Night came, then the dawn came, then the night again and another dawn, again and again. The sound of the constant explosions from the bombardment became part of the daily routine of Trestia. The people learned to treat it as something to bolster their spirits, not crush it. One more round, many less Infected! Became a common phrase people used to try and cheer each other up. The Knights' patrols were effective enough that very few people had even seen an Infected up close, and no more lives were lost after that initial assault. So, people once again started gaining a sense of security even if such a thing was utter foolishness.

Joseph never cared much for the city's authority or law and order in general. Trestia's fame, based on fact, as one of the best policed city in the Empire was to him mostly an annoyance. He much liked to do as he liked, say what he felt needed to be said and to put whatever drug he fancied into his body. Unfortunately for him, all of those were the kinds of things that the Empire's authorities did not like very much, which did not do much to endear him with Trestia's police. Thus, Joseph learned very well how to evade the police, where there were blind spots in the city's monitoring, where they patrolled most often, where they rarely went. He came to quite enjoy the “underside” he inhabited. Unlike many other considered undesirables, Joseph did not decide to make use of the chaos before the arrival of the Infected to try something cute. He knew that he made the right decision after seeing what the prince and princess did to the rioters. The system might be a shit thing to be a part of, but he also knew that it was an even shittier thing to be an opponent of.

That day, like many others and especially lately, he was alone with his thoughts and drugs in one of the unused underground tunnels of Trestia. Even there, he could still hear the faint sound of the bombardment, it grated him. It doesn't matter how necessary it actually was, humans were not made to withstand such constant exposure to such loud sounds. The stress built up, and the only way he knew to release so much of it was to smoke.

“Fuck, I can still listen to it. Flame burn it all! What I wouldn't give for any decent little shitty thing to stick into my ears and hopefully make this stop.” He had never thought of ear protectors as anything truly useful, now these were all that he wanted, almost as much as his drugs. “Huh... What the fuck is that?”

He could see a small crack appearing in the tunnel's concrete wall. Normally, he would just chalk it up to slightly stronger than average effects from his drugs. It would be quite strange, sure, since the drug he was using that exact moment had never made him hallucinate before, but it would be the only reasonable possibility. Right then and there he remembered: All the constant blaring announcements, competing to be louder than the bombardment. Resistance requires the utmost vigilance from all of us! Be prepared or we will all die! Personally, he had just thought of it as useless propaganda. Who really cares? We're all dead anyway! He thought he had accepted his inevitable death, along with everyone else in the city, but the moment he saw the point of a claw emerging from the concrete, he realized that this wasn't true: He didn't want to die. Gripped by terror and that one thought, he ran away, for the first time in his life, to the authorities, rather than from them.

Alexander took a deep breath. It was okay, really, he knew that something of the sort would eventually happen, all he had to do was keep his cool and give a proper response to the situation. He couldn't just explode.

“So... How long ago has this situation been informed to you?” Not good, assigning blame really wasn't important in that moment, but he felt so angry at the men in front of him. “No, never mind that... It doesn't matter anymore. The tunnels, how long will it take to seal them? The evacuation of the towers in the first and second line of the defenses should be done by now.”

The man in front of him was sweating, but he managed to reply properly.

“Some six to seven hours depending on how quickly we are able to suppress the Infected coming out of the tunnels, Commander!”

Six to seven hours... Thinking about it, it sure seemed to Alexander that it would have been useful if they started doing this eight hours ago. The table in front of him was flipped and proved no obstacle, the next moment he was grabbing the shirt of the man in front of him, who was now a few well executed moves from having his neck broken.

“Tell me again, why have I only recently known about this when the first civilian report of fucking tunneling Infected was made eight fucking hours ago?”

Alexander was this close to ending the man's life out of irritation, and both of them knew it would mean nothing to him, and before he had realized it, he had lifted the man from the ground. The man was gasping out of sheer nervousness.

“He was a known junkie and general petty criminal... We thought it might a trick... or a prank or at best a hallucination caused by one of his drugs! I... I... My sincerest apologies Commander!”

For a moment, he considered grilling the man some more to try and work out some of his stress, but he reconsidered. As fast as it came, the anger went away and Alexander dropped the man on the ground, unharmed. He couldn't lose his cool. It was the only, the best thing he had.

