The soft earth of the slope gave way under her boots and Wave sank in a good inch. Each step, more hasty than the last, tore grass and soil from the sodden ground. The farther up she struggled, the stronger the acrid smell of iron became. A few more steps and she reached the crest.

There it was in front of her, the sea. A sea, not blue and clear, but dark red, viscous, and stinking. Smoking machines formed a circle, together with lifeless bodies whose owners had still tried to reach the edge of the hill. Now they lay there, in their cut-up black uniforms, feeding the sea with their blood. Wave averted her gaze and stared at the figure at the center of this grisly scene.

Her father.

He looked over at her with a scrutinizing gaze, wondering if she, too, was one of those to whom his wrath was directed. The wrath that had so suddenly appeared out of nowhere. It was as if this man was no longer her father, but someone else entirely. Some kind of ... creature. Wave walked closer to him and she could see the color of cold steel that his green, loving eyes had given way to.

Metallic tentacles crawled toward him. No, they belonged to his body and were now returning. The tentacles were not the strange thing. Her father, her adoptive father, was not human, he was a Nethuf. Not unlike humans, only instead of hair, tiny tentacles covered the same parts of his body. But the color was not right. His tentacle hairs had always been red and they were not supposed to be that long. Of course, they were growing too, but not by that much.

"Dad?" asked Wave, almost too quietly to be heard by him. "What happened here?"

He didn’t respond, just looked at her. No, he rather looked through her.

Wave remembered that day. The day she had followed her parents because she couldn’t believe what they were telling her about them. And that was the first time she saw for herself what her parents were capable of.

"What happened here?" asked Wave, louder and more demanding this time. She was following the script of her memory with this.

Now he perceived her. His emotionless gaze darkened and the tentacles changed direction, shooting toward Wave. She recognized the blades at their ends as they flashed in the light of the sun, knowing that she had no chance of escaping them. Just as none of the Secs had escaped them. She closed her eyes and waited for the stabbing pain.

Nothing happened.

She opened her eyes again and saw one of the tentacles hovering in the air a few inches away from her face. Wave took a step to the side, out of the tentacle’s path, and looked past it. Her mother was now standing next to her father. Her pitch-black, long hair was blowing gently in the wind, and she had placed a hand on his shoulder.

The tentacles sank to the ground, shrank, and disappeared. Finally, he stood before her again, as she knew him. In return, something under her mother’s skin moved from his body into hers. A silvery glow lit up in her eyes and white strands grew in her hair. It was as if she was taking a burden from him. That had always been her strength. Listening to people and taking some of their burden from them. But that it happened here in this indescribable way, Wave couldn’t understand then and she still didn’t understand today.

Her father looked around, saw the bodies, and buried his face in his hands. He screamed. Not in pain, but because he realized what he had done. Then he pushed her mother away and abruptly returned to his previous state.

The tentacles rose from the blood and hovered blood-dripping in front of Wave.

"She’s your daughter!" her mother screamed at him.

"No, she’s his daughter. And he’s to blame for all of this. What if she becomes like him? What if she becomes like us?"

The tentacles shot off and Wave jerked her arms up in defense. Her mother threw herself against her father and the tentacles swayed. They brushed across Wave’s arms instead of piercing them. Still, they left deep cuts. More cuts on top of all the scars she wore like trophies on her body. One tentacle yanked her off her feet and she landed backward in the red mud.

Her mother’s screams, pleading her father not to harm their daughter and to flee this place, became distant as her head was submerged in blood.

That was the last time she had seen her parents. An impressive memory, which she always tried to suppress afterward, and whose message was still stuck in her head until today:

Don’t become like them!

Reports of their misdeeds continued to reach her for more than two years, but by then Wave had already fled to the city, with the excuse that she could become different there. Taking a different path to help the settlers. Not by force or by ... supernatural means that should not be available to any human or Nethuf.

As Wave’s head reappeared from the blood, she heard another voice. One she knew but had not heard in years. The light was gone, as was the blood in which she had lain. Dry darkness enveloped her, but the smell of metal remained.

"Wave?" that voice said from far away. Wave moved, bumping into something hard that rolled away. The noise the object made sounded too faint. It had to be louder than that. Did that mean ...

Her hand went to her ear. They were gone! Her earring and the thin foil of the hearing aid.

"Aki?" she called out. The hearing aid could just be somewhere else, couldn’t it?

"No, Wave. Don’t you recognize me anymore? Hmm, no, how could you, it’s dark. Well at least for you."

She somehow couldn’t figure out who it was. The voice was too quiet and sounded strange. But she didn’t care. Aki was gone.

"Shit!" she yelled, and her muffled echo returned. She braced herself and bumped her head. "Argh!" She lifted her leg and let it whiz to the ground with full force. There was a crunch and a crack, sounds that told her she had broken something. That gave her satisfaction, at least a little.

"Okay, let off steam," the voice from the darkness commented. "I can totally understand that. I would too if I ..."

Wave ignored the person’s babbling and kicked a few more times and then she screamed. She screamed out all her frustration that had accumulated over the years. In the years here at the Citadel where everyone seemed to be her enemy. Everyone seemed to be conspiring against her, even the people inside the city knew more about her past than she did.

Wave reached for something. It was long and flipped over as she held it aloft. With full force, she threw it forward and there it bounced off with a metallic 'clonk'. The sound echoed through the room.

And now she had found something worth fighting for, someone she loved. One last glimmer of hope in this cursed city. And she had failed. She had failed, just like her parents. They had failed to protect the settlers at the city border. That had been a big job. But Wave? She hadn’t even managed to take care of a small piece of foil! She couldn’t even turn into a monster, like her damned father, to forget how badly she had failed.

She kept screaming. She screamed until her voice gave way and the only thing that came out of her were silent tears. The stranger’s voice had faded away. Out of fear or out of pity? Maybe she had hit him with something she had thrown. In any case, he left her alone.

Wave curled up, wishing she had a blanket to crawl under, wishing for Ember or Hammer to take her in their arms and comfort her. But they weren’t around, which was her own fault! Wave had stubbornly followed her path, no matter how they felt about it, what danger she might have put them in, or what she might have destroyed. In fact, she even missed her parents, at least the ones from her happy past. But they weren’t around either. The only thing she had left was darkness and a voice. Just not Aki’s voice.

Eventually, her tears dried up. She no longer had the strength to throw or kick anything. She felt like a little child who had let off steam with rage and was now slowly coming back to her senses.