Longinus

FEBRUARY, 2524— BAD DREAMER, WHAT'S YOUR NAME?

The bells were never the same, but they always rang as one.

Colors swirled and hung in the air as light cast down from grand portraits trapped in glass, and for a brief moment, the eyes of a man caught some glimmer of God’s vantage, every hanging speck of dust highlighted, parting and colliding in the shape of a gentle breeze. He shuffled the book in his hands, felt a warmth in his chest, and let the ancient words sound from his lips.

“Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.”

A hazy blue hangs over the sea of mustard-gold methane clouds. It is the most beautiful juxtaposition, but he has no time for admiration. Beside him, behind him, streaks of flame dip into the ocean below as he grips the control sticks ever tighter, a heavy breath rolling off his lips. His visor’s polarization has turned to black as flares in the heavens announce another thousand souls have gone on to eternity. The display below him is awash in blue. “They got Hoplite!” He shouts. “Wyvern, stay with me!”

“Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.” Their voices mingled and resounded against the great vaults of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Sorrows, a symphony calling out for mercy, an ordinary plea taking on new urgency for a world gone mad. Beams of all colors poured over the choir, an exceptionally small bunch outnumbered by chairs and music stands. The man glanced over as the florist was silhouetted in a tranquil sky-blue, his hands waving in direction for the other singers. He glanced down at the notes, his own hands awash in stark crimson.

A flash brought a blip of static to his comms. “Wyvern, Northstar.” He finds a way to be shocked by something he already knew, a falling sensation in his stomach as every instinct in his heart turns to panic. His training does not let him. “Lancer is bent, I say again, Lancer is bent. All Lancer aircraft, you are under my control.” He knows a transition that sharp means only one thing. He knows there is nothing to do but this. He does not know how to do it. He settles for a guess. “Save them, Lord,” his heart calls out. He is not sure he hears a reply.

“Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem.” The florist smiled as the man met his eyes. A look of gratitude was painted across his face before he turned to the altar with the rest of the choir. “Behold the Lamb of God,” the priest proclaimed, “who takes away the sins of the world.” The man looks on the Lamb with the gaze of an old friend made new, troubled but long-suffering. Shaken, but not broken. Hurt, but not defeated. The child next to him looks up and sees the glimmer of a tear on the corner of his eye.

He carves his jet into a sharp spin, the reaction control thrusters pushing the nose around in a drifting curve, the thick atmosphere below having caught just enough purchase to clutch and claw at the airframe, twin fusion torches blazing away in a deadly sky. Tone buzzed in his ears, a duet of aviators and their machines about to reach its crescendo. “Wyvern One, Fox 2,” he gnashes his teeth, voice tripping on the rehearsed call. It feels different now, a guttural bark. It tastes alien in his mouth. The heatseeker rips from its rail, the Fangtooth missile about to make good on its name. He watches as the ring of shrapnel tears open a fiery hole in the Panther’s reactor. “Splash one.” He is glad he cannot see his eyes when he glances to the mirror on the canopy arch.

Four fresh candles flickered under the alabaster statue, a mother’s gentle anguish inviting the man to share his burden. He hesitated, the heat dancing on the end of the stick tickling his fingers. A deep breath stirred the flames, and he leaned down to light one more. The man turned and blinked, face to face with a familiar stranger.

“I’m glad you could come,” the florist nods to the man. “We missed you last week. Your voice adds a lot. And, you know.” He jerked his head towards the empty seats. “Heck of a time to find your way back, but…”

“I’m just happy to get out a little.” He nodded.

“You know, when the soldiers came,” the florist stared out at the tabernacle. “My son was so worried he wouldn't get to sing. Kids worry about the wildest things, right? Are we going to be okay? Not that. Not even, will they let us still go to church? Nope. Will they let us sing, at church? That was his question.”

“Was that really his greatest fear?”

“Maybe not his greatest. I guess he just figured the rest would be okay.” The florist laughed. “Here we are. Maybe the kid was right. You know, you've kind of become his hero.”

“Hero? I think that's a bit much.”

“I agree, but he was a wreck. Terrified. You showed up out of nowhere, and gave us your voice while everyone else was running away.” The florist tapped the man’s shoulder. “Thank you. It means more than you know.” The man could see the edge of a smile as the florist walked away. “Be right back, gotta take care of some things.”

Anxiety gripped him. He stared up at the flags hanging by the church’s narthex, the familiar gold and white standard of the Vatican with that green-white-blue tricolor, a UN crest emblazoned in the center. Why did that sight bring him such pain? It wasn’t the longing, wistful pain everyone else here felt. When he turned his eyes to the altar, the light of Tau Ceti glinting off the gold of the tabernacle, he felt a tremor in his bones, a gripping talon sinking into his heart. He closed his eyes, putting a hand on his downcast forehead, his breath hitting a hitch as it rolled down to the granite below.

“Why did you only show up now?” A little voice shouted up at him.

He opened his eyes. The florist’s son stared up, the child’s face consumed in an inquisitive blankness.

“Me?” The man pointed to himself. The hum in his core would not let up. He smiled anyways.

“Yeah, you.”

“I… am not from here.” That much, he felt, was obvious. “I got stuck here on a business trip.” The man stared out into the distance, sighing.

“Oh, what do you do for work?”

He feels the strain on his fingers, every ounce of willpower seeping into the controls. He knows it isn’t enough. The blue diamonds seared into his retinas remained with him every time he blinked and multiplied with every breath he took. If only they had kept more planes in reserve. If only they hadn’t loaded out just for air to ground. If only— if only he had been a better leader— No. He shakes his head clear, sucking down a deep breath. I am a squadron leader of the Fleet Air Arm.

“All callsigns, this is Wyvern One. Get back to where the ships can cover you. We’re not losing anyone else today. All Wyvern callsigns, turn hot and engage. We have the rearguard.”

He grips the stick, the growl of a heatseeker building to a howling roar. He reaches out with talons of silicon and steel and swats a Panther from the skies. He dives to the cloud layer below, seeking the visual cover of the thick, stormy sea to break any image-rec sensors. In the maelstrom he meets his adversary, and draws his blades as twin cannons pop from their hatches. His jaw spasms as the anti-accelerants hit, the neural weave channeling uncapturable anguish into the outlet of cold violence. Twelve g, thirteen, fourteen. He locks eyes with the UN aviator, a blank, inhuman visage returning his gaze. His Vaquero’s delta wings glitter in the blackened visor of his adversary. His thrusters do the work his wings could not, his airframe buckling under the stress of the soupy atmosphere, and the jet slips ever so slightly from the sky, but the snapshot is all he needs. A programmed burst of twenty-five tungsten darts slip from his breath. Reactor plasma bursts from the shredded Panther and the skies catch fire around it. The firestorm hangs in the air. The plane does not. He does not see a chute. He blinks, and he wonders what is happening to him.

“I’m a butcher.” He hadn't meant to lie to the little one. Perhaps he hadn't.

“Woah.” The florist’s son paused, a palpable silence as he let the man’s words set in. “What does a butcher do on a business trip?” The child raised an eyebrow.

“Oh, well, there's… conventions.” He stared out across the great Gothic columns of the building, hand-made stonework a touch of the cradle in this new world. He wanted to do anything except look at the kid. He couldn’t stop himself.

“I'm just glad you found a place to stay.” His smile quickly turned to concern. “They haven't dragged you to one of the… the big prisons, have they?”

“The… the prefab blocks?” The man glanced back to the kid.

“Yeah, dad says they're prisons.” The florist’s son glanced down at his feet. “He also says I have to be careful and that I can’t go outside near the wall. Because of the drones.” He looked up at the man. “They don’t really… cook you, right?”

“Um.” The man staggered back, biting his tongue. Not here, he thought. “You should listen to your daddy.”

“Dad says that the Minervans hate us.”

The man’s hands shook.

The man has no words for his pain. It seeps into his very breath as he raises his eyes on a board that had once been a consolation. Yet this is not his board. They had recreated it as soon as they had landed, lent to him by another squadron, the original up in flames with their home ship. He raises a marker, dragging it across a name that had been a friend. Good kid, that Hyder. His hands shake. His teeth clench. Good kid. That made four, today.

He doesn't want the answer, but he has to ask. What about the others? She puts her hand on his shoulder. Worse, she says. Much, much worse.

He is a mess of curses and agonies. They look like bugs, he thinks, the blackened, bulbous visor of the monsters who had done this to him hanging in the vision before him. They look like fucking bugs. They swarmed like bugs. And, he recalled, they died like bugs.

He looks down at quivering hands. I don't think like that. What the fuck is happening to me?

Commander, she says, her tone trying to ground him in the present. She knows it is useless. He has spoken at their weddings, seen their children, known their pains and shouldered their burdens. Now they are his.

He raises his eyes to a padded ceiling in a carrier ready room, at once familiar and alien, drifting far in the cold, distant darkness. It is a simple plea. Help me, he says. Save me.

“Hate you?” He looked down at the kid.

“Yeah. He says they’ve always hated us.” The florist’s son stared up at brown eyes struggling to hold back the fullness of a man’s sorrow. “Since the revolution.”

“This is a beautiful church,” the man smiled, a desperate ploy.

“I like the music. Dad always says, when we pray, we're supposed to lift our hearts to God. And he says when we sing, the rest of us comes too.” The boy nods. The man feels a wave of relief crashing over him. “You look sad.”

“No, I'm fine, actually—”

“Dad!” The florist’s son ran off. “Dad?”

The man watched in terror as the child tugged on his father’s arm. “Can the nice man have dinner with us?”

He glanced to the tabernacle, a fleeting feeling of calm washing down his head into his spine. He took another look back to a child pleading with his father to have his friend come over, and he was overcome by an insurmountable pity. He had begun to walk towards them before he even realized it.

Padre, he stares at the Chaplain. I don't know how to ask for this.

Then ask, the Chaplain nods.

I want to be whole. I want to be right with God. I want to come home.

The Chaplain reaches out to his brother. There is a tenderness in his eyes that the man has never seen before. It is a look of love. His tears fall on a purple stole.

How long has it been? Padre Josemaria leans into the hug, the Father lending the man his warmth.

My whole life, the man sobs. I started, but I never finished. The priest pulls away, looking the man in his eyes. That's alright, mi hijo. It's late. But it's never too late. Now come, he smiles. We have work to do.

The florist and his son seemed to have come to an agreement. “You're welcome to join us,” the florist says. “Susan has a roast in the freezer we've been saving for something big, and they didn't cut our power for long, so it's still good.” The florist looked down at his son. “We were hoping we'd break it out for the end of the occupation, but…” He smiled. “This is a nice occasion too.”

“Oh. Wow,” The man stepped back. “That would be…” He fumbled for an excuse. He came up empty. He chuckled. “I mean, for me?”

“Yeah,” the father, the florist, stared back with an unplaceable look somewhere between bitter and sweet. “We don't know when they'll cut the power for the last time. Might as well eat it while we have it.”

“You really don't have to.”

“I insist.” The florist shook his head. “Look, I don't know how they do things where you're from, but here it's rude to refuse an invitation.”

He wanted to run. He had to run. He had no other choice but to run. He was in too deep already. His breath quivered. His voice spoke on its own. “Alright,” the words slipped out. “Yeah. That sounds lovely.”

The upper atmosphere of the moon glows a tranquil blue below them, the typically daggerlike delta silhouettes of the interceptors turned into porcupines by radiator booms peeling from their wings. A thin bridge between the ground and the heavens beyond reaches out below the man as he glances through the bottom of his spaceplane, the sensors melding perfectly to pick up where natural senses fell short. The sleek, pearl-white composite of the station at the terminal point, far, far in the distance looks almost close enough to touch through the eyes provided to him by Kormoran Astronautics, the neural weave spilling tantalizing sights across his occipital lobe. It is not completely white and nor is it completely sleek— charring scars the station’s side as a wound of grey reinforcement panels gapes out at the moon below. Is that it? He asks. Yeah, his wingman answers. They took sixty-three of ours with that fuckin’ thing. Anti-ship warheads, she snarls. Only place to go from there is a bloody nuke.

