Jun remained on the classroom floor after the words left him.
The rain had strengthened again. It struck the windows in uneven bursts, sometimes hard enough to drown out the distant gunfire, sometimes soft enough that the noises from outside returned one by one—the occasional scream, the low mechanical groan of something heavy being moved, a siren that had been going for so long its tone had started to warp.
Hana Mori lay beside him.
The System chimed. Rewards for clearing daily missions. The windows continued stacking. Jun's eyes moved across them slowly.
It had ticked to one, as he killed the girl before him.
Jun reached forward and closed the window, but another appeared immediately.
[Limited Recruitment Unlocked!]
He opened the Recruitment menu. The greyed-out section was gone. In its place was a familiar banner.
A woman stood beneath a holographic pink halo.
Pale platinum-blonde hair drifted around her shoulders beneath a crown of translucent machinery. A circular wing of segmented white metal spread behind her, its individual sections shaped somewhere between feathers, surgical equipment and weapons. A pinkish red substance pulsed through vein-like structures along the wings to the body as if it were alive.
The staff held in one hand looked like a religious cross until the eye followed its construction far enough down to find the barrel.
Her pale amber eyes were narrowed in a gentle smile.
Beneath the portrait was a single line.
Come to me, Doctor. While my wings still shelter this land, no life beneath them will be abandoned.
Jun did not touch the summon button.
He looked at those words for long enough that the banner animation repeated twice.
Then he closed the menu.
Lunallu's gaze followed the movement of his hand despite there being nothing visible to her. Jun got to his feet. His knees almost gave on the first attempt. Lunallu caught his arm before he hit the desk beside him.
"We need to get her mother."
Lunallu looked towards Hana, or what remained of the person called "Hana".
Jun pulled a white sheet from one of the abandoned medical beds pushed against the wall. It had been folded badly, stained at one corner with something old and brown, but the centre was clean. He covered Hana with it. His hand remained on the edge of the cloth for a moment. Then he stood. "You said, the maintenance room right?"
Lunallu nodded, and then without warning.
"Jun Tae-yoon."
Jun's head lifted.
"Is that your name?" She pressed.
"...It's the name this world knows me by."
Lunallu watched him carefully.
"And Doctor?"
"That's the name your world knows me by. So, which would you prefer?"
"Doctor." That came without hesitation. Lunallu's fingers touched one of the short chains hanging from her waist.
Jun checked the PZ400. Ten rounds. He ejected the magazine, held it for a moment, then replaced it with a full one from his reserve.
"...You have an interesting ability, Doctor."
"Yeah? Don't be too surprised, you'll get to know me better from now."
[Affinity has increased by 1.]
"You know," Jun stared at Hana's covered body for several seconds more.
"When I found you, I was scared of people seeing you. ...I kept thinking that if the forces of this world saw too much, they'd start asking questions."
Jun rubbed at the blood beneath one fingernail and gave up when it would not come away.
"If civilians saw too much, they'd start asking different questions. If either of them worked out that I was connected to you, eventually somebody would want to know what else I could do."
"You mean... Sanctum Vitae has..." Lunallu muttered, almost in shock as she proposed a familiar name.
Sanctum Vitae, the medical conglomerate that had all but owned the first region of the game. Hospitals, augmentation clinics, emergency networks, pharmaceutical manufacturing—if something involved keeping a human body alive, there was a decent chance their name sat somewhere on the paperwork. Project Valkyrie had been one of theirs too. ...Jun eyed the featured operator in the limited banner, Aurelia. Aurelia's portrait remained in the corner of the interface. Project Valkyrie had belonged to Sanctum Vitae too, as a centerpiece to its downfall.
"...followed us through the Gate?"
Something close to confusion crossed Jun's face.
"...No."
Lunallu did not relax. Seeing that, he explained.
"No. At least, I don't think so." Jun rubbed his forehead with the heel of his palm.
He stopped.
"Luna. There's something else."
Her attention returned to him.
"I lied to you about when I came to this world."
...
"It wasn't a few days ago."
Jun looked at her, and smiled.
"Twenty-seven years."
"!!!"
"I've lived here for twenty-seven years. Jun Tae-yoon... I've had this name for as long as this world has known me."
Lunallu stared at him. Whatever answer she had expected, twenty-seven years clearly wasn't it.
"Time doesn't seem to match between worlds. You shouldn't think too hard about it."
"...Then... you... you've been alone here all this time?"
Jun gave a weak shrug, as he looked at 'Hana'.
"Just nobody from Cyverse."
"..." A quiet beat passed between them.
Then Lunallu seemed to remember where the conversation had begun.
"And... the military of this... Earth?"
"The military. Government. Companies, if any of them are still functioning properly under this virus outbreak. Luna, there's a saying here. The road to hell is paved with good intentions."
A sigh came out.
“And once things start falling apart, whoever still has enough guns and manpower gets to ask the questions.”
Lunallu's eyes narrowed slightly. "You speak as though you expect them to behave like Sanctum scum."
"I'm saying I don't need them to be Sanctum's people."
That made her pause. Jun looked towards the covered shape beside him again, then away.
"They could be perfectly decent people. That's actually part of the problem."
Lunallu gave an expression as if she couldn't comprehend the Doctor.
"Let's go. While the rain masks our movement."
The hospital had become quieter.
That did not mean safer.
The loudest phase of the collapse appeared to have moved elsewhere. A trail of abandoned stretchers ran through the corridor outside the classroom, wheels turned in different directions. Emergency lights blinked red along the ceiling. Somewhere farther inside the block, water poured continuously from a broken pipe.
The main courtyard was worse. Rain had diluted the blood into thin pink streams running towards the drains. Several infected lay where Lunallu had left them. She had laid waste to the vicinity, as charred bodies, severed bodies all mixed to the ground.
As Lunallu quietly observed the aftermath of her actions, Jun added, "This world is advanced by its own standards. But you and I know what Cyverse could do. To them, what you just did outside doesn't just look like better technology. It looks impossible. And people don't just leave impossible things alone."
"..."
The rain continued, so Jun spoke with a little more volume.
"Maybe they ask nicely. Maybe they want us helping with evacuations. Maybe they want to know if there are more people like you."
"..."
What he had laid out, was the beginning of how Sanctum Vitae came to become the villainous entity of the first region. Surely, Lunallu had understood what he was trying to convey. Jun crouched beside his bag and pulled his phone free. It had little charge left. The cracked screen lit his face as he brought up the local map, though his finger remained still over it.
"Someone asks where they come from. How many. Whether I can choose who appears. Whether I can make weapons appear too. Whether I can do it again."
"...Can you?"
Jun turned back to Luna.
"Yes."
"..."
"Luna. Do you wish to return to your own world?"
"...I..."
"I do not."
"...!!!"
"This world, you must have noticed it already. The air is clean. Rain is—"
"—Doctor!" Lunallu stretched out her hand as if shocked at his sudden action.
But the Doctor raised a hand to stop her. His other, reached out of the shelter and exposed itself to the rain. That was when Lunallu's eyes widened.
"Rain is clean. There are no monsters... well, until recently. So, yeah, I've grown used to this new world."
Jun wiped his hand on his pants, and laughed.
"It's a simple world, where we can momentarily forget about everything difficult there was in our last one. No plagues, no wars. It's no excuse, but I wonder if that's why I'm such a bad shooter now."
Rain continued to fall in the darkened skies. Jun pressed his hands on her shoulders.
"Your sister. Your hometown. It must be difficult to let them go."
"...Doctor, I..."
"In the future, more will join us."
Lunallu looked a little more alert, her teeth slightly clenched.
"My ability in this new world, as it was granted by a higher being, has given me a revelation."
"A higher being...?"
Jun shook his head. "All I know, is that I was given a duty. A duty to save this world, and the people in it, in order to receive the people from ours. We are the chosen ones, with a great mission."
Her violet eyes began to draw life.
"You mean to say...!"
"End of the Void."
It was a term that all of Cyverse would know.
"Doctor, how much have you pried into the future?"
"... ... ...I will say no further. But, there is... one last thing." Jun smiled weakly, an expression that looked so fragile that it could break at any moment. His hand gripped hers. Lunallu's grip tightened around his hand.
[Affinity has increased by 8.]
"If you're ever feeling lonely, let's feel lonely together."
It was a lonely smile, one that seemed to shoulder the entire world's burden altogether, for a long, long time.
[Affinity has increased by 20.]
You have unlocked 3 Personal Episodes with ★★★★ Lunallu Verionlight!
Unlocking Bond Perks: Completing each Personal Episode of an Operator will unlock their Bond Perks, up to 4. Bond Perks significantly raise the overall stats of your Operator.
