Chapter Text
The first breath was a choked gasp, a strange and alien sound that shattered the sepulchral silence. Consciousness returned to him not like a gentle dawn, but like a sharp, dry blow. He found himself lying on a hard, cold surface, his cheek stuck to a floor of rough, bare wooden planks that gave off a smell of dust and old resin. With a groan, he sat up, a clumsy movement that made his bones creak and stirred a slight dizziness. He passed a trembling hand over his face, confused, as his eyes, heavy and gummed, opened to a world he did not recognize.
The room was a wooden coffin. Four bare walls of dark, untreated pine rose to a ceiling lost in the gloom. There were no pictures, no light switches, no trace of humanity beyond his own fragile body. The air was static, stale, and smelled of confinement. Yet, in the midst of that absolute desolation, one object stood out with an almost obscene violence: a large white cabinet, of a clinical, disinfected white. It was tall, imposing, and at its center, painted in an intense, vibrant red, like a fresh wound, was a cross. It wasn't a religious cross, but the universal symbol for aid, for healing; but here, in this context, it seemed a sinister mockery, a mark of ownership upon the unknown.
The young man, with a slim build and tall stature, got to his feet with difficulty. His skin, of a white-bronze tone as if it had captured the last rays of a long-forgotten sun, was pale with fear. His chestnut hair, messy and damp with a cold sweat, fell over his forehead. His clothes, simple—a red t-shirt and dark pants—told him nothing. They had no pockets, no labels, no stories to tell.
His gaze, laden with a confusion that tightened his throat, scanned the space over and over, looking for a point of reference, a crack in the logic of his nightmare. It was then that he saw it: on the highest part of one wall, almost touching the ceiling, was a tiny rectangular window, so small not even a child could have looked out of it. Through it filtered a few oblique, dusty rays of sunlight. They were thin golden dagers that cut through the gloom and illuminated motes of dust dancing in a silent, eternal waltz. That light was his only connection to the outside world, a world he remembered nothing about.
"Good morning. Do you feel stable enough to answer some questions?"
The voice made him shudder so violently he almost lost his balance. It was a female voice, soft, modulated with a professional and serene calm, like that of a nurse or a therapist. But it didn't come from any face, from any body. It came from the void. His desperate gaze swept the room a third time, and then fixed on the ceiling. There, almost camouflaged among the wooden beams, was a small circular grille, a speaker. It was the ear and mouth of his invisible jailer. A wave of cold sweat ran down his back, a chill that made the hair on his arms stand on end. The room wasn't just empty; it was watched. His solitude was a lie. He wasn't alone at all.
"Who are you...? Where am I...?" he managed to articulate, with a hoarse voice he didn't recognize as his own. The words echoed hollowly in the confined space. Suddenly, the walls seemed to close in on him, the wood creaked with a sound that felt like a threat. He could feel the beat of his own heart, a frantic, terrified drum pounding against his ribs, marking a rhythm of rising panic.
Without thinking, he lunged towards the only visible door, a solid wooden door with no knob, just a smooth metal plate where the lock should have been. He grabbed the edge with both hands and pulled with all his strength. The door didn't budge. Not a millimeter. It was like pulling on a concrete wall. He tried again, bracing his foot against the wall for leverage, the muscles in his arms and back straining until they ached. The door didn't respond. The initial confusion transformed into acute anxiety, a knot of snakes twisting in his stomach.
"Let me out!" The shout tore at his throat, a primal sound of fear and rage. He began to beat the wood with his fists, to kick it with the tips of his shoes. The impacts echoed in the room like gunshots. *Bam! Bam! Bam!* The pain grew, first as a dull warning in his knuckles, then as a sharp sting that shot up his arm. His lungs burned, and he panted, his face flushed with effort. He watched with a kind of fascinated horror as his knuckles reddened, swelled, and began to take on a violet, bruised hue. The door, however, didn't have a single scratch.
"In order for us to continue, I need you to answer the questions. I will ask again. Do you feel stable enough to answer some questions?"
The female voice sounded again, identical to the first time, with the same imperturbable calm. There was no trace of irritation, nor of concern, only an infinite, mechanical patience. For that voice, his screams, his terror, his bleeding fists, were nothing more than a minor procedural inconvenience. The young man felt fear, now mixed with absolute hopelessness, grip his belly with an icy fist. It was hard to breathe, as if the air itself had become thick and heavy. The room was no longer just a physical space; it was a living entity threatening to swallow him, to absorb his identity and his sanity. With a superhuman effort, holding back a new scream, he nodded his head, a small, defeated gesture directed at the ceiling speaker.
"Excellent. What is your name?"
The question, so simple, so fundamental, hung in the air. His mind, by inertia, prepared to answer. He opened his mouth, expecting his name, the sound that defined him, to emerge naturally. But nothing came out. Just a faint sound of air. His mind, which moments before had been a whirlwind of fear and confusion, had become a perfectly clean slate, a white, resonating void. He searched the recesses of his memory, groping in the darkness, but found nothing. There were no faces, no voices, no memories. And at the center of that oblivion, where the cornerstone of his being should be, there was no name. Who was he? The question echoed inside him like a sound in an infinite cavern, finding no wall to return it.
"I... I don't know, I... I don't know..." he murmured, and the sound of his own voice, trembling and lost, caused him more panic than the silence. He felt the anxiety like an electric current running through his muscles, making his legs shake.
"Try not to get overwhelmed. There are no wrong answers here. We only need your total honesty. If you don't know the answer to a question, you may respond with: Unknown." The voice was reassuring, almost maternal, but its invisible origin made it deeply disturbing. "Do you know what year it is?"
The young man's mind was again a blank canvas. He tried to cling to something, anything: a fragment of news, a song, a number. Nothing. Only the buzz of fear and the desolate void of his memory. The silence stretched, heavy and oppressive, as cold sweat trickled down his temple.
"Unknown..." he managed to say, and the word sounded like surrender, like the acceptance of an abyss that was much larger and darker than he had ever imagined.
The word "Unknown" had left his lips like a spent sigh, the second in a series he feared might have no end. The echo of his own voice, laden with an impotence that corroded him from within, still seemed to bounce off the wooden walls when the female voice, unperturbed, continued from the ceiling speaker.
"Excellent. Can you tell me your state or territory of birth?"
The question felt as absurd as it was terrifying. State or territory of birth? How could he even begin to address something like that when not even the name that should inhabit that supposed State existed in his mind? "Uh... Unknown," he repeated, and this time his tone was harsher, tinged with an anxiety that was beginning to rot into frustration. The need for action, to physically challenge his prison, drove him back towards the door. He lunged at it, sinking his fingers, already sore and bruised, into the tiny space between the door and the frame. He pulled with the desperate strength of a cornered animal, the muscles in his arms and neck cording under his tanned skin. Low, guttural grunts escaped his throat as he struggled, but the door didn't yield a millimeter. It was like trying to topple a mountain with bare hands; he only succeeded in renewing the stabbing pain in his knuckles and a deep sense of powerlessness that settled in his chest.
Before he could catch his breath, the voice returned, posing a new question so incongruous that for a second he thought he was hallucinating. "Do you know what Redmond Mann's favorite breakfast is?"
The young man blinked, bewildered. The question was not only impossible to answer, it made no sense at all. It didn't fit the interrogation about his identity. It was like a fragment of someone else's conversation inserted into his personal nightmare. "I... That doesn't even make sense," he exclaimed, and for the first time, a flash of genuine anger, raw and unfiltered, shone in his eyes, displacing for an instant the paralyzing fear. His patience, a resource he already lacked, had run out.
The speaker fell into a sudden silence. It wasn't the professional pause from before, but a dense, meaningful muteness. The seconds dragged on, each longer than the last, until the silence became tangible, an oppressive weight settling on his shoulders and tightening around his skull. His ragged breathing was the only sound in the room, and it seemed deafening to him. His mind, already blank, filled with horrible possibilities. What did that silence mean? A system failure? The prelude to something worse? The anxiety, which had been building like a dam, found a new crack to flow through, colder and more penetrating than ever. "Unknown?" he tried to answer, as if with that word he could appease the ominous stillness. He felt a hot, painful knot in his throat, the pressure of tears that his body, for some reason he couldn't comprehend, refused to release. It was a dry cry, a pain without catharsis, which made it all the more desperate.
Finally, the female voice broke the spell, its tone surprisingly soft, almost encouraging. "Very good, we are doing very well indeed." The statement was as disconcerting as the questions. What could possibly be going well in this abyss of oblivion? "Last question, and the most important one... What color are, or were, your mother's eyes?"
This time, the question wasn't just another blow; it was a direct stab into the heart of his void. "Your mother." Two words that should have evoked a universe of sensations, a face, a voice, a scent. The young man squeezed his eyes shut, pressing his eyelids until he saw explosions of light in the darkness. He plunged into the depths of his mind, groping the walls of his memory for a recollection, any recollection. A caress, a lullaby, the color of a pair of eyes... But there was nothing. Only a smooth, impenetrable wall. It wasn't that the memories were blurry; it was that the space where they should have been was empty, sealed. He only knew that he had woken up in this room, and everything before that moment was a black hole, an absolute non-existence.
"Unknown..." he whispered, and this time his voice sounded like total surrender, the final collapse of any hope of recovering what was lost.
Immediately, the speaker emitted a sharp, piercing beep, a sound that drilled into his ears and made him flinch. Then, silence returned. But this silence was different, deeper and more threatening than the last. It was the silence of a machine that has powered down, of a presence that has withdrawn. The young man was completely alone, accompanied only by the frantic beat of his own heart and the terrifying certainty that he was adrift in an ocean of uncertainty. Fear and anxiety grew exponentially, feeding on the loneliness and bewilderment. He wondered, with a visceral panic, whether being alone was better than being watched by that disembodied voice, and he didn't know the answer.
Then, it happened.
With a dull metallic click and a groan of heavy hinges that had never sounded before, the door opened.
The young man jumped backward, instinctively moving away from the sudden opening, his body adopting a defensive posture. The light from outside wasn't the warm sunlight filtering through the high window, but the cold, fluorescent lighting of a hallway. And in the doorframe, silhouetted against that artificial brightness, stood a woman.
She was shorter than him, and wore an austere purple office-cut dress. Her jet-black hair was pulled back into a severe, low ponytail that accentuated the pallor of her face. Her eyes, large and of a disturbing clarity, were magnified behind thick, square-lensed glasses. And she was smiling. It was a soft, kind, almost maternal smile that created small wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. It was a smile that in any other context would have been comforting. Here, on the threshold of his wooden cell, it only made the young man take another step back, his back almost hitting the opposite wall.
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Scout," said the woman, with a voice he instantly recognized. It was the same female voice, serene and professional, that had been interrogating him from the shadows. But hearing it now, coming from lips of flesh and blood, made it infinitely more real and, therefore, more dangerous. The low, black heels of her shoes echoed with a precise *click, click, click* on the wooden floor, a marked and ominous rhythm that was getting closer.
The young man stood frozen, watching as the woman approached. It was then that he noticed she was carrying a pair of objects in her hands. They weren't medical tools, nor documents, nor anything that could explain the situation.
"I hope you love your new job as a mercenary," she declared, as if she were welcoming him to a new accounting position. And then, she handed him the objects.
They were a black baseball cap, the kind used to hide one's face, and a metal baseball bat, heavy and cold, its surface slightly dented, as if it had already been used for a very specific purpose. The woman offered him an even warmer smile, an expression meant to be welcoming and encouraging. But the young man didn't feel a single ounce of that warmth. Only a cold that froze his blood.
Scout.
The word resonated in the void of his memory, and this time, it didn't fade. It didn't arise as a memory, but as a label, an assigned name, a new identity forged in the crucible of his amnesia. It wasn't an answer he had found within himself, but one that had been delivered to him from the outside, along with a bat and a cap.
His name was Scout. The young man without a past now had a name, a uniform, and a purpose.
...
Time, in the world of Reliable Excavation & Demolition, was an elastic and meaningless concept. For Scout, days weren't measured in sunrises and sunsets, but in matches. An endless succession of explosions, gunfire, and point captures that blended into one long, bloody day. Had it been months since he woke up in that wooden room? Or was it years now? The question sometimes floated in his mind during the rare seconds of calm, between one respawn and the next charge, but he pushed it aside as easily as he dodged a bullet. In the end, it didn't matter. The before and the after had blurred into non-existence, replaced by an eternal and violent present.
Miss Pauling, in her purple dress and thick glasses, had been the one who, after a series of "protocol reviews" that consisted of more questions and cold scans, had handed him the fragments of his new reality. She had told him that his name, his real name, was Jeremy Willys. The words sounded hollow, like an echo from another life. Jeremy Willys was just a ghost, an absent resident of a body now inhabited by Scout. And Scout was a mercenary for RED, hired to fight, kill, and die over and over for a series of dusty buildings and territories whose strategic value he never fully understood. His enemy was Builders League United, BLU, a faction identical in every way except for the color of their uniforms.