How many wounded?

Almost a hundred.

The man stares at the maw of the wound in disbelief. The new suits were supposed to save you from decompression. Even a civilian station like this was supposed to be able to contain a blast. What happened? He asks. I know the story. I still don't understand it.

Motherfuckers snuck four gutted anti-ship conventional warheads onto a cargo palette stuffed full of medical supplies a few months ago. It got security checked, but they hid the damn things real bloody good and we were getting careless. I think they bribed somebody.

Bribed?

It happens everywhere, man. Everyone thinks they're above it. No occupation has ever gone without it.

The silence hangs, static over a radio line screeching louder than any words ever could.

The meds were real, by the way. In case you were wondering. Allegedly, a donation from local hospitals to show they wanted to cooperate. They blew up their own bloody meds just to kill a few of us.

Bastards, he snarls. We’ll get even.

Our boys don't even get real coffins. They're bloody— dust and ice on the solar wind. And these motherfuckers get to go home to their wife and kids every night.

The man has never walked these streets, but he knows them. The drones buzzed overhead, timing, tracking, surveilling. He did his best to not present his face to their sensors, but they were everywhere. In the distance, shuttles carved through crisp blue skies, orbiting with troops loaded to the gills with everything from tasers to RTEKs, ready to kick down any door in the city at a moment’s notice. He had long looked up at this all as a comfort, a watchful aegis against the very people he now walked alongside. The three kept to the marked route.

Along the roads’ intersection, the snowmelt from a few days prior had turned a shallow bomb crater into a miniature lake. Some local children played unattended around the edge, the eldest casting an imaginary lure into the crater with the broken-off branch of one of the avenue’s trees. The man stopped for but a second, frozen by the boy’s smile. The downwash of a distant riot control drone tussled his hair. Their parents really should bring them in. The thought ricocheted through his mind as implications and consequences wreaked havoc in his imagination. He jogged to the florist and his son, a question searing his mind. “Your wife couldn’t come today?” The man looked over to the florist with a concerned glance. He pushed the image of the crater from his mind, an obvious answer he could not allow himself to entertain.

“Her leg got crushed when they raided our local grocer two weeks ago. They blew a hole in, and a big piece of concrete just smacked her right here. Shattered her bone.” The florist gestured to his shin. “She hasn't been able to walk since. And we still haven't heard from Mr. Nesmith.” A pang of guilt overtook his slight relief.

“Is he going to be okay, Dad?” The florist’s son pressed his father’s hand as he walked. They stopped.

“Son, I don't know.”

“I hope he'll be okay. He was always so nice.”

The florist knelt, and held his son gently. The man retched. This was not his to witness. He did not get to be here. He felt an intruder. He felt disgusting.

He looked out at the wall in the distance, the drones buzzing overhead, and felt through every muscle in his body the urge to run for it, to slip back into the little tunnel patrolled by the likeminded Marine, to not look back at the faces, the hearts, the souls he had crossed paths with here. This was dangerous. The florist was a good man. He was not. Run. Run. Run.

His heart put a foot down, and he set his face toward their home.

“You alright?” The florist raised an eyebrow. “C’mon, it’s not far from here.”

“Yeah,” he breathed out. “I’d have loved to see this place before.”

The florist paused. “It was a beautiful city,” he sighed, a sudden distance in his words. “One day, it will be again.”

The man cast his eyes down, the wistfulness of the florist’s voice stirring a great guilt within him. “One day, when the Minervans are gone.”

The florist huffed.

