Bara woke up before the alarm.
He always did.
His eyes snapped open and his body followed a heartbeat later, breath locked halfway in, muscles already tense like they had been ordered to move before he knew why. For a second, the ceiling above him was not concrete. It was armored plating. It was too close. It was shaking.
Red light bled into the edges of his vision.
Something was wrong.
Something was always wrong.
Then the sound came. Not an alarm. Not a warning. Just the low, familiar hum of an air conditioner struggling against Jakarta's heat, and the distant growl of traffic that never really slept.
Reality slid back into place.
He lay there, staring at the ceiling, waiting for his heart to slow down. It took longer than it should have. His fingers twitched once, like they were looking for controls that had not been there in years.
"Bangun lagi," here we go again, he muttered.
The dream clung to him anyway.
It always did.
In it, he had been fighting. Of course he had. He was always fighting. The place never stayed the same. One second it was the shoreline in Bali, dark water churning under a red sky. The next it was a city torn open, buildings split like ribs, streets flooded with something thicker than water.
The Abyssal was too close.
It always was.
No matter how far he moved, no matter how hard he hit, it stayed just within reach, its surface rippling as if it was reacting to his thoughts instead of his actions. Every strike sank in. Nothing stopped it.
And then the pressure came.
Not sound. Not words.
Just a pull behind the eyes.
Closer.
Stop resisting.
Let me finish it.
He saw Rakshasa Squad again.
A frame collapsing under weight that should not exist. A cockpit tearing open. A voice screaming his name over open comms, breaking apart into static as something reached inside and pulled.
Another pilot didn't scream at all.
He remembered that one clearly.
Thrusters cut. Weapons powered down. No panic. No hesitation.
He just walked forward.
Straight into the thing that was killing them.
Bara felt his jaw tighten as the memory replayed itself, sharp and clear like it wanted to hurt him on purpose.
"Cuma mimpi," just a dream, he whispered, even though his hands were shaking.
He swung his legs off the bed and sat there, elbows on his knees, staring at the floor. Sweat ran down his spine, cold against his skin. His chest still felt tight, like something heavy had been sitting there and had only just decided to move.
The apartment was quiet.
Too quiet.
One bedroom. One window. Thin walls. Furniture that did its job and nothing more. No photos. No decorations. No reminders of anything he might miss.
He kept it that way.
Memories were dangerous if you gave them places to sit.
He stood and went to the bathroom, splashing water onto his face. The mirror showed him a man who looked solid until you paid attention to his eyes. They never really rested. Even now, they tracked movement that wasn't there.
"Masih hidup kok.." I'm still here, he said to the reflection.
It sounded less like relief and more like disbelief.
In the kitchen, he poured himself a glass of water, then stopped.
Medication first.
Three pills waited on the counter. Same colors. Same shape. Same quiet reminder that he wasn't built for normal life anymore. He stared at them for a moment, jaw set, then picked them up.
Once, it had taken a Demon Core ripped from something ancient and angry to keep him alive in combat.
Now it took chemistry.
"Lucu," funny, he muttered, and swallowed the pills dry.
The bitterness stayed on his tongue. He didn't chase it with water right away. Pain that small felt grounding. Real. Something he could control.
The edge dulled slowly. Not gone. Never gone. Just pushed back far enough that he could move without snapping at shadows.
By the time he left the apartment, Jakarta was already awake.
Street vendors setting up carts. Security guards leaning against gates with coffee in hand. Motorcycles weaving through traffic like they were alive. The city moved on instinct, loud and impatient and completely uninterested in who anyone used to be.
He liked that.
Walking to work gave his thoughts somewhere to go. Each step had weight. Each breath had rhythm. Left. Right. In. Out.
People bumped into him and apologized without knowing why. Something about him made them do that. He didn't look angry. He looked like he wouldn't move.
At the GDF training compound, the gates opened without comment. Inside, Military Heavy platoons were already drilling. Powered exosuits hummed softly. Hydraulics hissed. Clean machines. Predictable responses.
No biological cores.
