He remained motionless, but he blinked thrice in a row.

“Three blinks?” asked Zelsys.

“That means yes. Two mean no.”

A loud rumble echoed from Zelsys’ stomach, and she instinctively looked around for her unfinished mess tin of soup. “Still warm. Good enough,” she said, scooping up a spoonful.

While she ate, Spliteye left the firepit and disappeared into the transport. The screaming of rusty hinges echoed through the night for a good couple minutes, undercut by the distant sound of the blonde rummaging around inside their living space. A couple times, Zelsys even caught remarks along the lines of “So that’s where that was.” and “I knew we still had one of those somewhere.”

A few minutes and another helping of soup later, Sigmund had begun to move rather cautiously and Spliteye finally came out of the transport bearing a large, reinforced sheet of leather with a number of straps and buckles attached. Before Zelsys could question its design, her raised eyebrow was answered with “I know how it looks, it’ll wrap around the cleaver and loosen when you want to use it. We just have to get it on you first.”

The holster had to be attached to an extra belt that went across her chest as well as the belt loops of her trousers, but when it was finally time to test it, the holster worked flawlessly. With nary a single visible strand of Fog, the hardened leather wrapped itself around the cleaver and then loosened itself just enough when Zelsys pulled on the handle with the intent to unsheath the weapon.

“You think he’ll notice it when he wakes up?”

“He’ll notice the cleaver missing for sure.”

“Let’s hope he doesn’t get too torn up about it.”

“Say, what’s up with that gun on your arm?”

“Oh, this? I don’t know myself. Found it in the Exclusion Zone.”

“Figures. Most explorers come here looking for tech from the War of Fog. While he’s still out, I think there was a way to officially transfer ownership of something within a squad as per the operational guidelines…”

Two words flashed in his mind’s eye, dredging him up from the void of unconsciousness.

DELETION SUCCESSFUL

He awoke to the after-echoes of a familiar, buzzing pain shooting up his right arm, punctuated by the sting of a cracked fingernail. For a brief moment, he thought he was back in the barracks, before he got his bearings. The moment he realized where he was, he immediately looked to the Tablet, and there it was - the very projection he had hoped to see.

RECORD OVERWRITE PLEASE ENTER NAME

The consideration of using his legal name was brief, and quickly swatted away by a name he felt far greater connection to. The name of a man he had looked up to in his youth, and also one of the more common names out there.

“Makhus.”

NAME MAKHUS SEX MALE SPECIES HUMAN (IKESIAN) FORCE D+ PRECISION C- HARDNESS C- AETHER C TRAITS>

Makhus was pleasantly surprised by his Aether - he had expected a D+, or perhaps a C-, but not a full C - anything above or below D was considered beyond the usual deviations from human baseline.