But Scout was something more, something Miss Pauling explained with a reassuring smile that failed to hide the monstrosity of the concept. Scout was an "Innie."
The explanation was deceptively simple. A person, an ordinary citizen like this Jeremy Willys, could be "severed." A part of their consciousness, their "Innie," was created to handle the unpleasant tasks, like working in a mine or, in this case, fighting in an eternal war for a faceless company. The "Outie," Jeremy, could live his normal life. For him, work was just a blink, an instant disconnection. He could clock in, blink, and upon opening his eyes his shift was already over, ready to return to his home, his family, his life, without a single memory of the pain, blood, or fear. It was, in theory, pretty cool. The ultimate separation between life and work.
"There's a bloody Spy!"
Demoman's shout, thick with accent and gunpowder, cut through the poisoned air. Scout nodded, a quick, mechanical gesture. His eyes, now trained to detect the slightest inconsistency, caught a flash of blue moving with unnatural agility behind Heavy, who was unloading his Sasha with a dull roar. It wasn't a teammate. It was the stealthy silhouette of an enemy Spy, his knife gleaming with malicious intent. Scout's reaction was pure instinct. He pivoted on his heels, the scattergun already aiming. The blast of the shot mixed with the wet, satisfying crunch of pellets finding their mark. The Spy's head burst into a crimson cloud, and the warm, alien blood streamed down Scout's face, splattering his cap and cheeks.
Scout didn't even blink. He raised a bandaged hand, the same one that months or years ago had uselessly beaten a wooden door, and wiped the sticky liquid with his palm in a gesture of annoyance. The bandages, already dark and stiff with the dried blood of countless encounters, absorbed the new color, integrating it into their macabre texture. Death was just a minor inconvenience, a mess to clean up before the next objective.
"The match ends in 60 seconds." The Administrator's voice resonated in his ears, a hoarse, low tone completely devoid of emotion, like a weather report announcing rain. It was the same cosmic indifference he had felt in that room, but now it was the soundscape of his existence.
The Innie... Scout didn't know what to call it. It wasn't a life. It was servitude. While Jeremy Willys, his Outie, was probably on a comfortable couch, watching TV or having dinner with loved ones whose faces Scout would never know, he was here. Trapped in the routine. For an Innie, there was no "after work." There was only work. He was the shadow condemned to dance eternally, while the body it belonged to enjoyed the light. A blink for Jeremy was an eternity of violence for Scout. The severance was a sweet lie for one and a life sentence for the other.
"BLU team is capturing the control point." The Administrator's voice sounded again, impassive.
Scout reacted like a spring. His legs, fueled by a seemingly endless energy, propelled him forward. He dodged a burst of shrapnel from an enemy Heavy, weaved through a rain of sticky bombs from a BLU Demoman, and ran. The world narrowed to a tunnel: the control point, stained blue, and the bodies in his way. His scattergun spat fire and lead, eliminating any "maggot" that stood in front of him. Each impact, each cry of pain from the BLU team, sent a jolt of pure adrenaline through his veins. It wasn't just victory that drove him; it was a visceral, animal happiness that sprang from the very violence that defined his existence. A huge, deranged smile spread across his face, a grimace of ecstasy under the layer of dried and fresh blood.
Around him, the battle reached its climax. The Medic's maniacal laughter rose above the din, a sound of pure, joyous insanity. Heavy's roar was a constant, but now it intensified, mixed with a supernatural glow. Scout knew instantly: the ÜberCharge. A heavenly light bathed the giant and the doctor, rendering them invincible. It was the signal. The final push. The tide of invincible steel and flesh carved a bloody path, supporting Scout's charge towards the point.
The adrenaline was a torrent, a liquid fire in his arteries. The satisfaction of firing, of feeling the weapon's recoil in his hand, of hearing the shrieks of agony that followed his attacks, was his only solace, the only reason for being in his shrunken world. This match, his mind screamed, would be a victory for RED. It would be a victory for Scout. His only possible victory.
With one last, frantic effort, he leaped onto the control point. For a moment, the world erupted into a chaos of sound and color: the final shots, the curses from BLU, Heavy's triumphant roar. And then, a victorious electronic tone cut through the battle. The control point, once stained with the enemy's blue, was dyed a radiant, deep red, the color of his team, the color of his blood, the only color that truly mattered in his endless nightmare.
The victorious electronic tone marking the capture of the control point seemed to cleanse the air, thick with gunpowder and ozone. For an instant, the battlefield—a landscape of smoking craters and walls spattered with crimson—plunged into an expectant silence.
