Denied.  User credentials invalid.


    Ren made a face as she looked at the access screen on her HUD; she knew the attempt was likely futile, but she had to try.  Ahead of her on the weather-deck, she watched Seth getting to do his first formal Limitless investigation on his very first willing test-subject; High Negotiator of the Fourth Wing, Gabriel Lugios.  She turned her eyes to her overlay again, and tried putting in her old password one more time…only to get the same message.


    Denied.  User credentials invalid.


    They really did cut me out, she thought grimly, and her brows crinkled in disappointment.  She waved her hand to hide the entire overlay under her sights, and pushed to sit up a bit higher on the long couch she’d been slouching on.  She looked at the squeeze-ball in the loose grip of her new hand, and sighed, Practically speaking, I can only hold this thing up because my fingers naturally curl that direction…  It’s gonna be a long road to get this thing functional.


    Seth handed Gabriel an empty ceramic cup, “Can you split this?”


    “Yeah,” He answered; eyes had been alight for a little while already, and his hair floated up as it typically did.  He focused on the cup, and the little lines of purple light manifested through the vertical center, with the finger-loop on the right side where he held it.  With a fizzle, the cup was now two halves, and he handed them back.


    Seth immediately took the two pieces and inspected the break line, then set the two halves together, “…Wow…it’s really a perfect split.”


    Gabriel just stared like that was the most obvious thing anyone could’ve said, and glanced over at Ren with a shrug, “I mean…it’s what it do.”


    “No, I mean…look how well the pieces fit back together.  You can’t even see the seam-line anymore.  If I didn’t know they were two pieces, I’d think I could fill it with liquid.” Seth explained, “Normally when something is cut, there’s an amount of material that’s lost where the break happens.  Like when you cut through wood, and all the saw-dust comes out from the friction.  But this?  This is incredible…  I’d have to look at it with instrumentation but, to my primitive ape-eyes, it looks…as if the very molecules that make-up the edges were just nudged apart from one another, with nothing missing between them.”


    “Neat.”


    “Dame Ren?”


    The voice was like a dagger through the air; Gabriel’s afflictive light vanished quickly, and his hair dropped behind his back.  Seth looked up normally.  Ren could feel her heart in her throat.  She turned her head slightly first, then her whole upper body…and spotted Furion there in the middle of the atrium.


    “Hey!” Seth said cheerfully, and held up the two halves of the cup, “Look at what Mr. Gabriel’s Limitless thing can do!”


    “That’s nice.” Furion answered, and turned side-face, gesturing back the way he’d come, “Dame Ren.  A moment.”


    Gabriel’s eyes went from the Captain to his trainee, and she gave him a pleading look, but he could only shrug; he had no excuse that could get her out of it.  They were clearly not doing anything important.  With a long sigh, Ren stood up, and reluctantly shuffled her way around the length of that long sectional to follow after her former commander.


    Her heart pounded strongly enough that she thought it could be seen through her jacket, and she set her good hand over it in an attempt to calm it down.  Before she knew it though, that awkward silent procession had ended in the Captain’s office, and that familiar space made her breath catch in her throat.  She finally managed to speak though, “…What’s all this about?  What do you want all of a sudden?”


    “Your credentials were noted as trying to access sensitive Sixth Wing files; more specifically, Fafnir files.” He answered calmly, and stood beside his desk, “As an official with an interest in who is accessing that data, I was alerted to the attempt.”


    “’Attempt’ being the operative word.  I couldn’t get in.  Can I go?  Captain Rydell, sir.”


    Furion hesitated to answer for a moment, but then shook his head, and dropped the whole fa?ade, “Ren, I…  What are you trying to do?  What are you looking for all of a sudden?”


    She narrowed her eyes at him, “Why do you care?”


    “Because if you need the access, I can give it to you.” He explained, “I just need to know what you’re looking up.”


    “I don’t want your help,” She said bitterly, and turned to start going towards the door again, “I’m leaving.”


    “Wait!”


    She paused with her hand only an inch above the door-panel.


    Furion took a careful step closer, “…Why are you still so angry, after all this time?  I thought-“


    “You thought nothing.” She barked, and turned on a heel to point at him, “After what you did to me – after what you made me do – how can you even ask that question?”


    The stunned look on his face was unexpected, “…You still don’t know.”


    “Know what.”


    He turned his gaze away, “I thought you’d realize…after…”


    “What are you talking about!?”


    Furion clenched his eyes and shook his head, but then gestured upwards with both hands, and put his HUD on display for Ren to see.  He turned it and shoved the images above his desk, and made them bigger and easier to see.


    Ren just glowered at him, “Whatever you want me to see, I’m not going to be able to.  It’ll just be a blank canvas to my rank.”


    “I’m fixing that, too.” He answered simply; and as he spoke, he was already doing so.  He found Ren’s dossier in the Council’s personnel database, and reactivated her Fafnir rank, “There…  You’re one of us again.”


    “What-“ She balked as her uniform regained its blue hue, and the coat-tails elongated to her heels.


    “That last mission isn’t what you think it was.” He continued, and sifted through the mission date-logs, going back until he found that infamous date.  There were two entries; one from Ren’s armor and one from the ship’s log.  The important one was Ren’s, and he loaded the video of her perspective to the display.  The first thing it showed was her last few seconds in the Aegis’ launch-bay before she took off into the skies, and since that was irrelevant, he fast-forwarded through it until she’d arrived at the actual mission site.This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    “I don’t want to see this again,” Ren commented, “I already remember it too vividly.”


    Furion gestured back at her to wait again, “It’s not what you think.  What you saw wasn’t right.  Just…give me five minutes.  I’ll explain everything.  Please don’t make me issue that request as an order…”


    She rolled her eyes, but stood, “Fine.”


    Furion took a step back and watched the footage unfold as he knew it to be.  The first-person view from Ren’s armor gave a clear image; there was a warehouse, and it was already sunset, giving the area a red haze and deep shadows.


    “Wing optics going off.” Ren’s voice spoke, and the subtle glow on the door from behind her ceased.  Her armored hand went forward on the panel, and she pushed it in.  Dark-vision manifested, and the warehouse’s interior was easy to see.


    “Everything’s looking really good so far.  Targets are still where they were prior.  You can proceed.” It was Furion’s voice that time.


    Ren’s sights showed how she’d hovered up a series of metal ladders, and took to the upper level.  There was a door at the end of a dark corridor, illuminated for the occupancy, but put-to.  She crept closer, quietly, until she was right outside.  Voices could be heard; whoever was behind the door was speaking quietly.


    Hearing them already made Ren upset, “That’s not what happened.  You’ve distorted the audio.”


    “Nothing’s been altered.  This is the raw footage from the mission, logged and archived as it always is.” Furion corrected, despite Ren’s angry expression, “Just watch.”


    “I’m going in on three…two…” Ren’s voice sounded, and the footage showed her right arm up with the vambrace-pistol at the ready.  With a breath, she took a step back, kicked the door in, held her arm up…and stalled, “What…what is this?”


    “STOP IT.” Ren yelled, stepping angrily forward as Furion paused the feed, “That’s not what was there.  Those are grown-ass men.  You sent me in there to kill children.  This footage has been doctored.”


    “I promise you, it hasn’t been.” Furion countered, “This is what I saw the entire time.  When you started talking about kids, it made no sense.  Then all their eyes lit up and it was like you had no idea.  You just froze, and backed out of the room, arguing that Lord Rylen should take another look and try again.  I had no choice.  They were going to kill you.” He pleaded for reason to be given a chance, gesturing at the paused video.  A few clicks forward in the timeline and, as he’d described, all four rough-looking men got up from their meeting table and activated their afflictive eyes.  He clicked to play normally again, and showed ‘Ren’ using that energy weapon on all four in quick succession, even as she was screaming for him to stop and resisting every forced movement.  He stopped the video then, and they were left in quiet, “…In emergency situations, when a Fafnir has been rendered unconscious or compromised, the Captain can commandeer their armor in an effort to get them to safety or...to…complete the mission.  It’s part of a fail-safe system that makes certain our weaponry will never be used wrongly.  The Fafnir…are too powerful to be allowed full, unfettered autonomy in the field.  In this case, as we found out later…there was a fifth target.  One we were all blind to.”


    “…What…do you mean?”


    “It was a trap, Ren.” He answered, “They knew we were coming for them.  The fifth man – one it took us two months to find after this – used his power to put a sort of…glamour on them.  To you, he made them look like kids…but to me?  Watching remotely, on a digital video feed?  I saw exactly what it was.  As soon as your words about the mission didn’t match what was happening, I knew you were in trouble…and I activated the fail-safe.  I took them out as planned, and then brought you back.”