“Fine. You're dismissed, pray that your mistake wasn't so costly that you don't even have the chance of ever making another such mistake.” The men left. Alexander sat back on the chair with a deep sigh and hand over his face. He felt exhausted. “Damn... I can't lose my calm. Calm down... Thinking things through and not losing are the things I am best at.” A memory from the past came back to him. The phrase that irritated him most of all in the world. The grinning face of Frederick. That's why you'll never beat me: I play to win, you just play not to lose. Alexander kicked the overturned table into the wall, completely breaking it. “Fuck... Fuck you Frederick, I might not survive this, but I will make sure she does.”

A few minutes later, when Konstantinos entered the room, he found a mostly composed Alexander, who acted as if the broken table to the side was merely part of the room's decoration.

“Suppression of the tunneling Infected is now in full effect, most of our reserve forces have been mobilized, including both Swords and both Shadows. Might I inquire as to what you intend to do after we manage to drive them back to the tunnels? I mean, they tunneled into it, I don't think something like collapsing the entire structure on them would be even useful, considering they just might start tunneling out of it or something.”

That was such an easy answer, Alexander had already thought of it previously.

“Simple. Pump it full of flammable gas and ignite it.”

The casual tone with which Alexander said was only surpassed by the shock in Konstantinos' face. It even took him some time to actually give a reply.

“What? Ignite? It's beneath the city! What it might do to its structure short term... let alone long term, have you really thought this through?”

Alexander kept his calm and explained it in simple terms.

“The city's structural integrity in the short term, let alone the long term, is of no concern. If a few people lose their lives because of sinkholes caused by this, doesn't really matter. As soon as our defenses falter, every single one of us is dead either way. This is the course of action with the most probability of completely settling this matter, you know fire is one of the most effective ways of dealing with the Infected.”

Konstantinos was still in shock, shaking his head.

“But... it's beneath us...”

Alexander's anger was almost coming back.

“I know I gave you you position mostly on the merit of you contradicting me, but now is not the time... Do it!”

Konstantinos bowed and left, not saying another word.

Things were going downhill. As Franz cut down another Infected near one of the tunnel exits, he wished that he didn't need to fight anymore, not because he was lazy or scared, but because he wished that the situation wasn't so desperate that he would be needed as a fighting force. At first, he slightly resented Alexander keeping him and Chelsea out of combat because they were part of his “trump cards”, but now he understood. In the flash of an eye he cut down an Infected stealthily approaching the operator who was working on the panel connected to the huge set of steel doors that would seal the Tunnels' entrance. These Infected were nothing like the usual. They rarely made a sound or even acted in a suspicious manner before attacking someone. He saw some of them completely ignore civilians before attacking military personnel. The ones that acted more like regular Infected, did so in a greatly exaggerated manner, almost as if they were there only to terrorize the civilians. To someone that had even a vague familiarity with the Infected, this was all very strange.

“You okay there? Take your time, better to not mess it up, than to hurry it up and have to do it again.”

He gently encouraged the man he was protecting, but to be honest they were at this operation for quite a few hours now and Franz could start to feel the strands of his patience unraveling, this was the third and final set of doors they were to close. The man initially only gave a grunt in acknowledgment, but soon turned around, wiping some sweat of nervousness from his brow. Even if they weren't facing swarms of of the Infected, it was still very nerve-wracking.

“It's all done now. I've even rerouted the airflow system to pump gas into the tunnels as ordered. The doors should start closing soon enough, but like last time, you're going to have to make sure they don't try to just clog it up with their bodies.”

Horrible, but necessary nonetheless. Franz went to work, standing near the threshold and cutting down any approaching Infected and kicking them back into the tunnels. It had an almost mechanic rhythm to it and they seemed to almost not care about it. That was something else that he eventually realized about the way these Infected were behaving: They seemed almost distracted by something, like they were being compelled by a higher force to accomplish some sort of grand design. His heart stopped as he saw one particular Infected.

Those clothes. She was not not the same girl that Chelsea had fought, but she was definitely an Heir Maiden, at first she walked, then as the doors started closing faster and faster, she quickened her pace. There was already quite a considerable pile of corpses near the exit, so there was only one obvious way for her to exit the tunnel: Leaping over it.

“Ugh, I think I might get ulcers... Wait, did he say gas would be pumped into the tunnels?”