The Marines hoot and holler, the jam-packed square a disciplinary breakdown for the ages. The aviator knows that not even CINCOMAR himself can stop them from what they are about to do. The aviator knows that CINCOMAR does not want to stop them. He feels likewise, staring up at the statue of General Nguyen Ivanenko, a boogeyman right out of his sixth-form history book. The man who had burned Hazelcrest to a cinder, immortalized in bronze. The General raises an ancient sword to the sky in defiance. Cables wrap around the General’s neck, a hangman’s noose the man was happy to see on the old bastard. Once more, the proud Ivanenko meets his end at the hands of Minervans. He glanced down at the plinth. BUT FOR TEN MEN WHO CHOOSE DUTY OVER FEAR, OUR PEOPLE WILL LIVE A THOUSAND GENERATIONS. The aviator raises an eyebrow. The message rings true.

He lets a shout rise as the messenger topples over, bronze twisting and giving way as a Chevalier tank rolls down the street, chain held fast to its rear. The Marines wave unit flags from beside the plinth as the bronze snaps, General Ivanenko’s head scraping down the stairs, his nose snapping off on the asphalt as a Marine snatches it off the ground. The crowd roars as the man holds the souvenir high. A small mob assembles, each Marine seeking to climb the newly vacated plinth to wave his flag as the final conqueror of their ancestral terror. Man, Narco nudges him. I can’t fucking wait until we get Havelock’s, too.

You think we’ll make it to Ottawa? He raises an eyebrow. C’mon, that’s not what we do. Besides, we’re not dumb enough to try invading—

Man, just enjoy the moment. We got the bastard.

He stares at the words on the plinth. He thinks of the words of his own oath. It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense. How could he— that butcher— say that?

He looks out at the wall in the distance, barely visible through the forest of skyscrapers. There is a sinking in his stomach. He watches as the Marines kick, spit and snarl. A feeling passes him by, the dimpled texture of a flight stick, the smooth plastic of the trigger.

A cathedral spire pokes out above the wall, a golden cross mounted above a tower of stone. The Angelus bell rings out the noonday call to prayer, the space an aural warzone as the gentle grace of the bell’s ring rises up against the Marines’ cacophony.

He stares at the dead man’s words, and he knows.

The apartment was small and simple. A florist, it seemed, did not make money for luxury, only from it. The door to the home beckoned, either the welcoming draw of a gate swung wide or a gaping maw waiting to devour some sweet prey. His instincts raged, a battle between the desire to cross the threshold and the animal panic to run home to safety. He had hidden his heart from these men just as he had tried to know theirs. His heart had enjoyed the security of anonymity, and while he had raised his voice to the heavens he had chained his heart to the ground. Survival training kicked in. He had no means of resistance beyond his fists and fangs, no means of escape beyond his feet and no means of identification beyond his face.

His heart rose against his gut and forced his foot across the sill. He had come this far. A strength swelled behind him.

“Mom! Mom! The nice man from church came!”

“Hang on a second.” The florist held up a pyx, the golden disc glinting in his hand. The man’s eyes widened. “I need to bring Him to the wife.” He sighed. “Lot more extraordinary ministers these days than ordinary. I’m responsible for all the injured in our apartment block. Gonna get this taken care of, get the roast in the oven, and then go stop by Mr. Foulke’s.” The florist disappeared into the other room, and his son flopped onto the couch.

“You still look sad.”

“I…” The man blinked. “This war has been very hard for me.”

“Yeah,” the kid said. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It's… I don't know, kid, it's… it's hard.”

“What's your name?” The kid stared up at him. “I never asked your name. I'm Gabe.”

The man knelt down. “I'm… I'm Longinus.”

“That's really cool.”

“My parents were, ah, traditional.”

“What's your family like?”

The bitter cold of the Japanese winter bites at his neck. The man stares at the cross and the child lashed to it. The edict has sealed his fate, the man thinks. This is for us all, to shake off the foreigner’s yoke. The boy’s brother writhes under the weight of his breath. Are you ready to renounce this barbarian nonsense? He points to the cross. You can save him.

“My family is from France and Japan. My ancestors were samurai.”

The brother breaks free. His hand goes to his sword, but something stays his draw. The brother falls at the foot of the boy’s cross, embracing it, looking up at his own flesh and blood. Go, Yujiro, he says. Do not give in for my sake. The newness of life lies ahead. His tears fall into powdery snow.

