
“You went quiet for some time after the bombs. Everything went quiet after the bombs.” All light disappears from his eyes, leaving them black pits.
“But then you resurfaced after the lockdown, more active than ever. Abandoned cities, protests, empty food aisles in shops, hospitals, mass graves, patients with radiation poisoning and mustards wherever you looked. Our motherland’s mortal throes.
You were our window into a disappearing world.
I don’t think I’ve ever admired you more than back then. ”
The quiet admission is like a chest punch, knocking the air right out of me.
“But then, one day, out of fucking nowhere, you showed up wearing Continuum colours. Feeding them information, documenting their progress, parading for their media, like an obedient, trained fucking monkey. Strutting around Everrise and posing for photos with Volker’s daughter like you two were sisters. ”
“Aron, you don’t understand!” I interrupt him with desperation in my voice. “They made—”
“They made you an offer you couldn’t refuse,” he finishes the sentence for me. “Let me guess? Something to do with your family. Did they threaten to harm them unless you went along with it?”
“No,” I say quietly. “They offered them safe passage to the Oceanics in exchange for my cooperation.”
“Aaah, the Oceanics. Very nice. Sunny. Big spiders, though.”
“I couldn’t refuse. I couldn’t. Four siblings, one still a toddler, and my parents. All safe forever. I couldn’t say no to—”
“Ah, that’s the thing, Hotshot. You could have. And you absolutely should have.” His voice could cut through steel. “You gave us hope, and then you took it from us, and you stomped on it. And that makes you not just a traitor, but the traitor.”
“It’s so easy for you to judge my choice, isn’t it? There is no right or wrong when it comes to people you love. I hope for your sake that you’ll never find yourself in my position. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. No matter what you choose, the consequences are impossible to live with.”
“You won’t have to live with them for much longer,” he assures me dryly.
“You’ve made the wrong call. And you know it because you know this was way bigger than your family.
But let me finish my story, since you were so keen to hear it.
” He leans a little closer, eyes boring into mine.
“It wasn’t my sister’s death, my friends’ death, my mother’s death, my father’s and brothers’ deaths.
It wasn’t even the war or the nukes that made me what I am today. ”
It finally hits, where he’s going with all this, and it’s like the ground has opened beneath me and I’m in free fall.
“It was the day I saw you in that hideous mustard yellow for the first time. That finally did the trick. That night, I still went to sleep as Aron Krasnik.” His lips curl in a smile that freezes the blood in my veins. “But come morning, I woke up as the Necromancer.”