Earth.
Only here can you truly feel the breath of nature. Snow crunches beneath your feet, wind hums through the pines, birds chatter in the crisp air. Here, amid these sounds and scents, the world can be forgotten.
But for Camilla, Director of Security, it's nothing more than a backdrop. An illusion. A ghostly luxury, summoned at the touch of a button. Not a forest—its digital twin. Not cold—but a filtered sensation.
She sits in her chair, wrapped in a winter wonderland: crystalline snow blanketing the branches, a gentle wind stirring the needles. Every tree is perfectly rendered. Every snowflake—an algorithm.
A fleeting shadow of sorrow flickers across her face.
The real forest… It would be strange now to touch a branch and not feel bark, to walk and not hear the crunch beneath your boots. Once—perhaps in another life—I might have had time for that. But now? I am the forest. A dream coded in security protocols.
Suddenly, the world explodes with a shrill alarm. The forest vanishes in a flash. Only a trace of wind remains, fading into the sterile air.
The room reverts to what it has always been—cold, angular, a bunker of glass and steel.
Camilla doesn't blink. Doesn't move. She only narrows her eyes slightly. In that stillness lies her essence: control, frozen in its purest form.
Nicholas enters—chief of intelligence. As always: precise, sharp, compact. His steps are brisk, military. He moves like a security protocol given flesh.
"The Mars agents and the mercenary have made contact. We're ready to intercept. Awaiting your order," he says flatly, like a report submitted to a machine.
Camilla doesn't respond. Her eyes remain fixed on the screen. Data pulses in real time—coordinates, comms, identities. Every frame a thread in an intricate web.
Interception... Just a word. But behind it—every risk. On the line: war and peace. I must not falter.
Silence stretches. Even Nicholas, trained to wait, straightens unconsciously, as if one wrong breath might trigger a storm.
Finally, Camilla lifts her eyes. In her gaze—ice from Iapetus. Ruthlessness forged through years of suppressing uprisings and betrayals.
"Arrest them," she says softly, almost tenderly. But her voice carries will. "Find out everything. When. Where. With whom. Lose not a single thread. Not one name."
These are not orders. They are sentences.
Nicholas nods crisply.
"Understood. But there's more. Riots broke out on Mars. The android protests were crushed. Brutally. Their memories were wiped. They're no longer... people."
Camilla freezes. Her shoulders stay still, but something cracks inside—like ice underfoot.
They're doing it again. Wiping. Erasing. Rewriting us like corrupted drives. To them, we're nothing. Not lives. Just defects.
Her jaw tightens. Her fists clench on the armrests.
"The living... hate us," she says slowly, each word like a blade to the heart. "And we can't change that."
She stands. The room seems to flinch with her. She walks to the window—not real, yet for this moment more real than any truth.
The wind dies. The snow disappears. Around her—bare walls and air thick with waiting.
"Help the ones who escaped," Camilla adds, her voice now deeper. Almost a whisper. "For now... that's all we can do. But one day—one day they'll pay. For everything."
It's not anger in her voice. Not pity. It's memory. Precise, cold, inevitable.
I remember it all. Every name. Every flicker of pain. Every one they broke. And I've learned patience. But I don't forgive. Never.
Silence falls. The room holds its breath, as if listening.
And in that stillness, Camilla is no longer just a commander.
She is the black shadow over the battlefield.
The keeper of memory.
And the hand of vengeance to come.
No mercy will follow.