“Woah, that's super cool!”

The man stumbles back. How strange. He raises his eyes to meet the emaciated face of an unconscious child, bloodied and bruised. His breath speeds. He looks back into the distance, the lights of the prison a warm glow in the careless dark. The brother looks up to the man. Commandant, I will not abandon my God, the Lord of Mercy. My brother will not live to see tomorrow. The man looks to the child on the cross. The man looks down at his hands. What have I done? Something crumples in his chest. Have mercy on us, the young man pleads.

How? The wisps of sorrowful breath hang in the February night.

“It sounds cool, but…” the man paused. “He wasn't like, a hero, or something. He was a torturer.”

“Aren’t samurai like… Knights?”

“Men of honor…” he chuckled. The poster that had once promised him adventure and nobility hung in his imagination, saccharine words turned sour. “It turns out, we're all just men.”

He trudges through the heavy snow of the Tsuwano countryside, the cold form of the boy in his hands. Clouds still issue from his nostrils, weaker and weaker with each step. Yujiro, his brother had called him. The lights of the other prison, the women’s prison, cut through the blistering breeze and falling sleet. Frost bites at his hands, his neck, his heart. The boy gets heavier as the night grows darker, the snow giving way to the path. He runs down the block of cells. Yujiro! A voice cries out from behind the bars, anguished and frightened. He orders the guards to let him in and leave him be. He places the boy in his sister’s arms, dying.

The man looks the Navy chaplain dead in the eyes. I have killed, Padre. He shakes against the confessional. In the service of my country, sure, but I desired blood, not peace.

A wave of panic rose within him. He looked for the door, a hand raised to the back of his neck, fingernails digging gently into his hair. “I'm sorry for coming here. I should go.”

“Go?” The child looked up at him. “You just got here.”

He started for the door.

“I'll miss you, Mr. Longinus.”

His hand fell on the cold plastic of the door handle, and his breath shuddered. He glanced back over his shoulder, and he saw a heart breaking behind brown eyes.

“I’m… I’m sorry.” The man bowed low to the boy. “I… you have a very nice home.” He looked around the walls, family photos taunting him, their backdrops flush with the vibrant colors of a city full of life.

“Please don't cry.” The boy came closer as he walked back towards the door.

“This… this war.” He shuddered. The son’s eyes looked up at him with the most tender pity, and deep sorrow welled forth as he choked on his words. “I— I—”

“It's okay.” The boy ran up to the man, staring up and reaching out a hand. “Come on, sit down.”

The man blinked, and silence gripped them both. He nodded, and took the boy’s hand. The florist and his wife had emerged from the side room, a bootleg flashfabbed wheelchair joining the three plush-covered chairs around the sturdy square table as the florist gently set the pyx down on the table. “That one's mine,” the boy said, pointing across the table. “This one’s yours.”

“Thank you.” The man set his hand down on the grooved wood and lowered himself into the chair, his body aching with the pains of the heart.

“You’re the man from the choir?” The boy’s mother set her gaze upon the man. He watched as the florist started to prepare the roast, heating up the oven behind her. He caught sight of a few birthday cards scattered across the countertop, written on plain white paper instead of the colorful cardstock of peacetime. He stared at the stacked up pile of CHC cassettes next to the stereo. He did anything except look her in the eyes. She cocked her head and looked intently at the stranger, clearly a man of much sorrow, etched onto his face with the chisel of experience and time. Stress had painted silver streaks over his ears and he had the acrid reek of instant coffee. A wistfulness seeped from the corner of the man’s eyes as he stared at the music cassettes, the joyful funk of yesterday that had long since fallen silent from the radio, overtaken by the harsh blare of emergency sirens and the biting sterility of evacuation orders. A pitiful breath curled from her lips. “Are you alright?”

“No.” He still didn’t look her way. His head dropped into his hands, mutterings slipping from his lips. She looked over at the florist, quickly flashing a finger towards the man with a frightened look. The florist turned away from the roast. He mouthed “I-don’t-know” before fixing a glance of pity down at the stranger at their table. Tears had already started to well in the son’s eyes, poking his head around the vase of wilting roses that had long been the family’s centerpiece.