"Victory for the RED team."
The Administrator's voice resonated in each mercenary's earpiece, and for the first time in what felt like an eternity of combat, a nuance, a faint, almost imperceptible hint of something resembling satisfaction, filtered into her hoarse, low tone. It wasn't joy, nor pride, but the cold approval of a programmer watching their code execute flawlessly. But for the men on the ground, it was enough.
As if a collective spring had been released, the tension that held the mercenaries upright vanished. Shoulders, once squared for combat, relaxed. Laughter, rough and laden with residual adrenaline, erupted here and there, mixed with triumphant shouts and tired gasps. The euphoria of victory was a fleeting balm over the physical and mental exhaustion. The smell of blood and explosives began to yield, replaced by the more mundane scent of sweat and dust. They had won. It was the only thing that mattered in the microcosm of their existence.
With slow movements, like sleepwalkers waking from a shared nightmare, the team began to group up and walk towards the ramshackle buildings that served as their base and quarters. The imposing figure of Soldier, his helmet gleaming despite the splatters, stood tall before the group.
"Fellow Americans!" he bellowed, bringing his hand to his forehead in a martial salute as rigid as his principles. "I am filled with pride for each and every one of you! For the sheer joy of doing something so American, as is shooting and ending the lives of others. Hooah!"
A murmur of tired assent answered him. No one had the energy to chant along with his harangues. Scout, whose energy seemed inexhaustible in combat, had slumped onto a rusty barrel, feeling the sudden weight of every muscle, every bruise beginning to bloom under his skin. A deep gash on his arm, a gift from an enemy Scout, throbbed with a dull burn.
Medic approached him, his boots crunching on the trampled earth. His white coat was stained with red and black, and his eyes, behind his glasses, shone with a spark of that scientific madness that always characterized him, though tempered by fatigue.
"I know, I know," said Medic, with a weary enthusiasm as he aimed his Medi Gun at Scout's lacerated arm. A beam of celestial light, warm and restorative, sprang from the device and coiled around the wound. Scout felt an intense tingling, followed by immediate relief as the flesh knitted together, leaving only a pink scar and a memory of the pain. "I feel today was a more than wonderful victory," the doctor continued, "Above all, it must be said that Heavy was an indispensable part of this victory we had!"
Heavy, who was sitting on an empty ammunition crate, meticulously disassembling and cleaning his heavy machine gun, Sasha, looked up at the mention of his name. His small, deep-set eyes settled on Medic, and a tired but genuine smile appeared under his aquiline nose.
"Nyet," rumbled the giant with his deep, thunderous voice. "Heavy not do much. Doctor is main reason." He stood up, with the strength of a bear, and approached Medic. With a movement that was both possessive and tender, he wrapped his monumental arm around the German's shoulders, pulling him into his bulk. "ÜberCharge was perfect moment."
Medic allowed the hug willingly, a smile of professional satisfaction and personal affection lighting up his face. He rested his head, smeared with sweat and blood, against the Russian's broad collarbone and began planting a series of small, quick kisses along his jawline.
"Bleh... If you two are gonna start gettin' all mushy, don't do it near me," Scout exclaimed, sticking his tongue out with a grimace of genuine disgust. The spectacle of that affection, so raw and human amidst so much death, was more bewildering to him than a Demoman charge.
Engie, who was dismantling his teleporter with a wrench, let out a hearty laugh from behind his machine. "Sounds like someone's jealous of Heavy and Medic's beautiful relationship," he commented, pulling a cold beer can from his dispenser and opening it with a satisfying hiss.
"Oh, why didn't you say so earlier, Scout?" asked Medic with feigned surprise in his voice, pulling an inch away from Heavy to look at the young man. "We would have included you long ago! Every team needs a cupid, isn't that right, *Schatz*?"
Before Scout could let loose another jab or a sharp retort, Heavy moved with surprising speed for a man of his size. His arm, which moments before was caressing Medic, became a steel vise. He wrapped it around Scout's neck in a firm but non-lethal headlock, squeezing just enough to cut off his air flow and force a choked sound from his throat.
"Nothing more romantic for Heavy than kiss with future corpse," the Russian crooned, a playful glint in his eyes as Scout kicked and beat at his arms with impotent fists, his feet scuffing grooves in the dust.
