Visisonor's blog

Chapter 1

Consider a line. A curved line on a coordinate grid. The horizontal axis is time, the vertical is perceived measure of success. Not necessarily real measure of success, more like what it seemed to us back then. The line twisted and turned in negative territory for ages, but at some point it shot up towards zero.

This was when the short-lived truce collapsed. Vera paid the ultimate price for that, but with a member of high command eliminated, and his former protege on our side, things started to change in our favor.

It had still a long way to go, and this was the global outlook too. If you tried to plot this line specifically for Kate, it wouldn’t have looked even remotely hopeful.

— Maybe I should look in the armory.
— You won’t find her there, Kate. She is… Gone.
— How can you say this and remain so calm?!
— She was my friend too.
— But it’s different for me. It’s my fault that she died.
— It’s no more your fault than mine or…
— I couldn’t save her! I promised to myself to take care of Vera, and I wasn’t even there when…

This was a typical conversation between me and her, of which there were so many I’ve lost count.

Whatever words I could find, Kate already used them to comfort Vera after Villa’s death, and hearing them again only doubled her sense of loss. She would shift into reality of guilt and grief, then shrink back into her illusory world shrouded in mere sadness.

Still, as the time passed, these shifts became longer and more frequent, so we dared to hope. But it took years.

During those years human command threw everything they had at us — we even had to retreat in some areas. But not for long, for they tried to break an unspoken core rule of this war — the one stating that only inventive thinking can get them tangible outcome against syncons. The results were predictable: after months and months of heavy losses among troopers and growing public unrest they had to reintroduce field agents to the front lines. And one encounter with a pair of agents inadvertedly revealed further details of their game.

We’ve learned of these two when they found a weakness in our line of defense (one which we providently left for them to discover, knowing regular troopers wouldn’t). Leliana and Rick went to investigate.

They didn’t intend to make contact: unlike many other cases, these two weren’t — at that time — in danger of being killed by their troopers. But these intentions crashed and burned when Leliana took a close look on one of them.

— It can’t be! — she gasped, passing her binoculars to Rick. — It’s Tomoko!

Then she darted off towards them, forgetting the mission, her own safety — everything.

This requires an explanation.

Leliana and Tomoko joined the syncons much earlier than the rest of us. But Leliana was captured by human forces when another agent, Constantin, derailed her routine mission to create a distraction for his planned escape back to humans. He would have succeeded had his partner, Linda, been on board with his plans. But she wasn’t: together with Tomoko she tried to stop him. Tomoko lethally wounded Constantin, at the cost of her life. There was not, and could not be, any doubt of it. We all knew it for certain. All but Leliana: we just didn’t have the heart to tell her. She spent a year in captivity, hooked up to an experimental neural interface designed for interrogation. We found and freed her eventually, but her mind suppressed all the memories of that time. Up until now she believed Tomoko was lost too.

Instinctively, Leliana remained hidden for as long as she could while she approached the two — a young woman and a slightly older man. Imagine how startled they were when she showed up right in front of them. So startled, if fact, that the girl started shooting.

Her partner urged her not to, but he was too late. Rick, however, wasn’t: he discarded his own weapon and jumped right in front of confused Leliana, shielding her from gunfire, then quickly closed the distance to the shooter and grabbed the barrel of her rifle.
— Please. We do not mean you any harm, — he said calmy and clearly.

With a syncon having disarmed her effortlessly, and an unfamiliar human calling her a strange name, the girl found herself at loss for words. So did Leliana, unable to process that Tomoko tried to shoot her. She was the first to break the silence, repeating this name again and again.
— But I am not Tomoko, — shouted the girl decisively. — Who is Tomoko?

Rick placed his free hand on Leliana’s shoulder and pulled her slightly away:
— She just looks very similar. This happens sometimes.
— And what’s going on? — continued Tomoko lookalike. — You… You could have killed us many times over!

Leliana, meanwhile, stepped back in disbelief. By that time she noticed some differences in the look of the person in front of her. Wavy hair as opposed to straight, and brown — not black. And yet the face was exactly as she remembered.

— Sophie, — called the other agent from behind. — Remember the truce broadcast five years ago? When a human negotiated on behalf of syncons?
— Vaguely… — replied Sophie absently. — But it was declared a fake.
— We have reasons to believe it wasn’t.
— What do you mean, Chris?

Sophie turned to him, wide—eyed and disoriented.

— This is too much for her, — warned Rick in loud voice.

He was instantly proven right: Sophie groaned, holding her head in her hands, and crumbled on her knees.

Moments later she was dead.