“Mr. Longinus?”

“I… I had so many friends in the Navy.” He brought his gaze to meet the florist’s.

The florist closed his eyes with a grimacing nod.

“This war has taken so much from me. So many from me. But I… I come here, and… I… I’m lucky. I’ve never seen it face-to-face.” His face quivered. “I… I don’t believe in hate. So why do I hate them so much?”

“The Minervans?” The florist leaned in.

The man looked down. “The soldiers.”

“Father Declan tells me that ‘if you hate, you shall surely die,’” The son reached out his hand across the table. “I don’t want you to die.”

The man blinked. A smile crept across his face that didn’t match his eyes. “Thank you,” he whispered.

“I can’t believe they did this to us, either.” The florist’s words cut like steel. “They’ve taken so many from me, too. The soldiers.”

His hands shook. His hands shook with the memory of Hyder and Chmeil and Hakim and Davin, his hands shook with the words he had told little Rianna about her daddy, his hands shook as they had when he had hit ‘record’ for the fifth time in two minutes, his hands shook with a hatred born of loss and pain and the dimpled grip of a flight stick. His breath rose and fell with his heart. It was that buzzing dryness, that hatred deeply steeped, that gripping malice that seemed to crawl right out of his bones.

He'd been a man of much grief, but hate, this kind of hate, was new to him. It felt right at home. It terrified him.

“I can't believe they can do this to us.” The florist’s voice trembled as he walked down the countertop, picking up a deck of playing cards. “Rounding us up, leveling our homes, herding us around like cattle. That wall. That horrible wall. I'm glad the cathedral is on our side of it. Who knows what they would have done if it was in the way.”

“You don't think they'd tear down a church, do you?” The man lifted his eyes to the florist, a gasp curling from his breath.

“After all this? I'm not putting anything past them anymore. Probably not very Christian of me.” The florist shook his head, pulling a card from the deck with a sigh. “I’m sorry.”

The man was struck speechless. His head collapsed into his hands. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry…” Staggered breaths rolled out from behind the fortress of the man’s hands.

Silence hung as the boy reached across the table, falling too short to lay a hand on his new friend. His mother glanced around the table and shot a worried glare towards her husband.

“Susan, Gabriel?” The florist looked to his family, the faint tenderness of a grin curling across his lips. “Can I speak to my friend alone?”

She nodded. “C’mere, Gabe.” The boy looked back at the man and walked over, placing a hand on his side and looking up with a care the man would never forget. “Take care, Mr. Longinus.”

“You too, Gabe.” The man smiled down at the son, eyes glassy with tears as the boy walked away.

“Now that we’re inclined to… let’s speak honestly.” The florist set his hands on the back of his son’s seat.

“Honestly?”

“You’re not quite as good at this as you thought, my friend.” The florist tossed down the Three of Hearts. “A man of your stature cannot come here without being known to a man of my station.” CDR ELISHA T. NEWPORT, the card read. A younger man stared back, a man who had not yet been tormented by the terror of war or the trials of command. “I didn't recognize you at first. The beard threw me off. It ages you.”

“Are you going to kill me?” There was a flatness to the man’s words.

“No.”

“Why?”

The florist fumbled with the words. His eyes were mired in confusion and pain. “I… wanted to, once. But… I wanted to know why you came. You didn't have to. They’d strip your wings if they knew. You're not spying for them. You’re not smuggling for them. You come to Mass, you sing, and you leave. I didn't even trust myself after a while. I thought you were just who you said you were until we walked here together.”

Have you decided, mi hijo? The priest stands beside the oils, a smile on the wizened face of the chaplain. The man breathes deep, opens his heart, and feels God rest on his head as he fixes his gaze next to the Cross, brushstrokes traced across the wood of the icon.

The words echo in his mind. I wounded Him, and then I came to believe.

The Centurion stands confounded, spear lowered from the side of the One he had pierced, drenched in mingled Blood and Water.