Breakthrough Level Limits: Each Operator has a level cap at 50. You can breakthrough this level cap after all 4 Bond Perks have been unlocked. The final level cap is 100.
You have unlocked Private Communications with ★★★★ Lunallu Verionlight!
Private Communications with Operators: Unlocks a private System messaging channel between Doctor and an Operator. Messages do not require external networks and cannot be intercepted by conventional technology. Operators may message Doctor independently.
...
There were questions Lunallu could have asked. Or to push for answers to what she'd clearly seen as lies.
Too many, in fact.
And yet they lay unanswered. The short time spent in this strange, new world had given her time to recall her past.
She was a chief warden in one of Halcyon's most dangerous containment facilities; augmented criminals, political detainees, failed military assets and modified superhumans that threatened everyday security.
As chief warden of the Vesper Containment Authority, Lunallu had spent years around people who lied for reasons far less complicated than the Doctor's. Prisoners lied to survive. Guards lied to cover mistakes. Corruption among the ranks was, by its nature, a mountain built on lies. By the time she had inherited command of the central detention block, she had stopped treating contradictions as proof of guilt by themselves. A person's hands, the questions they avoided, the details they remembered too quickly—those were usually more useful.
Lunallu's chains had begun as tools for that work.
"V-Violet Warden!"
She first heard the name after a containment failure in the lower blocks, back when she was still deputy warden.
Three security sections went dark within minutes. Restraint fields failed. Someone opened doors that should never have been connected to the same emergency circuit in the first place, and by the time Lunallu reached the central corridor there were prisoners loose who could tear through ordinary guards before a rifle was properly raised.
The official report described what followed in language dry enough to make it sound almost boring. But the recordings, they were less restrained. Violet electric discharge had filled the entire corridor. Chains ran from railing to railing, wrapped around reinforced doors, limbs, weapons and necks where necessary. Emergency lights had failed somewhere in the middle of it, leaving only purple arcs crawling across metal and the silhouette of Lunallu standing at the centre of the block, stopping the prisoners in their tracks.
It was also the incident that revealed something her childhood records had never mentioned: Electra had been diffused through her bloodstream years ago, sometime during her childhood in the Downside.
...
The prisoners adopted that name first.
She disliked how heroic it made the incident sound. Nobody ever mentioned the seventeen minutes of unadulterated violence before she arrived, or which administrator had ignored the first alarm, or how many detainees had been beaten or brutally killed afterwards by guards who wanted revenge for being frightened. A title was easier to remember than a failure report.
The Doctor's name had reached Vesper in much the same way. Through paperwork. A sealed medical-authority request had crossed Lunallu's desk asking for access to one of Vesper's restricted detainees. The signature at the bottom had simply read Doctor, as though whoever sent it expected that to be sufficient identification.
It had annoyed her immediately. The request cited treatment privileges that should not have existed, referenced classified augmentation records that Vesper itself had only partial access to, and politely informed her that the detainee would be interviewed without sedation.
The interview eventually happened. Lunallu remained inside the room. The Doctor did not object. That should have been the end of it. Instead, they kept crossing paths under increasingly peculiar circumstances. An escaped augmentation subject brought him back to Vesper months later. A corruption inquiry put his name beside one of her former supervisors. Another time, Lunallu arrived at the aftermath of a riot only to learn that the Doctor had somehow been there first, treating prisoners and guards without much concern for which side they belonged to.
Outside Vesper, his name appeared often enough in the news that she eventually stopped being surprised by it. Disaster zones. Medical scandals. Evacuations that should have failed. Places where authorities had already decided that saving everyone was unrealistic, followed shortly afterwards by reports that the Doctor had disagreed.
They had never been inseparable. Lunallu knew better than to mistake familiarity for complete trust, and the Doctor gave anyone paying attention plenty of reasons to remain suspicious. He kept secrets, ignored procedure when it inconvenienced him and possessed a strange talent for involving himself in problems that sensible people would have left alone.
But there was one thing about him she had eventually stopped questioning.
When someone was still alive, the Doctor generally behaved as though that fact alone made them worth trying to save.
...A saviour complex.
Perhaps that was why the man before her remained recognisable despite everything else that no longer quite fit.
His name was different. His habits were different. Had it truly been the cause of years of adapting to a new world? Yet after failing to save one girl, his answer had been to stand back up and decide he would save more.
In that moment with their hands held together, Lunallu superimposed a blurry figure she had recognised in her world, with the Doctor from this one.
...He sounded like the Doctor she remembered.
