Gahn gazed out the window of his suite with abject hopelessness.

  Somehow, he found himself to be in a position in which he was both above and beneath everything. Above all of the violence, chaos, grime and dirt that grew with ever increasing intensity. Beneath the players that controlled every aspect of the board. He happens to be only a more valuable game card for their current means.

  Gahn felt this ever increasingly suffocating pressure bearing upon him on both ends, as though there will eventually come a point that he will be crushed to death altogether. Forced to work with the indignity, he finds himself ironically in the position of which Vertan had for so long described the Coalition: kicking the can down the road to survive yet another day of a rotten existence.

  There is in fact no dignity, no pride, no prestige in being up here, now that the man has seen it for himself. He in fact finds himself only to be a leashed pet, satiated with luxuries, all for the purposes of upholding the very thing he stood against. The purposeful intention is to distract through endless suffering, extract, and eventually erase it completely altogether.

  Looking down onto a street in the faraway distance, he sees yet another violent incident break out. Here, the military has already been in control for months. Perhaps this has to do with yet another suspected “demon sympathizer”, or some other obviously nonsensical excuse.

  He watched as the soldiers dragged a bound man out onto the street in front of his family. Having already beaten him bloody, as if it weren’t enough, they pinned him down so that he faced upwards, feet-first underneath the treads of a tank. The child continued to cry despairingly, and the wife continued to beg for mercy.

  As though frustrated, in a fit of rage, one of the soldiers beats the wife, binds her, and so too was she dragged to the other tank treads. The child is screaming hysterically now as another soldier holds her back.

  Finally at last, given the signal, the tank is driven forward, inching and crawling slowly. The husband and wife, as they are slowly crushed underneath, let out a screech that could be audible to Gahn’s ears from this distance. They were all eventually macerated completely into red pulp, and as the tank eventually uncovered them on the other side, the soldiers continued to force the child to watch the spectacle, laughing and cheering gleefully as they did so.

  Eventually, it seems as if they had enough with the child. Thrown to the ground, she was beaten ceaselessly. Stomped, over, and over, and over again, the soldier’s boot stamped down on the child’s face. The screams stop. One of the other soldiers stepped in and shot relentlessly at the still body, leaving only mangled mincemeat. As though to rub in further insult, a third soldier rubs his boot, smearing the remains of the parents and child together across the pavement, kicking it around.

  They all laughed and cheered, sharing cigarettes with one another. Becoming sick now, Gahn turned his head away, growing lightheaded. He wondered why he made himself watch all of that. Perhaps it was an act of self punishment. Perhaps it eventually had to be done, to get it through his system that such acts happened. Or, perhaps, he found himself in a state of shock that people could be capable of such cruelty to the very end, completely jubilant about it.

  He nearly found himself in denial of it. It was so evil to the point of becoming morbidly comical, seeing what they did and then reveling in the others’ suffering. It seemed to be something that could only happen in fiction, capable of being written only by a very sick person, and yet, here it happened in front of him. Unfiltered, unapologetically, completely authentically.

  For a moment, he glances back at the window. In all, it is a very luxurious suite where they were all staying at the moment, but it may as well be a cell to the man by this point. The existence of a balcony in this suite almost seemed to mock him. He felt within him an overwhelming urge to fling himself over that balcony and simply cease to exist, forgetting about everything. If reincarnation or an afterlife was real and he is made to suffer as atonement in those too, then so be it.

  But of course, he couldn’t. He has the burden of family. Somehow, some way, he has to fight for them. He has to ensure their survival. Seeing what happened to that other family just now, it made him fear immensely of his own kin meeting anywhere a similar fate. The sentiment eventually reached levels of utter ridiculousness, and he soon became resentful of his own self for having the audacity to get married and raise children, preventing him from leaping over the balcony right now.

  And so, he is eventually brought back down to the cold and cruel reality of where he is.

  Made to be brought along as a special informant, Gahn found himself once more on the planet of Qiaou, occupied and settled against the locals’ will for its strategically desirable position. A gathering kept secret from the public’s eyes is being held amongst the hyperpowerful elites, with a vital assembly scheduled for tomorrow on how to best approach the issue moving forwards.

  Quietly, Gahn wondered in what ways he could silently sabotage their efforts. His options are certainly limited; after all, they know him and his family thoroughly to the point of transparency, and he couldn’t risk anything that might bring them back harm.

  For a fleeting moment, he considered somehow killing all of them in cold blood with his bare hands. Consequences thereafter be damned, right? Perhaps the ensuing power struggle would allow enough time for Vertan to do something, if the delusional hope that he’s still alive turned out to be true. Unfortunately, Gahn came to the quick realization that he cannot simply do so. Not everyone is going to be present; some may dial in their presence remotely. Furthermore, given that they’re going to be smart about it, they’ll likely have security present like they always will. Attempting to kill any one of them like he initially considered would be meaningless suicide.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  He’ll be forced into catering to their demands regardless. Perhaps he can stall them. If it is true that Vertan had made it, then as long as there are Happians, there’s the chance that this could be put to a stop. He has seen and heard enough of their discussions to know that their project will meet its final conclusion in a few months’ time, though likely less since they generally run by conservative estimates. The more realistic estimate comes down to within several weeks.