No voices in your head.
Bara stood at the edge of the training floor and watched.
"Ulangin," again, he said.
The troopers reset and ran the drill from the top.
He didn't shout. He never did. He corrected with precision. A shoulder adjusted here. A stance fixed there. A look that told someone to breathe before panic set in.
"Gausah buru-buru," no need to rush, he told one of them.
The kid nodded too fast, eyes wide. They always did once they realized Bara wasn't playing.
Fear paid attention.
Hours passed like that. Sweat. Metal. Discipline. He pushed them harder than the manual said to because manuals were written by people who didn't have to watch things go wrong in real time.
During a break, one of the younger officers hovered nearby, clearly working up the nerve to say something.
"Izin bertanya, Pak. Masih ada rasa pengen turun langsung?" do you ever feel the urge to go back out there?, he said finally.
Bara looked at him for a long moment.
"Tidak," no, he answered.
It wasn't a lie.
What he missed wasn't the machine.
It was the clarity.
Back then, everything had been simple. Kill or die. Advance or retreat. No quiet moments where your thoughts had room to turn on you.
Now there was too much space.
Lunch came and went. He ate alone. Rice. Protein. Water. No caffeine. No alcohol. The doctors had been very clear about that.
He watched the younger soldiers joke and complain like today was hard. He let them.
They didn't know what hard felt like yet.
Good.
The afternoon disappeared into paperwork. Reports. Assessments. Proof that he was still useful even without a frame wrapped around him.
Indonesia had never wanted a P-G1 pilot.
He remembered the selection process clearly. The tests designed to induce panic. The questions with no right answers. The simulations meant to break people.
He passed because he didn't fight it.
He adapted.
They called that resilience.
He knew better.
After Bali, they gave him options. Quiet retirement. Reassignment under supervision. Medication mandatory. Monitoring indefinite.
He stayed.
Because stopping felt dangerous.
Night fell fast. Jakarta lit up in neon and exhaust and noise that pressed too close. The city felt heavier after dark, like it leaned on you just to see if you would push back.
Back in his apartment, he cooked something simple and ate standing up. He avoided screens. Avoided the news. Abyssal updates were always classified anyway.
Before bed, he opened the floorboard and took out the old Rakshasa patch. Burned edges. Faded stitching.
He stared at it for a long time.
"Harusnya gue ikut," I shouldn't be here, he whispered, not when they weren't.
The silence after that stayed too long.
Bara sat on the edge of the bed, the Rakshasa patch still warm in his palm, like it had absorbed heat from his skin and refused to let it go. His thumb traced the burned stitching without thinking, following shapes he knew by heart.
"Bodoh," stupid, he muttered, not at the patch.
At himself.
He should have stopped looking at it years ago. Should have thrown it away, or locked it up somewhere he couldn't reach without effort. But he never did. Some things felt wrong to abandon completely. Like proof that something real had existed before the world learned how to eat people alive.
He slid the patch back into its hiding place beneath the floorboard and closed it carefully. The hollow sound echoed once, then vanished. Just another secret buried under cheap laminate and concrete.
For a while, he did nothing.
Just sat there, breathing, letting the weight press down without resisting it. This was the part no one prepared you for. Not the battles. Not the losses. The quiet afterward. The hours where no alarms sounded and no one needed orders.
"Kosong ya.." empty, he said softly.
It wasn't despair. Despair had edges. This was flatter than that. A wide absence that stretched without direction, without urgency.
Eventually, his eyes drifted to the table.
The data slate lay there, dark and unassuming.
It didn't look like military equipment.
At first glance, it passed for an ordinary phone. Slim. Seamless. A single sheet of dark glass without ports, buttons, or visible markings. Even the GDF insignia stayed hidden beneath the surface, only appearing when the screen activated.
That was intentional.
After the Great Rifts, anything that looked military became a target.
Every active member of the Global Defense Force carried one. To civilians, it was just another device in a world already drowning in them. To GDF personnel, it was everything at once: communicator, command terminal, biometric key, and classified archive access compressed into something pocket-sized.