Medic then approached, a smile of pure, diabolical amusement on his lips. With his gloved hands, he took Heavy's face and guided it towards his own. They sealed their lips in a deep kiss, full of an affection as intense as it was grotesque, right above Scout's head, who had, literally, a front-row seat to the spectacle. The young man could see every detail: the texture of Heavy's skin, the shadow of Medic's eyelashes on his cheeks, the exchange of a love that bloomed on the field of death.
The laughter of the rest of the team—from Engie, from a smiling Pyro who waved their hands enthusiastically, and even the approving grunt from Sniper—echoed in the twilight air. The camaraderie, forged in a thousand shared battles and deaths, felt as tangible as the evening chill. Amid his suffocation and discomfort, Scout, with the stubbornness that defined him, promised himself he'd get revenge by stealing Heavy's sandwich in the next match.
And then, the beep sounded.
It was a sharp, electronic, impersonal sound. It didn't come from their earpieces, but from some hidden source in the base, an omnipresent reminder that their time did not belong to them.
The effect was instant and brutal. Heavy and Medic separated immediately, as if a switch had been flipped. The headlock gripping Scout's neck released, and the young man fell to the ground, coughing and massaging his throat as he gulped down great lungfuls of air. All the camaraderie, the post-victory relaxation, vanished. Smiles were wiped away, replaced by a professional stiffness. Engie put away his half-finished beer and sped up the dismantling of his machine. Soldier straightened his back, his gaze lost in the distance. Heavy picked up Sasha without a word, and Medic adjusted his gloves, his expression now serious and distant.
The work shift was about to end. They had to hurry. The transition was as abrupt as a knife cut, separating their violent reality from the unconsciousness waiting on the other side. For them, the Innnies, no celebration lasted.
The last glow of the sun, a fuzzy orange disk sinking behind the battle-scarred hills, filtered through the high, dusty windows of the RED shed, drawing long shadows that stretched like dark fingers across the concrete floor. Scout pushed the heavy metal door open and entered, leaving behind the distant echo of the Administrator's final beeps. The air inside smelled of oil, rust, and dried sweat, a familiar scent that told him he was home, or in the closest thing to a home he would ever know.
With movements automated by the repetition of countless days, he headed to his locker, one of many lined up against the wall like metal tombs. The screech of the metal door opening broke the silence of the place. Carefully, with an almost unconscious ceremony, he stored his scattergun, its barrels still faintly smoking, and his metal baseball bat, with its new dents and crimson splatters. He hung his black cap on an improvised hook inside the locker, revealing his chestnut hair, damp and flattened from hours of wear.
For a moment, he stood still, motionless. The adrenaline from the battle had completely dissipated, leaving a peculiar void, an interior silence filled only by the hum of his own existence. His gaze, lost in thought, slowly focused on the inside of the locker. And there, from the depths of the metal, a pair of eyes stared back at him.
They were feminine eyes, of a clear, serene blue, captured in a faded photograph slightly warped by time. It was taped to the inside wall, next to another snapshot. In the first, a woman with straight black hair, styled with a simplicity that spoke of a life far removed from war, smiled with an expression that shared the same mischievous features as Scout's own grin. Small wrinkles, like maps of happy experiences, hinted at the corners of her eyes and mouth. It was the face of his mother. Or, more precisely, the face of Jeremy's mother.
The second photo was more intimate. It showed the same woman hugging a young man, *Jeremy*, on what seemed to be a sunny day in a park. He had a wide, carefree smile that Scout had never seen on his own face, and she had her eyes closed from the force of the hug, an expression of pure, unconditional love.
Scout looked at her. He didn't feel a racing heart, nor a lump in his throat. There were no memories associated with that image. He didn't know the sound of her voice, whether it was soft or rough. He didn't remember the feeling of her touch, whether her hands were work-roughened or soft as velvet. He didn't know what she smelled like, of soap, damp earth, or the fragrance of her apple pie. He had never, in his entire conscious existence, tasted apple pie.
And yet, a slow, warm smile spread across his lips. It was a smile of pure and simple gratitude. An emotion that came not from memory, but from understanding. He knew that, somewhere, outside these concrete walls and the eternal cycle of violence, there was someone who loved Jeremy. And, by extension, by the simple fact of inhabiting the same body, that love, in some abstract but real way, enveloped him too. It was borrowed love, a reflection in a dull mirror, but it was the only warm thing in his cold reality.
