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They met in the arcade off Rosario Promenade. The wind blew in from the harbour, bringing with it the smell of dead fish and fetid water. It was a hot afternoon and the promenade was abandoned except for a few sailors on shore leave.
He arrived first, waiting in the passage, sweat trickling between his shoulder blades in his stifling suit. He hated the clothing and customs of Liberio. The longer he observed them first-hand the greater his hatred became. Memories had failed to properly convey the suffocating strictures of Marleyan society, the rigid manners and unspoken norms dictating every interaction.
The girl turned off the promenade and into the shadows of the arcade. She was about twenty with a long ash-blonde braid hanging down her back like a rope. Her face was pointed, with thin lips and sharp cheeks. Her eyes were small, deep-set and very bright blue under the white ridge of her forehead.
She studied electrical engineering at the University of Liberio and until recently her political actions had been safe and symbolic. An anonymous article in The Resistance. A black armband over her white shirtwaist. A badge with the Boyan lion roaring in victory on her satchel.
The death of her younger brother on the northern front had propelled her to join a small cell of Anti-Marleyan Volunteers. She longed for the death of the empire and the independence of the Boyan homeland.
She blinked as she entered the sudden shade of the passage. The brim of her straw boater cast a shadow over her face and she peered out myopically, looking for her contact.
He was by the newsagent’s stall, reading the Tribune. His lips moved silently as he read, sounding out the letters.
She felt a trill of excitement. Here was an island devil. She took a moment to observe him, but she couldn't see horns or cloven hooves or any of the grotesque deformities her grandmother had so lovingly described in bedtime stories. Instead, he was just a boy, close to her age and well-built. He wore a good suit but it hung on him awkwardly, as if he'd never worn proper clothes before. His hair was too long for a commoner and he held his hat crumpled in his hand.
She came up alongside him and asked, “Do you have the time?”
He checked his wristwatch.
“1:05.”
She passed him a slim envelope. She was supposed to pass him a letter and leave, but the sight of him was intoxicating.
“I'm Marina, our mutual friends sent me. Come along,” she said and extended her arm.
He took it hesitantly.
“Eren Yeager,” he said.
“You must always lead a lady, otherwise you'll stand out,” she told him.
They walked out of the passage and into the blazing sun.
“Put on your hat,” she whispered in his ear.
He shoved it on, pulling the brim of the flat cap down over his forehead. He walked purposefully, although she knew he had no idea where they were going. Marina noticed he had very green eyes.
“I’ve never seen an Eldian like you,” she told him.
“I'm not a self-hating dog.”
She had seen plenty of Eldians since coming to Liberio. They worked in gangs clearing away municipal waste and sweeping the streets. They stood in queues outside the walls of the internment zone, waiting to pass through the security checkpoint on their way home from work. They milled around the train stations in their military uniforms, embarking and disembarking the troop transports. She found them a dispiriting and meek people, disappointingly unlike the terrible monsters found in history books and fairy tales. Here was a real Eldian, a tall, dark, brooding stranger. A devil in the guise of a man.
“Do you want to come to my flat? For a drink?” she asked, leaning into him.
“Alright!” he sputtered, looking embarrassed.
She led him along the promenade and then into the dank metro station at Independence Square. He was alarmed when the train came, the huge metal carriage screeching and hurtling along the narrow tunnel. He sat next to her and gripped his knees.
They got off at Canal Street and walked to her building. She took him through the lobby with the rows of wooden post boxes and up the back staircase to her little garret flat. It was small and smelled of warm wood. The beams of the roof timbers divided the space into a sleeping and living area. There were piles of books and periodicals scattered everywhere. Marina set down her satchel by the door and flung off her shoes. Eren hung back in the doorway.
“Leave your shoes there,” she said, indicating the little rack by the entrance.
He untied his shoes and set them next to hers.
“Sit down,” she said.
He sat on her divan. Marina was very proud of her divan. She imagined its moth-eaten velvet giving her humble student flat the air of a bordello. She had purchased it at an open-air flea market and it had taken three boys to haul it up the winding stairs.
She poured Eren water from a tin jug and watched him gulp it down. Marina was a modern woman and she believed fervently in liberation in all its forms. She had been relieved to rid herself of her cumbersome virginity her first year at university and considered herself experienced. She had heard that the island devils let women fight titans. That the devil bloods thought nothing of premarital sex and inversion. That behind the walls they permitted every manner of sexual deviance.
Eren put his glass down on the floor beside the divan.
“Will you really bring down the empire?” she asked, leaning towards him so their faces were nearly touching.
He shifted away from her.
“Yes. Marley will fall. Eldia will be free.”
His voice was gravelly and he tensed up when he spoke.
“Death to the empire,” she said breathily and kissed him.
She kissed him for a few minutes, coaxing open his mouth with her tongue. He started to kiss her back and she straddled his lap, feeling the hard bulge of his erection through the thin fabric of his trousers. She liked the look of his dark, suntanned hands gripping her white thighs. She unbuttoned her shirtwaist and directed his hands to her breasts.
Marina stood and shimmed out of her underwear. She straddled Eren again and cupped his cock. He moaned and rolled his head back. She unbuttoned his fly and stroked him a few times before she slid down, swallowing him up.
There was a moment of shock, his eyes wide and his face screwed up in a grimace. Then he groaned and thrust up into her. She rocked against him, stroking herself until she came. She felt him come a few minutes later, the hard throbbing of his orgasm sending her over the edge a second time. She lay her head against his chest.
Eren was hot, sweat rolled down his neck and his armpits were damp. He could feel the slow trickle of his come seeping into his trousers. He felt disgust crawling over his skin. Marina kissed his neck and wound her long fingers through his hair.
He hated himself for letting her touch him, for enjoying it. His loathing grew and suddenly he jerked his head and growled.
“Get off me you bitch! What did you do to me?”
He pushed her off his lap and she tumbled onto the carpet.
“Do you think you can hit me, you dirty devil blood?”
She stood up and slapped him.
“How dare you! I could call the PSA right now and they’d take you away for rape. They’d hang you! Get out!”
She slapped him again and pulled at his ear until he stood and jammed his feet into his shoes.
She was crying, her face red and crumpled. She hit his back with her fists and he quickly opened the door and ran down the stairs to the street.
It took him a long time to make his way back to the Hizuruan embassy. He got lost in the metro, taking the train in the wrong direction at Canal Street. Back in his room with the door closed he felt the letter in his pocket. It was wrinkled and damp with sweat.
Eren thought about the people of Marley, their stupid clothes, their cruel laws, their glittering city lights and their marvellous technology. He thought of them, the hundreds of millions of souls living this moment in ignorance of their deaths. He thought about Marina; imagined putting his hands around the long column of her throat and squeezing until the life went out of her eyes.
There had been no particular moment when he decided to kill them. It had come to him slowly, the realisation that he would do it, that somehow between this moment and the last moment he could foresee, he would kill them all.
He could feel the bodies of his victims squelching beneath his feet. He recalled the way the Reiss children had crumpled in his father's hands. The warm, wet sensation of crushing a bystander in Stohess. The itchy feeling of blood drying on his face after he saved Mikasa. What difference did it make if he killed one man or a billion? He was already a devil.
He looked at the letter in his fist.
Tomorrow
10:45
Factory 1
Ask for a light
It was Zeke's handwriting, the Marleyan letters neat and orderly in their little blocks.