Bara's was different.
Not in appearance. You wouldn't notice unless you knew what to look for. The difference was in what it allowed. Deeper layers. Older records. Clearance corridors that should have been sealed long ago but quietly remained open for certain names.
#VETERAN-ACTIVE DESIGNATION.#
For simple terms it is GDF language for we're not done with you yet.
His slate updated itself more often than most. New hardware revisions arrived without warning, identical on the outside, sharper on the inside. Faster encryption. Broader access thresholds. Interfaces that adapted instead of asking permission.
He never requested the upgrades.
They just kept coming.
The screen woke the moment his fingers touched the glass. No prompt. No scan. It recognized him by patterns he couldn't fake: grip pressure, micro tremors, pulse rhythm. Somewhere deep in the system, fragments of his old synchronization data still existed, informing how the device responded.
It knew him.
That part always made his skin crawl.
"Masih dipake juga gue," still using me, he muttered to himself.
He sat back down and let the interface bloom open.
Folders unfolded silently. No sound effects. No colors meant to impress. Just data, stacked clean and precise. Archived briefings. Decommission notices. Casualty summaries he had learned not to open all the way.
Then one directory caught his attention.
#GLOBAL-PHALANX DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM#
His brow furrowed.
"Apaan Ini!?" what is this!?, he murmured.
Inside were overview files. Not schematics. Not blueprints. High-level summaries meant for people who needed to understand capability without asking uncomfortable questions.
#Phalanx units.#
Not the old Gen-1 Oni-Frames.
New generations.
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P-G2: Bastion-Class:
Heavy garrison platforms powered by Titan Cores. Contained nuclear systems. Stable. Predictable. Designed to hold ground when evacuation was no longer possible. Slow. Armored. Meant to endure rather than chase.
Psychological strain: minimal.
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Bara exhaled slowly.
"Enak amat." Must be nice.
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P-G2.5: Standard-Class:
Centurion and Dragoon Frames. Dragon Cores. Modular energy systems. Mass production optimized. Components interchangeable. Pilots replaceable.
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That word sat wrong.
Replaceable.
These were the machines recruitment posters were built around. The future soldiers would grow up dreaming about.
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P-G3: Seraphim-Class (Experimental)
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He slowed here.
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Elite prototypes. Angel Cores. High-output plasma weaponry. Neural feedback dampening rated theoretically sufficient.
A small footnote blinked at the bottom:
- Long-term synchronization effects unknown.
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"Belum kapok juga ternyata." Seems like still haven't their learned, he muttered.
Another tab opened automatically.
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#Core development.#
Dragon Cores. Angel Cores. Synthetic hybrids grown in sterile labs instead of carved from something that bled and screamed. Cleaner. Safer. Supposedly.
-------------------------------------------------------
The language was careful. Optimistic. Full of words like buffer, fail-safe, mitigation.
He had seen those words before.
They had been there when Demon Cores were first approved.
Infantry armaments followed. Trooper exosuits reinforced against Abyssal pressure. Helmets lined with neural insulation to blunt low-grade psychic intrusion. Weapons optimized for entities that didn't obey human anatomy.
Then ammunition.
Armor-piercing kinetics. Magnetically shaped explosives. Experimental payloads designed to disrupt tissue that refused to behave like matter should.
One entry carried a warning tag:
VOID-TIP – RESTRICTED USE
Bara stared at it longer than necessary.
"Sekarang peluru juga aneh," now even the bullets are weird, he said quietly.
The slate vibrated once in his hand.
A low-priority notification appeared at the edge of the interface.
-------------------------------------------------------
#ANOMALOUS TELEMETRY – ARCHIVED#
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He didn't open it.
He locked the screen and set the device face down on the table.
"Bukan urusan gue," not my problem, he told the room.
The words didn't convince anyone.
He locked it away and lay down.
As the medication pulled him toward sleep, he felt the familiar weight settle in.
The dreams were waiting.
They always were.
And tomorrow, he would wake up again. Hopefully.