For now, that was enough.
Lunallu accompanied the Doctor to where she'd left Hana's mother, behind a maintenance-room door jammed shut with a trolley and a metal cabinet. The woman opened it only after hearing the Doctor's voice twice, and the relief on her face lasted just long enough for her to look past them.
"Hana?"
The Doctor answered her.
Lunallu stayed near the corridor.
There was little point crowding grief.
Still, she overheard a bit of the conversation, but it wasn't anything she wanted to concern herself with. The Doctor was struck across the face hard enough to turn his head. Lunallu's chain left her waist by several centimetres.
The Doctor raised one hand without looking at her. She stopped.
The Doctor let her grab his shirt. He did not offer the kind of explanation people usually reached for when they wanted forgiveness. He told her Hana had been bitten. That she had remained herself for a while. That she had asked about her mother. That she had asked him to keep her safe.
He spared her the rest.
Eventually the woman's anger collapsed beneath its own weight. Her hands slipped from his clothes, and she cried against him instead.
Lunallu looked away. She had seen mourning often enough, that she'd almost become numb to it.
But the Doctor...
He barely moved while Hana's mother clung to him. His cheek had reddened where she struck him. His hands remained at his sides for several seconds before one finally rose and rested awkwardly against her back.
A strange thing to notice. The Doctor had become easier to read in some ways and considerably more difficult in others.
Hana's mother eventually asked to see her daughter. The Doctor glanced towards the unsecured corridor, one hand settling around the PZ400 as another distant cry echoed through the block.
"When it's safe enough for me to take you."
She protested once. He did not change his answer.
...
The Doctor moved her west, towards the surviving EDF position around the school administration building. It was hardly a proper shelter. Filing cabinets had been dragged against broken doors, civilians occupied offices meant for six people at most, and a wounded soldier sat on the floor while another tried to clean blood from his rifle with a torn sleeve.
Still, there were people. People. Lunallu pondered over what the Doctor had told her.
The Doctor became noticeably more ordinary the moment they entered. He had kept his firearm. Lunallu's chains remained loose and unlit. When one of the EDF soldiers asked who she was, the Doctor gave him exactly four words.
"She's travelling with me."
The soldier looked at Lunallu, but he blocked his view.
The soldier's brow tightened, clearly unsatisfied. Before he acted, the ground rumbled suddenly. It was a familiar sound. People looked towards where it had come from. The Doctor took the opportunity to leave the distracted soldier.
Hana's mother was placed with several civilians in what had once been a conference room. Someone found her another blanket. A medic checked the old wound on her arm and replaced the soaked bandage.
The Doctor remained nearby until the medic finished.
"I need to leave for a while."
Hana's mother did not look at him.
"I'll bring back what I can, please stay rested, auntie."
...
The Doctor looked towards the window.
Rain ran in thick lines down the glass.
"Luna, could you handle this side for now?"
Luna looked at the Doctor, puzzled.
"I'll be fine myself. I need her mother safe, at least until she's gone somewhere I can be sure she won't be harmed."
At that request, she felt obliged to answer the Doctor's expectations.
Lunallu gave a small nod. Before leaving, he reached into Inventory and retrieved the temporary relay set. The black case opened into two earpieces and a pair of compact transceivers, plain enough that they could almost have passed for ordinary military equipment if not for the complete absence of any manufacturer markings.
He handed one set to Lunallu. She turned the earpiece over between her fingers.
"Three kilometres. It'll work for eighteen hours, but I'll probably be back by then. Heard that?"
"Clearly."
"If anything happens here, call me."
"And if something happens to you?"
"I'll call for you."
The rain had eased to a steady drizzle by the time Jun stepped outside.
He did not head far.
The marker on the Map sat absurdly close to the school administration block, close enough that the route estimate showed less than four hundred metres if he cut through the residential estate behind it.
Perhaps for once, the System had decided not to make him cross half of Lincol for something useful.
A notification remained open beneath the map.
[Limited Recruitment Results.]
260 remaining.
Jun closed the Recruitment Records and kept moving. The route took him through the rear of the estate, past a playground half-submerged beneath runoff and a row of vending machines glowing uselessly inside a shuttered minimart. Somewhere above, a baby was crying from one of the apartment blocks.
Jun slowed. The crying continued. No screaming followed it. No infected appeared at the windows.
He moved on. A lone infected wandered near the mouth of the next street.
Jun raised the pistol. The infected had not noticed him.
