The last drone fell, smoking, into the ash.
We stood back-to-back in the silence of the wasteland. Vesper dropped to one knee, panting. The blood from her nose dripped onto her white suit.
"We... cleared the field," she whispered, sounding shocked.
I offered her a hand.
"You possess excellent processing speed, Marshall," I said, smiling tiredly.
She looked at my hand. She hesitated, then took it.
[CONTACT INITIATED.]
The moment our skin touched, the world screamed.
ZZZZZTTTTT!
A shockwave of blue static blasted out from us. It wasn't electricity. It was memory.
Vesper's eyes went wide. Her glasses cracked.
FLASH. (A memory of Vesper and Caelum eating ice cream in a park. Caelum is laughing. Vesper is smiling—a real smile.) FLASH. (Vesper crying over Caelum's dead body in the rain. "Not again. Please not again.") FLASH. (The two of them holding hands as a nuclear blast consumes them.)
She yanked her hand away as if I burned her. She stumbled back, clutching her head, her eyes wide with terror and confusion.
"What..." Vesper gasped, staring at me. "What was that? Those images... inside my head..."
I stood there, my hand still outstretched. The secret was out. The Ouroboros had tried to sync with her because it recognized her soul.
"That wasn't a hallucination, Vesper," I said softly.
"How do you know my name?" she whispered. "I never told you my first name."
I lowered my hand.
"You did," I said. "Just not in this life."
Vesper stared at me, her logical mind trying to process an impossible variable. The fear in her eyes shifted to something else. Recognition?
"Who are you?" she asked, her voice trembling.
"I'm the casualty," I said. "And you're the one who keeps counting the bodies."
[End of Volume 1]