  Perhaps he can subtly lead them in the wrong directions, accumulating unnoticeable mistakes to prolong their efforts, buying more time for Vertan to prepare on the other side for a counter strike even past their projected completion date.

  That is, if Vertan is still alive out there at all. Gahn has no idea.

  Regardless, at this point, he has to try all that he’s got. To him, what other options did he have that could remotely offer some semblance of redemption? He despised himself for letting it ever get to this point, that it could have been far easier far earlier had he simply listened. The only silver lining now is that as dire as the circumstances were, he is now on the inside of their system.

  *****

  Gahn found himself sickened by those he was surrounded with as he sat through the meeting.

  Sitting around an elaborately ornate table, he is with several of the Coalition’s top elites. projecting all across the table are various different holodisplays from hidden projectors that emitted the likenesses of several more people present for the meeting, dialing in remotely from elsewhere. Surrounding the room are armed bodyguards, standing guard stoically at the doors.

  Increasingly, Gahn felt disgusted watching the people around him discuss these matters. They all behaved and looked oddly normal for the demons they truly are. It became somehow poetically ironic to him that it was them who labeled an entire ethnic group as “demons”, and that it was the most egregious example of projection he had ever seen. Moreover, he felt increasingly disgusted with himself as well for having gotten himself here to sit amongst them, and began increasingly hollow and shameful of it all.

  “I’m not entirely sure if I agree with you here,” says one of the men, named Quornus. “It’s a delicate balance, what we’ve held up out there, even as expensive as it is. It keeps them preoccupied and away from us. Pulling our resources back for this last push could risk opening the floodgates and having them rush in to overwhelm us! They manage to get even one of their own here and it’s over. Seeing how the last one went, it’s a miracle that we got off this lucky.”

  “I don’t like the way you framed that,” replies Rabilin. “That’s suggesting that we are only holding out from them winning, which is not the case. Rather, they are using their resources to keep us preoccupied and away from them. Think about it; every time we almost make meaningful progress, they open up a new front behind our backs, and we have to run off to confront it so that we don’t eat a more expensive loss.”

  “Here’s another way to think about this,” Viskarin adds. “This has always been a defensive war for them; we have something they don’t, which is that we’ve kept them from ever accessing our home territories since the beginning. If we can meaningfully find where they’ve dragged their planet off to for the past while now, there’s really nothing they can do about it. Are those other fronts really going to matter that much when the homeworld is at stake? We can just let it burn!”

  “You really think getting the homeworld will actually rid us of these vermin?” retorts a man named Fiorin. “Besides, that’s what failed with them the first time, attempting a surprise blitz on them, and look where that got us! Are we really just going to try that again? Have we not learned the lengths they will go to? They’re unnatural! Hypernatural! They’ll just move to another planet if they have to!”

  “And that’ll be the death of them,” chuckles Rabilin. “We’d still have gotten rid of their most valuable base. It will be different this time. With our newfound powers by then, it will overwhelm them no matter what, and they’ll be forced on the run as we pick the rest of them off. The tides will have turned in our favor, by then.”

  “That is, of course, if we can actually find the damn planet, right?” says Quornus frustratingly. “At least do tell me this is in development, because things have not been well on my end!”

  “Relax now, Quornus,” sneers Viskarin. “Of course it is. That’s why we have with us a very special witness and informant. Mr. Gahn Ramlik, you were one of the few survivors to come out of Olmona, is that correct?”

  Gahn looks over to Viskarin across the table from his seat, and refocuses his gaze.

  “That would be correct, sir,” replies Gahn.

  “Gahn here is an admiral of Ulminh, who was responsible for the safe transport of Subject-000002 when it crashed on his planet,” Viskarin continues. “Unfortunately for him though, his mission gets hijacked by the terrorist Zviedal, and then further betrayed by the disgraced General Hiau when cooperating with her. Truly unlucky series of events. Now, do tell us, Gahn, what did you witness while you were there in Olmona?”

  Everyone at the table turns to face Gahn. He maintains a steely face.

  “I retreated to allow Zviedal and the Subject to be captured into Hiau’s custody as originally planned,” states Gahn. “This did not happen however, and as you all know, Hiau defected, supposedly in favor of Zviedal’s mission to take the Subject to her homeworld. A deadly battle ensued during my retreat, and I witnessed Olmona falling as my remaining troops and I made it out in time.”

  “Good, good,” chimes Viskarin. “Now, the important part of the question is, did you see them make it through?”

  All eyes continued to lay intensely upon Gahn, waiting for what he had to say next.

  “I’m not entirely sure, as it is tough to say from the distance,” Gahn finally answers. “But given the timing and thorough destruction, I find it highly unlikely that Zviedal, Hiau, and the Subject could have survived in that instance. The gateway they attempted to access appeared to have been destroyed before they could reach it.”

  Debate and chatter followed this statement. They for now seem to be under the assumption that the Happians are all unaware of their secret progress. An air of relief for them sets in. Their timetables could at least relax somewhat, even with the rising pressure of the public masses.

  Gahn found himself hoping that his statement was false.