    Ren was dumbstruck; she could hardly blink for the shock of it, “…There’s…no way…  I…I know what I…saw…  What I felt…”


    “I know how real it felt to you, Ren…” Furion continued, “You were so angry at me for what I did, but nothing I – or even Lord Rylen – said to you made any difference.  You just…you wouldn’t listen to anyone.  The glamour was so absolute that it’s like it changed your perception of what we were saying, and what you saw, even after you were back here…”  He dared to step closer, cautiously and slowly, “We knew that you couldn’t go back out there, so we…were forced to put you into detainment.  I was certain that once we got the guy who cast the glamour, you’d finally be released…but when we did, and you didn’t reach out…”


    “…Who…how?”


    “The fifth man?” Furion echoed, “His name was Tobias Greenwich.  He was a nobody before, just a thief, but…he spent a few years in the Exclusion Zone, and came back…far more powerful than we could handle at the time.  He started selling his glamours to the non-afflicted, and in the end, the only reason we actually got him was because he got arrogant about how powerful he’d suddenly become.  Given what happened with you, Lord Rylen approved a remote-viewing mission later, and I effectively piloted Donivan’s armor from here, since he couldn’t trust what he saw with his own eyes.  Two prior stealth missions failed because the glamour turned out to be an aura, and impacted anyone who got too close…it didn’t matter how quick or surgical we were.  So…we blinded Donivan’s feed from start to finish that last time, so he’d never have to witness whatever glamour was being used to try and stop him.”


    Ren looked down; she felt frozen.  Furion inched closer.


    “We couldn’t just keep you locked-away while we figured out how to stop this guy though,” He continued, “So Lord Rylen came up with the idea of transferring you out to a non-combat position.  Lord Xanarken had a mediator with a bad history with the Fafnir and a penchant for driving partners away, and they agreed to put you with him on the belief that, once we got Tobias, the glamour would fall from your eyes and you’d realize what you saw was false.  But you never came back.”


    “…You all threatened me with a Court Martial!”


    “You were never under threat of a Court Martial!” Furion pleaded, “You just heard what you feared to hear!  Your whole life’s ambition was to become a Fafnir, and the whole reason that dream started was because of a kid who’d gotten targeted with a Fafnir’s aim…  In retrospect, it makes perfect sense why you’d think what you did.  That glamour worked so well because it fed on the fears of the people who walked into it.  Why do you think your room was left alone?  Why do you think I never let anyone take your position?  You’re still Wing Commander.  The rank-change in the system was just a formality until the mission was over…!”


    Ren could feel her whole body shaking slightly.


    “…The proof that it’s over is in the fact that you could see the mission footage for what it really was, instead of seeing what you remembered while that glamour was active.  We tried to show it to you before; to convince you it was a ruse, but you…still saw those kids.” Furion went on; he was within arm’s reach then.  He drew a careful breath, and took one more step closer, and dared to reach for her right shoulder, “Nothing really worked out the way we thought it would…  You were too clever by half to fall for whatever Sir Gabriel threw at you that drove everyone else away.  The mission to go get Seth back?  …That was Lord Rylen trying to reach you in a way that he thought might finally work, since you hadn’t listened to anyone else.”


    “…We all nearly died on that mission…”


    “That whole thing went so incredibly wrong…  You should know that we’d never put anyone – especially a cadet – in danger, if we had any reason to believe it would go south like that.  I sent Ianori to keep an eye on him, and even that felt like overkill; I had to agree to let him try out for your spot just to get him to go, knowing he’d never get it.  Everything until those last moments went exactly as we expected it would, and from what I’m understanding, it would’ve continued that way if not for the void scar’s behavior.” He explained, and when she didn’t react to the feel of his touch, he stood straighter and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close, “…These last four months have been Hell without you…knowing how upset you were with me, and knowing there was nothing I could say or do that would convince you…  Please, Ren…  We put everything we had into getting Tobias so you’d be free.  It’s time to come home…”


    Tall as he was, when Ren turned her head, she could hear his heartbeat, ear against his chest.  The pain in her own was overwhelming though, “…It…was all a lie…  None…  None of it was real, not a shred of it…”


    “None of it…” He repeated.


    Her vision started to warble as tears filled her eyes.  Confusion swam in her head, conflicting with every emotion she’d wrestled with over the last four months.  But that hug…it was so familiar, so warm…  Her left arm was pinned between them in her sling, but her right…she lifted it and wrapped it around the man’s waist.  She could feel the relief melt through his whole body when she did it, and he hugged a little tighter, which just made her cry.


    Not that Furion was immune from that kind of thing; a few tears fell from his eyes as well.  When Ren felt them fall to her shoulder, she even looked up at him, those intense green eyes looking all the brighter for his newfound – refound – ease.  In a moment he’d been hoping for, for four months, three weeks, and five days…he leaned in and gave his apology kiss.