Longinus, the man says.

“You're not… Resistance, then?”

“I am.”

The man stared up with an overpowering medley of emotion. Misery and joy, loss and hope, tension and release, all flowing from the corner of his eye, bridged the gap between two hearts if only in this moment, this fleeting moment.

“Still, though. I must ask. How can you do this to us? How can you call our nations brothers and…” The florist stumbled over his words, pointing to the window.

“We… I… I never—” The man gathered his words from a mind wracked with sorrow. He stared out the window, a Roohawk shuttle shining a spotlight down on a distant apartment block, smoke rising from below. He struggled to meet his reflection in the glass, and he set aside his excuses, gathering himself with a gasp. “Brothers kill brothers sometimes.”

“Hmm.” The florist cast a glance down, a wistful sigh rolling off a simple shrug.

“Something I think both our countries are familiar with.” The man could not shake the bronze visage of General Ivanenko, a revenant horror, a reminder of why the city he’d visited so many times as a child had such perfectly straight streets.

“I suppose that would make my people Cain,” the florist sighed. “There wasn’t supposed to be any vengeance for Abel. But I think you’ve more than repaid us.”

“I think so too.” The man could not bring himself to meet the florist’s eyes. “You wanted to know why I came?”

“Yes.” The florist leaned in over the chair.

“I’ve been at war for most of the year now,” the man brought a weary gaze to bear on the florist’s eyes. “I’m not just fighting your people anymore. I’m fighting myself. I’m fighting for myself. I… I have been at war for my heart. There are two men who wear my face, one merciful, one wrathful. But neither speak with my voice. I… I needed to sing. I needed to see.” He glanced to the door of the side room. “I needed to be with the ones I have wounded.”

“You needed to know your brother.” The florist met his eyes with pity and sorrow blended with a quivering hope.

“Yes.” The man rasped out. “I don’t know if I will see battle again. I pray and I hope not. They… they have to be able to sort something out. They have to see the madness. Can’t anybody see the madness? I… I must serve my country. I know you feel the same. The men and the women beside me— they are good. They are worth fighting for and I will protect them. But, can’t they see the madness this has all become? Our people were never meant to be conquerors!”

“I wish there were more of them like you.” The florist pulled his chair out and sat down next to the man, the man whose voice had mixed with his, the man whose despair had blended with hope in song and melody, the man whose heart had been lifted up with his under the stony mantle of Our Lady of Sorrows. The pyx sat on the table between them, gold glinting with the light of Heaven invisibly pouring out from inside, and in that light Michael embraced Elisha. “It’s good to see you, brother.”

Stillness reigned in place of silence.

“I don’t want to go back.” Elisha choked on a tear. “If I go back, the war will start again. I… I don’t want to fight your people. But my people— my brothers-in-arms— they need a chance. They need a chance to get home safe. There’s still so much rage in me when I think of what I’ve lost... My ancestor in the flesh and my ancestor in the faith are still warring for my heart.”

“I know.” Michael paused. “Me too.”

“Your people have taken so much from me.” He hung his head in his hands. “If I meet them, how will I know which man will win?”

He feels the smooth plastic of the trigger call out to him as he meets the aviator’s gaze. The canopies cross for but a moment as the planes roll past each other. He sees the eyes of a young woman staring back in terror from under that buglike visor. Smoke billows from a hole in the blue-grey composite of the American jet. He pulls the Vaquero free from the scissors and loops around, his wounded prey waiting under a bleeding sunrise in his helmet display’s boxed diamond.

He hesitates.

Your Lord, the man says. Your brother calls him the Lord of Mercy.

Yes, she says.

I did this to him, to Yujiro. He would not relent. So I did not either. I did this to him, to a child, in the service of our people.

Are you here to gloat?

⠀

No.

⠀

His hands shake.

I have come here to ask for mercy. He prostrates himself before the dying boy, laying in his sister’s arms, legs draping over her knee. The samurai opens his mouth and Longinus speaks. I have not come seeking such forgiveness from men but I ask— would your God have mercy on a soul like mine?