Arnel had a vivid dream. In the dream, he was being dragged out of a wreckage of twisted metal. He knew this was a dream because, in the skies above, he saw two moons, and the sky was filled with only twenty-three stars.

The two moons were old companions that Arnel knew very well. Fear and Dread. Phobos, and Deimos.

“We are alive, buddy,” Thomas whispered, pulling Arnel out of the wreckage of the transport. Not that far away, the Pilum — an eighty-meter tall rod of superalloy — was embedded into the ground, silver armor glittering in the starlight. The ground around it was disturbed in such a way to resemble a crown of molten and glassed dirt, like a frozen splash of water. “We are alive.”

Arnel knew this was a dream because even though there were lakes and cloud forests around him, this was still Mars. And even though he knew this was a dream, he could not wake from it.

Why did he think of Mars? It was an old dream that now seemed so far away that it was simply unreachable. And yet, it came to him again, like a phantom in the night, settling on his consciousness as if to soothe him — as if to remind him of something.

Certainly, there was a time when Arnel desired to be a Colonist. He had spent much of his time educating himself on the academic knowledge required to become one — biology, various disciplines of physics, even philosophy to make himself a more attractive candidate. He never really asked himself why he wanted to leave his homeworld, he just knew that he did. Maybe, in his subconscious, he felt that Mars was the only way to escape from AGMI.

And now, in the sky above, surrounding those two moons, were the twenty-three lights of enlightened civilizations — the twenty-three perpetual stars of Artificial Intelligence. They followed him here, even to this place, three hundred and fifty million kilometers away from the cradle that gave them birth. It was as if they wanted him to know that even if he went to the Andromeda Galaxy, two and a half million lightyears away, they would still find him — their light would still reach him and their shackles would still bind him.

There was no escape. There was no freedom. Even in death, he knew he would still serve them.

He was theirs now.

___

Arnel woke from his dream with a start. Before he even realized it, the soundwaves from his throat bounced off the walls and vibrated in his mind. He was screaming.

Even with his diminished physical form, he was struggling against something. His eyes were open, and he could see, but his mind refused to process the information. He saw without knowledge, and he perceived without understanding.

“Calm down,” he heard a voice. “Bell! Come here!”

What was it that Arnel was screaming? Was it a “no”? Or perhaps a “help”? It was as if half his mind remained on Mars, mesmerized by the two moons and twenty-three stars as if he was staring into Camille’s eyes.

“Relax, buddy,” he heard the voice again and warmth on his cheeks. “You are alive,” the voice spoke again. “You are alive. You are still alive.”

It was a familiar thing — that tenor and cadence. It was similar to that mantra Ermin Saltzer chanted, claiming that the pain was just in his head. It turned out Ermin Saltzer was right, but also wrong. The pain was in his head, but he had no control over it. It was Leviathan’s doing. Maybe, back then, the AGMI was ruffling his grey matter to make a proper nest.

“I am alive?” The words were foreign to him. His own voice sounded unfamiliar.

He heard a thump nearby, something he still wouldn’t recognize as a footstep, and it was like a blistering hot knife carving through what little semblance of peace and calm he had just obtained.

“Shhh,” the voice spoke as Arnel began to struggle again. “You are alive. This is Isobell, she is a friend. Don’t be afraid. Relax. Take a deep breath. You can do it, buddy. You can do it.”

Gradually, his synapses fired in the expected way once again. Perception and understanding once more became part of normal life — if it could be called normal. He was in a room that seemed familiar.

The voice belonged to Thomas, who had both hands on Arnel’s cheeks as if to immobilize his head. The glimmer in his eyes reeked of worry and concern for the teen. Strangely enough, Arnel noticed that Thomas was not in uniform. Why his mind chose that specific detail to bring to the forefront of his awareness was a complete mystery. Who cared about the soldier’s uniform?

“You are home, buddy,” Thomas said. “You are safe.”

“Home?” Arnel asked. There was no particular reason why he asked that question. It was as if his mind was denying what his own understanding was telling him. This room was familiar because Arnel spent the majority of his life here. The pillow still remembered the shape of his head and the scent of his shampoo. The fragrance of his mother’s cooking was still trapped in the walls. The artificial light felt different here — warmer and more soothing than anywhere else. This was his home.

Isobell, the one Thomas called a friend, was a darker lady with silky, straight black hair and chocolate-brown eyes. Compared to Thomas, who was blonde with stormy gray and blue eyes, Isobell seemed far more imposing and interesting. She had something exotic about her — an air of mystique. Understandably, Arnel imagined her like an assassin.

“Hey there,” she said with a warm tone, kneeling down next to the bed and tentatively running a hand through Arnel’s hair. “You have nothing to worry about anymore. We are here now. We will keep you safe.”

“What…” Arnel asked, his gaze flitting from one person then to the other, taking wide sweeps across the room in the process. Why was he here? Why were they here? “Where is… dad? Did you…?”

Did you kill my dad?

“Your dad is in Prometheus four,” Thomas said. “He works there. You know this. Nothing terrible is going to happen to you, Arnel. You are having a panic attack. Just breathe. Focus on your breathing.”

“It is all right,” Isobell said, nodding. “You almost died. This is natural. If you want, I can give you something to calm you down.”

“No!” Arnel shouted. He didn’t mean to be so loud. Every hair on his arms was standing up. It was as if there was a yawning void above his head which he could not see, and he was falling into it. It pulled him up, but the falling sensation pulled him down, and it was as if he was being torn apart. He had never felt fear like this before. His heart was pounding so hard that he wished he was in Singularity. If he could open his buffer, all of this would disappear. He even wished he could hear Leviathan’s voice, of all things.

But there was something that stood out even more than anything else. It was true that Arnel’s father was in Prometheus-4. He had forgotten. But why were Thomas and Isobell here, in his home? Why was he home, in the first place, instead of Alpha or dead?

If this was another dream, then it was the cruelest of all dreams. But somehow, it did not feel like a dream. No, Arnel knew that this was reality. That knowledge alone helped to settle his nerves. Little by little, he began to calm down. He held his breath for several seconds and then exhaled at the same rate. His heart rhythm began to slow down.

“Tell you what, buddy,” Thomas said, patting Arnel’s head. “Let me go get the wheelchair, and we’ll take a spin around while Isobell makes you breakfast, yeah?”

Maybe it was because of the panic, and perhaps his mind was trying to latch onto anything for stability, but Arnel felt like he could trust Thomas. When it came to soldiers, Arnel thought that they would one day summarily execute him. Certainly, when they dragged him out of the hospital and shoved them into the transport, Arnel thought he was finished. But now, in hindsight, it felt as if they were trying to help him, not kill him.

Arnel nodded. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t make any other motions. He just nodded.

The ridiculous stories Thomas told him, his friendly demeanor, that adventure in seven, these were all things that helped Arnel decide that Thomas could not only be trusted but that the soldier was probably more an ally than anything else. At times when Arnel needed someone the most, Thomas was there.

Before long, Thomas returned with Arnel’s mode of transport and, wrapped in a blanket, Arnel was being driven down the hallways of the stacked apartment building, and out onto the streets of Prometheus-14. Fourteen was the quintessential population center that came to mind when one thought of Arcologies.

A self-contained city was the best way to describe what an Arcology looked like from the outside, but from within, it was a wholly different matter. It was neither a hyperdense suburb nor a sprawling megalopolis.

Non-citizens who never saw an Arcology before always thought they were hollow structures, with buildings inside them, but, in most cases, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Arcologies were solid megastructures, with living and business space carved into the ultra-lightweight superalloys of the structure — at least, that is how citizens thought of Arcologies.

Fourteen was more like a hotel building, or a mall, that was kilometers tall, and hundreds of meters wide and long. The hallways were streets, and each door opened into an entire apartment building — a sky-scraper at that. Instead of escalators and elevators, there were mag-lev trains running across the inner bulwark of the megastructure. The ground-floor levels were mostly reserved for agricultural needs. Beneath the ground, between the reactor layer and the agricultural layer, was an area that was mostly for the impoverished and the poor — the slums, so to speak. Above the agricultural level was the manufacturing sector, mixed in with low-density population blocks. Above that were population blocks, called pop-sec, and they varied from Arcology to Arcology — they were either hyperdense, or not, but they would mostly be uniform. At these levels, business and population came together to form a unified whole, sitting beneath the true luxuries of the penthouse levels where the famous, rich, and important lived.

Thomas drove Arnel around pop-sec and it was truly a huge place. One could go down the infinite webwork of alleys and never find their way back — if it weren’t for the digital displays of maps and helpful directions of the AI overlords. At this level, one could be fooled into thinking that this truly was a city, albeit a strange one — one that was perpetually shrouded in night. Structures like spires rose from the ground level, piercing the “sky” with their incredible hundred-meter heights, side by side, like stacked dominoes. Streets offered various kinds of transportation, like personal one-seater vehicles. There were other streets that allowed larger kinds of transportation. But mostly, if one wanted to get somewhere, they would have to walk — or roll, in Arnel’s case. The upper stratum of the sectors was usually reserved for drone lanes.

They enjoyed at least a dozen minutes of silence, before Arnel, fully calmed down now, asked, “What happened to us?”

Thomas did not answer immediately, but the slight shift in velocity of him driving Arnel around was a clear indicator that Thomas heard the question.

“Frankly, a miracle happened,” Thomas said after a while. “We should be dead.”

Arnel remained quiet. Of course, they should be dead. Artemis engaged them. They should be a flattened piece of metal with some traces of red goo. They shouldn’t be able to find enough of their remains — all put together — to have enough to cremate, much less bury. Even calling them dust would be generous and an outright insult to the class of particles that could be seen with the naked eye.

“Deucalion grazed the pilum on the failed intercept attempt, then took control of the transport and angled it in such a way to most efficiently absorb and disperse the shockwave,” Thomas explained, more as if quoting something than sharing his own opinion in true military mouthpiece fashion. “But I don’t buy it.”

Arnel craned his head back to look at Thomas. The soldier’s expression was thoughtful. “Why not?”

Thomas chuckled. “You were unconscious, so you didn’t see the thing. They used to call them Rods from the Gods,” he said. “Telephone poles made of tungsten. The arrows of Artemis.”

“Telephone poles?”

“It’s an old-world thing,” Thomas said. “Anyway, my point is, that pilum was not anything like that. It was massive. You know, Artemis is what they call a doomsday weapon, and for a good reason. Jenkins says we were lucky we got the pilum and not a proper arrow. Still...”

Silence settled between the two for several seconds, and Arnel thought about the soldier’s words.

Thomas shook his head. “The crater that weapon made… it was unlike anything I have ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot,” Thomas said. “It turned dirt to…” Thomas shook his head again, trailing off. “You really think a puny railgun can knock that thing off course when it is on final approach going Mach twelve or thirteen? That thing could probably destroy an entire Arcology, maybe even a Machine Arsenal.”

Arnel narrowed his eyes. The meeting with the AGMI which he observed — more like an impostor than an invitee — was still fresh in his mind. A potential course of events developed in his mind. Was he spared instead of saved?

“If Artemis was directly above us, it would take maybe a minute or two for the pilum to strike, but Deucalion was engaging it until the last moment,” Thomas said. “There is no way Deucalion knocked it away from us. I think it intentionally veered off course to let us survive.”

The way Thomas spoke the words resonated with Arnel. It wasn’t so much in the way he said it, but the choice of words. It was as if it touched on the unspoken question that must not be disturbed as if it was an eldritch creature sleeping beneath the oceans.

Questions like why did Artemis engage them, or why they were allowed to live. Thomas, no doubt, was not a stupid person. Life in the military must’ve taught him many things, or so Arnel thought. Especially when not to ask questions and which questions not to ask.

Maybe there would be secrets and unspoken questions between the two forever. That was simply the nature of a relationship a soldier and a threat to civilization could have. It was, perhaps, the bare minimum of a working friendship.

“I wouldn’t underestimate Deucalion,” Arnel said carefully. “Miracles? They’re just parlor tricks to AGMI.”

Maybe it was a forbidden topic, but it was not as forbidden as the topic of how much Delta and Epsilon seemingly wanted Arnel dead. It was almost absurd to imagine that if they had the chance to kill Arnel then and there, with Artemis, that they would change their mind at the last moment.

In that moment, Arnel perhaps realized that his goal in Singularity was not to meet Camille but to meet Deucalion. Despite what Thomas said, Arnel saw the AGMI and the way that Delta and Epsilon spoke of killing him. Arnel did not believe that he was spared at the last moment.

“Why are we here, Thomas?” Arnel finally asked, tone low and barely a whisper.

Thomas shrugged. "I don't know," Thomas said. "A couple of Ospreys came. They loaded the wounded, no one died thankfully, but Jenkins broke his arm. They all went to Alpha. You and I did not."

Arnel nodded slowly. It was a simple explanation, maybe intended not to raise questions, but all Arnel had now were questions. The AGMI, Theta's final words, the reason why they threw Arnel into a transport and tried to get him to Alpha in the first place. All those things swarmed in his head like a plague of locusts, and all he could do was nod. These questions did not have an answer, or at least, only an AGMI could provide an answer.

Thomas pursed his lips. “SecDef assigned me to be your bodyguard,” he said, after a moment. “Me and Isobell.”

Arnel nodded. So that is what it was. Bodyguards. Arnel chuckled quietly to himself. Bodyguards, executioners, same thing, wasn’t it? Were they protecting Arnel from the world or the world from Arnel?

“The order came down from Theta. She gave us new identities — officially, Isobell and I are married now, and your neighbors,” Thomas said, chuckling to himself. “I never thought I’d get married.”

Arnel craned his head back to look at Thomas again, and he smiled bitterly.

“That reminds me,” Thomas said. “You are now a Special Citizen. Class G. It is a status usually given to foreign envoys. Don’t abuse it, but if you want to buy your friend an APV or one of those Sim Pods you have coming, I wouldn’t say no.”

Arnel couldn’t even really focus on the words enough to realize how happy Thomas sounded.

The reason was rather simple.

For a while now, Arnel had been trying to avoid the elephant in the room — the sign of either clear, undeniable madness or something even worse.

Above Thomas’s head, Arnel could clearly see something similar to a window.

[ Name: Thomas Stone, Class K Citizen. Occupation: Failsafe. ]

Failsafe...

It was like Theta said. Now, more than ever, Arnel was within their reach.