Chapter 19: For the first time, Eden feels hope.

Eden keeps a diary.

The digital diary in his wristcom can be read with a keypress and deleted with a keypress, convenient and unsettling. Black words on white paper are a lot more reassuring to his eyes. Every day, he writes without pause, setting down everything he remembers, converting the ink in his pen cartridges into dense text in his notebooks.

This too is meaningless, to be honest. It’s easy to delete a digital record, but it’s not hard to throw a match onto a page either. Eden uses the pen and paper that Yasha provides, lives inside Yasha’s house. There’s nowhere he can hide the diary. The virtual butler oversees every corner in this house, even if it no longer shows itself out of consideration for him. Sometimes, Eden is overcome with a sudden rage, ripping up the pages, snapping the pens, slamming the door, collapsing into his bed. When he gets back up, the pen and paper will be once again returned to the table, all good as new.

Eden thinks about carving something into his body, but if Yasha has the will, there’s no place on his body secret enough, and no scar that can’t be repaired. He lies in bed, thinking the same thoughts forcefully again and again, as if by repeating something enough times in his brain, he can get it to stay.

He thinks, Eden. 329. Yasha.

He thinks, I love her. I’m afraid of her. Even now, I don’t hate her.

Yes, for now, even now, he can’t make himself hate Yasha. The past Eden who’d joined the Revolutionary Army must have considered the risks of rebellion and the price of failure when he made the choice. The commander of the Revolutionary Army and the daughter of the Consul were by nature diametrically opposed; the victory of one meant the doom of the other. It would have been this way regardless of whether a romance out of a classical tragedy was involved. Now that he knows the full story, Eden can’t blame Yasha. And if he’d once hated the daughter of the Consul, he doesn’t remember.

At this point in his thoughts, Eden can only laugh ruefully. Memory deletion is too handy. Even if he hated Yasha to his bones right now, all she needs is a single high-tech surgery, and he won’t ever hate again. The effect is so dramatic, the procedure so convenient. What’s there to prevent the powerful from using it?

His days thus pass in a muddle.

After their conversation, Yasha left in a panic, and she’s yet to return. The virtual butler provides for all his day-to-day needs; he’s given more room to roam in the house, and more facilities for passing the time, such as a gym and library. The library is at first all novels, but soon a research report begins to appear, placed in the most eye-catching spots. Eden suspects it’s all part of some greater plan, but it’s not like he still has anything left worth scheming for. The day he discovers the first research report, he goes ahead and reads it.

At first, Eden doesn’t understand anything. He recognizes every word on the report individually, but put together, it’s like reading a different language. There’s no mandatory education in the Protected Area. being literate is already an achievement; understanding the contents of the report is asking too much of him. He tries to question the butler, who answers everything he asks, and brings him related books, whether his questions and books have anything to do with the research report.

A word points him to a book; a sentence directs him into an entire field of study. Understanding the report is a massive undertaking, like asking a middle school dropout to teach himself a grad school course. Fortunately, Yasha isn’t short on or stingy with supplementary materials, and Eden has no shortage of time.

He takes several months to understand the report, which turns out to be a summary of research into how to protect an important figure from assassination. Eden’s brief fill-in-the-blank style self-study lets him just barely get the gist of the report, but no more. He reads the last line, turns off the screen, and pinches the bridge of his nose, wondering if he’s misread Yasha’s intentions—he really can’t figure out what a research report on how to prevent assassination has to do with him.

The next day, Yasha visits.

She smiles at Eden, looking weary but also intensely energetic, like someone who’s drunk too much coffee after pulling an all-nighter. Eden regards her wordlessly. Yasha speaks first. “Come with me. Let me show you some things.”

After half a year, Eden leaves this house for the first time.

They go through one teleporter after another, through rooms forming a disjointed labyrinth. He doesn’t see anyone the entire way, but the marks of technology grow denser and bolder, as if in a few steps they’ve passed through centuries. Eden doesn’t know how far he’s walked when he finds himself shivering inside a white room, his eyes dazzled by the cold light reflected off the machinery inside. As his steps slow, Yasha stops, giving him a comforting expression.

“I won’t do anything to harm you,” she says. “To be honest, we can teleport there directly, but I feel like you wouldn’t want me to take you directly? Last time…”

“Where are we going?” Eden interrupts her.

“The Protected Area command center. The Environmental Regulation room,” Yasha replies without hesitation, reaching a hand toward Eden. “Want me to hold your hand?”

Eden nods. Then he shakes his head. He continues onward.

They do end up in the Protected Area command center.

A few months ago, Eden wouldn’t even have known what he was looking at.

Blobs of light hover in a void, a dense starscape where every nebula hosts an interchange of countless messages. The light-mind turns and calculates at a speed impossible for organic minds. Optical fibers invisible to the naked eye meet here, data from across the entire Protected Area flowing through those arteries to this heart chamber. Components he doesn’t know the name of emit faint hums; the heat produced by light signals fade in an eyeblink, leaving only strange colors on the retinas of those watching it…it’s hard to imagine that the semblance of natural phenomena blanketing the millions of humanity comes from this hulk, covered in the marks of creation by man.

Eden has learned a lot on these few months. Maybe he still can’t pass the entrance exams of the elites, but he does know what they’re looking at. This isn’t just the command center for the Protected Area. They stand inside the Protected Area Core.

This room is the very machine that shields them from outside radiation, that’s created the habitable environment of the Protected Area.

“You’ve already seen the report,” says Yasha. “You should already know what the “Protected Area Core, the ