The wind over the high watchtower of Citadel Monolit was a constant, physical thing. It was a river of fine, rust-colored dust that scoured the stained concrete and hummed through the armored view-slits. Colonel Ivan Morozov stood his watch, a ritual he performed at the turn of every third cycle. It was not required by his rank, but it was required by his nature. A commander must know the feel of the ground his men walk, even if that ground was a hundred meters below. He scanned the horizon, a flat, grey line where the toxic sky met the endless Eurasian Wastes. Ten kilometers out, the skeletal spine of a ruined pre-Blast highway. Thirty-five kilometers, the overpass Sineus kept from turning to dust.
His purpose was to watch. To see. To remember the shape of the world so the world would not forget itself.
A coldness seeped into the stone beneath his boots. It was not the cold of the wind, which was a familiar enemy. This was a different cold, a deep and absolute stillness that had no temperature. It was the cold of a gap in the world, a silence where a sound should be. Morozov’s hand went to his sidearm, his fingers finding the worn grip out of instinct, but he knew this was not a threat a bullet could answer. The coldness was not outside. It was a pressure building inside the very idea of the tower. He felt it as a machinist feels a flaw in a spinning gear, a vibration that does not belong.
The presence, a void in the shape of a thought, focused on him. It was not looking at him; it was reading him. Morozov’s mind, a fortress built of discipline and schematics, felt the first probe against its walls. He thought of Sineus, a continent away, a spark of worry that was unprofessional but unavoidable. He hoped the boy was safe. He hoped the boy was holding to his purpose. The thought was an anchor, and his hand instinctively went to the heavy, worn multi-tool in his greatcoat pocket. His fingers traced its familiar shape, the faint, raised lines of the three-spoked gear stamped into its steel casing. A maker’s mark from a time when things were built to last. A symbol of a promise.
The coldness latched onto that thought. The attack began.
It did not come with a sound or a flash of light. It came as a quiet question whispered into the foundation of his mind. The word ‘Federation’ was the first to go. One moment, it was the structure and society he had served for fifty years, a bulwark against the Unraveling. The next, it was just a sound, a collection of syllables with no more meaning than the sigh of the wind. He could still picture the flag, the uniforms, the council chamber, but the memory of why they mattered was gone. The images were like photographs of a stranger’s family.
He blinked, a flicker of confusion clouding his engineer’s certainty. He looked down at the grey fabric of his own uniform, at the polished brass pin on his collar showing the tri-spoke symbol of the Eurasian Federation Successors. The symbol was a shape, nothing more. It held no weight. The cold was dissolving the mortar between the bricks of his identity.
Next, it came for ‘duty’. The concept had been the central girder of his entire existence. It was the memory that held him upright. Now, he felt it buckle. The cold touch of the void did not erase the memories of his actions—of leading men, of signing orders, of standing this very watch—but it severed the lines of purpose that connected them. He remembered giving Sineus the rucksack, but not the reason. He remembered the feel of the boy’s forearm in his grip, but the sense of shared, defiant purpose was a hollow echo.
Why am I here?
The question was not his own. It was the only thing left in the space where his duty had been. He looked out at the wastes, and for the first time, he did not see a territory to be defended or a threat to be assessed. He saw only a landscape of dust. The Citadel below was just a pile of concrete. The rhythmic hum of the Mnemonic Chorus, the sound that had been the heartbeat of his world for his entire life, was just noise.
The wind felt nice on his face. It was a simple, clean sensation. The pressure in his chest, the weight of command he had carried for so long it had become part of his skeleton, was gone. He felt light. He felt free. He relaxed, a slow unwinding of muscles he hadn’t realized were tense for fifty years.
His hand, resting in his pocket, was loose. The multi-tool, no longer an anchor to a memory of shared hope, was just a lump of cold, heavy steel. It had no purpose. His fingers uncurled.
The tool slipped from his pocket. It did not make a sound against the wind. It simply fell, tumbling end over end, a dark shape against the grey sky. The small, stamped mark of the three-spoked gear, a symbol of honest work and enduring purpose, spun away into the dust a hundred meters below, and was lost. The link was broken.
A continent away, in the sterile white perfection of The Dome, Sineus cried out.
It was not a sound of pain, but of severance. A shockwave of pure, absolute loss slammed into him, a psychic impact that felt like a physical blow. He staggered back from the Lexicon, his hands flying to his head as the world dissolved into a roaring static of pure, negative space. He knew this feeling. He had felt it when the wall at Monolit had died. But this was not a wall. This was a man. A memory of a man being eaten by cold wind. The anchor to his entire past, the memory of the man who had taught him that hope was a tool, had just been unmade.
Irina rushed to his side, her face a mask of alarm. The man who could project his mind across a kilometer was now convulsing, a raw nerve of psychic energy. Her trust, built on his discipline, shattered. The mystic had lost control.
— What have you done? — she accused, her voice sharp with fear and betrayal. She took a step back, away from him.
The other delegates, drawn by his cry, saw the same thing. They saw the weapon, not the man. Pavel Orlov moved to stand in front of Irina, his hand on his sidearm. The fragile unity forged in fire and steel and desperate hope was gone, replaced by the old, familiar walls of fear and suspicion.
The alliance was broken. In the silent, perfect heart of The Dome, Sineus was utterly alone.
The cold wind blew over the watchtower at Monolit, carrying with it the scent of rust and time. The dust settled at the base of the great wall, covering a small, forgotten piece of steel.