He cut that last though short. He had one shot, one chance. He saw the way those Heir Maidens fought, he knew he wouldn't have a prayer against her if he let her out of those tunnels, he didn't even have the confidence to survive against her long enough for Chelsea or other reinforcements to arrive. So he took a gamble: Even with reactions as ridiculous as hers, even an Heir Maiden couldn't change her body's momentum past a certain point. He lowered his head and ran into the tunnel. The Running girl didn't see him close in until too late. Having started her motion to leap into the air already, she was deftly tripped by Franz, who slammed her into one of the rapidly closing steel doors. He immediately hurried back and got out of the tunnels moments before they closed.

Lia was angry, Even though Franz and Chelsea tried to calm her down, nobody would stop her from going and giving Alexander a piece of her mind. When she slammed the door open to Alexander's office, the hinges broke.

“Are you insane? Putting the whole of the city's underground on fire? Its only been three days and there have already been multiple accidents, with many of them ending in deaths! Are you going to defend this city or destroy it?”

Alexander looked around his now completely trashed office, he couldn't really do any work there anymore, but then again, it might not even matter anymore. Things were way beyond breaking point.

“Am I insane? Perhaps. The last few days haven't been quite healthy for anyone's sanity. As for this city, are you really angry on behalf of its citizens? Its dead! Face it! The city is condemned! We cannot stop it! Not even I can stop it! I might be insane, but you are delusional if you think this city can be defended for even ten more days!”

The soldiers outside tried to ignore the conversation, not just because being involved in a fight between members of the imperial family was a bad idea, but because it was demoralizing. As true as it might be, nobody wanted their commander to admit the inevitability of defeat.

“So what? Are we then to just lay down or weapons and scorch the earth as much as possible before our downfall? Are we to just let the people die, then die ourselves? How could you ever think yourself deserving of the Throne with that mindset?”

Usually, such a thing would put Alexander in a foul mood, but perhaps due to the present situation, or the pressure he felt, maybe it was something that he just realized. Alexander laughed. He laughed at himself and he laughed at the world.

“Undeserving, you say? Heh, perhaps you're right. I never even truly wanted the Throne anyway... I told that I did to stop Frederick because he was dangerous, didn't I? Perhaps that was a lie. A lie I told myself for some time now. It's nothing so noble as that. You know what? I think its for the pettiest of reasons.” He picked up one of the broken pieces of his table. His voice intensified along with his grip, as he crushed it. “I just want him to lose, so fucking badly. I want him to look up at the sky, broken, and regret his fucking life! You!”

Even though she was angry before, Lia was taken by surprise. She did not know Alexander personally for very long, but she had always heard of him described as an impossibly calm person, unbreakable under any circumstance, very rarely showing any emotion, was it just a facade that finally crumbled under pressure? Where did this intensity come from? Was it something that had been boiling under the surface all this time?

“What about me?”

She was now on the defensive. Alexander pointed at her, in an almost accusatory manner.

“You can make it true. You're much more than I thought. Probably not enough to defeat Frederick were he to truly pay attention to you, but! He thinks nothing of you! Just like I did, so, you can do it, you can break him.”

Lia didn't like where this conversation was going. She would not flee. She would not abandon the people of this city. She had to say it loud and clear.

“I am not going to run away!”

She didn't say it as loud as she might have liked, but it was clear enough. She had resolved herself to do her best. If not, then what would be the point?

“You will. It is my dying wish that you do. I have already made preparations with your best men.” In five days, the Unbreakable will depart this city, with you aboard it.”

She had not heard of this. These news angered her enough that she managed to at least approach him in terms of intensity.

“What? How dare you! They are my men!”

“Not as long as I am commander of these allied forces! Make no mistake, we are equal as allies, but as long as I live, short as that time will be, any order that I give which does not harm you in any way is the law! Besides, I am sure you men will be happy to be given a chance at life! Would you deny them that? Would you deny every single life in this city a small chance at life just to satisfy your ego?”

“I... I...”

She had no words to reply with. It was true that there wasn't a point to completely refusing a retreat.

“You have five days to decide on a criteria for who you're taking on the Unbreakable besides your men. You obviously can't take everyone in this city, so think carefully.”

She didn't say any more. She couldn't. She couldn't even protest and volunteer to stay behind while he retreated. Was it because she knew it would be fruitless? No, there was something else. She was putting on a brave face and pretending to want to stay, but for some time now, especially on the days when she helped to snipe the Infected that got through the bombardment, she could barely sleep, terrified as she was. Fleeing the city came to her mind more than once, but she didn't want to admit it to herself, let alone others. Was it that she had been broken? Or was her brother the broken one?