Next to the photographs, a small bundle of letters, tied with a worn ribbon, rested on the shelf. They were letters addressed to Jeremy. Letters that Miss Pauling brought him on rare occasions. Scout had read them until the paper grew fragile. Words of pride, of longing, of questions about his life. "Your mother misses you," they said. "You are the family's pride." "Don't worry about money, you send us more than enough." "When you come back, I'll have your favorite apple pie waiting on the table."
Scout gently closed the locker. The metal resonated with a dull click, enclosing the only tangible link to humanity he possessed. He walked down the main corridor of the shed. His gaze drifted to a calendar hanging on the wall, its page marked "1970". His mind, trained to calculate respawn times and Über charges, did the math automatically. There were at least another ten workdays, maybe, before mail might arrive. It wasn't routine; Miss Pauling appeared when circumstances allowed. But it didn't matter. The mere hope, the possibility that one day she would arrive with a new piece of paper, a short letter from his mother or his eight siblings—a photo would be an even greater treasure—was the fuel that kept his sanity in a world designed to drive him mad. It was the beacon guiding him through the fog of his existence as an Innie.
The second beep, sharper and more urgent, jolted him out of his thoughts. Time was almost up. He hurried, unwinding the blood- and sweat-stained bandages covering his hands and forearms. He tossed them into a trash bin already overflowing with similar remnants from past battles. Passing the medical wing, he saw Medic. The doctor wasn't tending to wounds but, with surprising delicacy, was feeding his pigeons. He was stroking one in particular with a strange, possessive care, the one always stained a dark, coagulated red, as if the creature had bathed in the very essence of his work.
Further ahead, in front of his own locker, was Sniper. The marksman was removing his bushman hat and vest, hanging them up with precision. For an instant, the door to his locker was wide open, and Scout could see the photographs inside: an elderly couple, their faces weathered by the sun with wide smiles, posing in front of a rural farmhouse. A home. A real place. Scout averted his gaze and kept walking.
"Tomorrow will be another day," he thought, repeating the mantra that sustained him. "Life is good." He reached the end of the corridor, where an unmarked metal door awaited him. He knew what had to be done. He had to enter. For Jeremy, it would be just a blink. An infinitesimal instant between his comfortable life and his return to it. But for Scout, that blink was an abyss of non-existence, a leap into the void from which he would only emerge to pick up his weapon again.
But it would be fine. This was his life. This violence, this camaraderie forged in pain, this anxious wait for letters from a home that wasn't his, all of it was the only reality that belonged to him.
He stopped in front of the door. Outside, through a small window at the end of the corridor, the sunset was beginning to stain the sky purple and orange. Why was he hesitating? There was no hesitation. He couldn't afford it. He was an Innie. His purpose was clear, his existence a means to someone else's end.
And so, just like that, with the resignation of one fulfilling a destiny written by another, Scout opened the door and stepped into the elevator. The doors slid shut behind him with a metallic, final sound, cutting off the last glow of the day, encapsulating him in the chamber that would disconnect him from the world, preparing him for the next blink in another man's life.
...
The transition was as abrupt as ever: a dreamless void, a blink in infinite darkness, and then, consciousness. Jeremy opened his eyes. It wasn't a gradual awakening, with his mind lazily navigating the remnants of a dream, but an instantaneous appearance, as if a light switch had been flipped at the core of his being. A profound heaviness, not from sleep, but from a physical exhaustion he couldn't locate, had taken hold of his bones. He felt an ache in his back and a vague tension in his arm muscles, as if he had been carrying something heavy for hours.
The soft hum of the elevator was the first sound he registered. The doors slid open with a pneumatic hiss, revealing the cold, sterile control office of Mann Co. The contrast was absolute. One moment, nothing; now, the gray reality of polished concrete and fluorescent lights flickering overhead.
Jeremy sighed, a sound that came from the depths of his chest, laden with a fatigue more mental than physical. The work was over. That was the only certainty.
*What work?* The question, like a persistent mosquito, buzzed at the edge of his consciousness before he, with the practice of someone who had performed this ritual countless times, crushed it with indifference. He wasn't sure, and at this point, he didn't even care. The mechanism was perfect: he stepped into the elevator, blinked, and stepped out with his bank account a little fatter. No sweating, no thinking, no effort. It was the ultimate blessing of the modern man: all the benefits of employment with none of the downsides. There was no point in overthinking it. Some things were better left unknown.
He stepped out of the metal cubicle, his footsteps echoing in the sepulchral silence of the lobby. The security guard, a man with a face of stone and an impeccable uniform, sat at his post. Jeremy gave him a slight nod, a greeting that was more a reflex than an act of courtesy. The guard didn't respond, his gaze just fixed somewhere beyond the walls. No words were necessary; they were part of the same silent machinery.
He headed to his personal locker, a small, gray unit away from the work area. He opened it with a conventional key. Inside, waiting for him, was his brown leather jacket, the one he'd bought with his first paycheck. And on the shelf, his worn, familiar canvas backpack. He put on the jacket, feeling its comforting weight on his shoulders, and slung the backpack over one. From inside it, he pulled out his mobile phone and wireless earbuds, objects that were like extensions of his own body.
As he turned on the screen, the bluish light illuminated his face, marked by a shadow of weariness. Notifications began to appear in a cascade of colorful icons. A reminder for a pizza place deal he never used. A social media notification showing a photo from an old classmate's vacation. An email from an online store announcing a sale on clothes he didn't need. He scrolled with his finger, skimming through the digital superficiality. Nothing of substance. Nothing personal. Nothing that made him feel connected to anything or anyone.
Absolutely nothing.
A heavy sigh, weightier than the last, escaped his lips. It was as if an invisible burden had settled on his shoulders, dragging him toward the ground. The initial euphoria of having "finished" his shift dissipated rapidly, replaced by the usual emptiness. The silence of the building was beginning to yield to the hum of the city waiting outside, but to Jeremy, it seemed the real silence, the deepest one, was inside him.
He exited the Mann Co. facilities through a side door, plunging into the city's twilight. The air had changed; it had the cold, metallic bite of the approaching winter, carrying the smell of diesel exhaust and the distant, sweet aroma of roasting chestnuts from a street vendor. He buttoned his jacket up to the neck.
He walked along the crowded sidewalks, dodging pedestrians with the automatic skill of a city dweller. His gaze was lost in the river of neon and streetlights beginning to flicker in the gloom, creating an artificial landscape of reds, greens, and blues reflected in the puddles on the pavement. His mind, blank, latched onto the most mundane decision he could make. Chinese or Mexican for dinner? It was a pointless debate. He knew, with a certainty he found depressing, that it didn't matter what he chose. He wasn't hungry. Food, like almost everything else, had lost its taste. He would end up buying something out of habit, taking it to his empty apartment, and probably let half of it rot in the fridge, a monument to his own apathy.
He frowned, a grimace of annoyance directed at himself. He pulled out his phone again, as if searching for a lifeline on the screen. And then he saw it. He had been wrong. It wasn't empty. There was one notification he had missed, a text message that wasn't from an unknown number or an automated service.
It was from *him*.
The name on the screen—"Dad"—elicited an immediate physical reaction. Jeremy clenched his jaw so hard he felt a painful pressure in his mandibles. His fingers tightened around the phone until his knuckles turned white. He didn't open it. He didn't need to. He knew the content would be a mix of feigned concern, cheap excuses, and, most likely, a request to meet up, again. That damned old man. That pathetic bastard who called himself his father.
An intense bitterness, acidic like vinegar, flooded his mouth. He turned off the phone screen with a sharp tap, plunging back into the relative safety of his anger. That man, that sperm donor who had been absent for twenty-five whole years, had appeared in his life like an opportunistic ghost just one month after his mother died. Just when Jeremy's world had collapsed into rubble and an eternal silence on the other end of the phone.
The young man felt the familiar pressure of tears behind his eyes, a hot, painful tightness. But they didn't fall. There were no tears left to shed. They had run out a year and a half ago, along with his mother's breath. She had been his only pillar, his only real family. He was an only child, and now the void she had left was an ocean drowning him day after day. And in the middle of that ocean, the only other "relative" was that selfish castaway clinging to him, not out of love, but out of convenience.
Life was shit. Deep, stinking shit. His mother, the only person who had loved him unconditionally, was gone. And in her place, the universe, with its cruel sense of humor, had thrown him the caricature of a father.
He looked towards the deceptive glow of the city, towards the bars whose warm, dim lights were beginning to stand out against the night. Maybe, just maybe, a little alcohol would help quell the fire of rage and the cold of loneliness he carried inside. Maybe, for a few hours, he could forget the emptiness of work, the silence of his apartment, and the persistent ghost of a father who arrived too late and for all the wrong reasons. With a sigh that was the night's surrender, Jeremy changed course and headed towards the nearest light, seeking in the bottom of a bottle the oblivion his life no longer provided him.