There was an open service passage to the left, which he quickly took. The detour added perhaps thirty seconds. There was no reason to fire.
The marker drew closer.
Three hundred metres.
Two hundred.
Jun crossed beneath an elevated walkway and entered the grounds of a neighbourhood community centre. The main building had gone dark, but emergency lighting still illuminated one stairwell in red. Tables had been abandoned beneath the sheltered concourse. Plastic chairs lay overturned beside a registration booth.
The marker pointed beyond it. Jun followed. At the rear of the centre was a multi-storey carpark. The barrier arm had been snapped off. A sedan rested nose-first against one of the concrete pillars, driver-side door hanging open.
Jun looked upward. Purple light reflected faintly against the underside of the fourth level.
He took the stairs.
Second floor. Nothing.
Third.
...A wet footprint crossed the landing.
Jun stopped. It was human-shaped.
Bare. The print continued downwards rather than up.
He listened. Nothing.
Then, somewhere above him, rubber scraped lightly against concrete.
Jun looked up. Someone stood at the next turn of the stairwell.
A girl.
That was about all he could make out. A dark hood obscured most of her face. Large headphones covered her ears. One hand rested against the railing.
She was watching him. Jun froze. The girl did too.
Neither spoke.
For a moment, the only sound between them was the calming rain blowing through the open sides of the carpark.
She didn't look infected, but there was no way to be certain from here. Most of her was buried beneath dark clothing.
Jun lowered the pistol slightly.
"Hey."
Her eyes moved to the gun.
Then back to him.
"Are you—"
She stepped backwards.
"Wait!"
She turned, vaulted the half-flight railing and dropped to the landing below. Jun remained where he was. Footsteps slapped across the level below. Quick. Then nothing. He considered following. The purple glow reflecting against the concrete above made the decision for him.
She was a strange person. Maybe she'd come to see what had fallen from the sky.
...He had somewhere else to be. Jun continued upstairs.
By the time he reached the fourth level, there was no sign of her.
Only the rain. And the chamber.
The chamber had buried itself across two parking spaces near the open edge of the roof.
Concrete around it had fractured into a shallow crater, spiderweb cracks running beneath faded white lot markings. Rain hissed against the surface of the capsule, gathering in the grooves of its black-purple shell before spilling onto the floor. Every few seconds, something inside gave off a muted pulse of violet that reflected against the ceiling.
Jun stopped near the edge of the crater.
No one around this time. Because he'd made his way here immediately. And by a stroke of luck, it had landed close by.
He swept the rooftop first. Rows of abandoned cars. A delivery van with its rear doors hanging open. A motorcycle lying on its side near the ramp. Nothing moving between them.
The strange girl was gone.
Jun brought up the Map once more.
The purple marker sat directly on top of him.
He closed it.
He stepped into the crater.
Water soaked through his shoes immediately.
The capsule was about the same height as Lunallu's had been, though narrower through the shoulders. Its glass remained completely opaque, reflecting Jun back at himself in warped black.
He stopped in front of it. The Doctor in the reflection looked awful. Wet hair stuck against his forehead. The side of his face still carried the faint redness left by Hana's mother. There was dried blood on his clothes that the rain had not fully washed away, and fresh scratches marked both hands.
Jun lifted one of them, and placed his palm against the glass.
The response was immediate.
A faint vibration passed beneath his palm.
Purple lines raced outward from the point of contact, tracing seams across the chamber that had been invisible a second earlier. The dark surface shimmered, Jun's reflection stretching strangely across it before breaking apart.
Then the glass began to clear.
Not all at once. Transparency spread from beneath his hand in a widening circle, peeling away the opaque surface layer by layer.
A pale shape appeared behind it.
Magnolia-yellow hair first. Then the outline of a face.
The figure stood upright inside the chamber with her eyes closed, head tilted slightly to one side. Her round glasses remained perfectly in place despite the fall from the sky. A cropped white labcoat hung loosely around her shoulders over a sleeveless turtleneck, while a narrow rack of cartridges and small instruments rested against one hip.
The rain continued to strike the chamber around his hand.
Something shifted behind the glass.
Her fingers twitched.
Her eyes opened.
Muted teal.
They found Jun almost immediately.
There was a brief pause. Her gaze moved across his face, dropped to the blood on his clothes, then returned to his eyes.
Her expression tightened by the smallest amount.
"... Doctor?"
✦✦✦✦ Charlotte Holmes