The command center was a void. No dust, no rust, only the cold, clean smell of recycled air and the low hum of the life support that kept the world at bay. In the center of the room, a holographic map cast a soft blue light on Lev Dementiev’s face, a face as smooth and unlined as worn stone. He observed the map, his solid black eyes absorbing the light without reflection. His focus was a single, stubborn point of energy crawling east: the Forge-Crawler Perun. It was a resilient little machine, a node of purpose. Worse, it was gathering allies, its signature now entangled with the faint, pulsing light of other, smaller entities. A web of belief was forming.
He considered the resilience, the stubbornness of their alliance. They build. A flawed premise. They lash themselves to the past with steel and oaths, dragging its weight behind them like a corpse. They believe that by remembering, they create. They are wrong. They only prolong the agony. Lev decided then that a simple strike against the Perun was insufficient. A surgeon does not just remove a tumor; he cuts the vessels that feed it. He would escalate. He would not just break their machine; he would break their world.
His long, pale fingers moved over the command console. The surface was cool and inert. There were no buttons, only a flat black plane that responded to the silent language of his touch. He composed the commands, the text appearing as stark white characters against the dark interface. The orders were not to battalions, but to sleeper cells and carefully cultivated nests of Mnemonic Vultures scattered across the continent. Two commands. Two precise incisions to sever the arteries of the nascent alliance. The console chimed softly, a sound like a single drop of water falling into a deep well. The orders were sent.
On the holographic map, a new window opened, displaying a schematic of a rail bridge hundreds of kilometers away. Union 9 Trestle 4B. Lev could see the maker’s mark on its central support girder, a small, arrogant symbol of a three-spoked gear. A mark of purpose. A memory of craft. He typed the command, his fingers moving with an unhurried grace.
— Target: Union 9 Trestle 4B. Erase the memory of ‘support’.
Another window bloomed, this one showing the schematics for a massive reservoir far to the south, in the arid lands of the Solar Caliphate. A different faction, a different world, but their stability was now tied to the Perun’s quest. They were part of the same disease of hope.
— Target: Solar Caliphate Aquifer 3. Erase the memory of ‘containment’.
He leaned back in his command chair, his work done. He closed his eyes and listened not with his ears, but with the part of him that was attuned to the great, silent hum of existence. He felt the psychic feedback a moment later. It was not a sound, but a sudden, satisfying silence. Two small points of light in the symphony of the world’s memory went quiet. On his map, the icon for the trestle flickered and went dark. The icon for the aquifer turned a dead, flat grey. A bridge, its girders suddenly forgetting their strength, would now be sagging into a ravine. A reservoir, its walls forgetting their purpose, would be unleashing a flood upon the desert.
— They build with steel and hope, — Lev whispered to the empty, sterile air of the command center. The words were a confirmation, a creed. — Such heavy, painful things.
He felt the familiar, faint tremor in his hands, the slight thinning of the air in his lungs. The price of erasure. A small cost for such a great act of liberation. He would unburden them all.
His gaze returned to the map. His fingers moved once more, pulling up a new target. Not a structure this time. Not a machine. It was a concept, an idea that had been a pillar of the old world and a crutch for the new. He highlighted the fortress-city of Monolit, the heart of the Eurasian Federation. A file appeared beside it, a name and a face. Colonel Ivan Morozov. The scout’s mentor. The source of his stubborn, foolish belief in duty.
The final command was composed. It was an act of exquisite cruelty, a gift of perfect despair for the scout who had dared to challenge him.
The cold light of the hologram reflected in his black, unblinking eyes. The air in the room grew still, waiting for the final incision.
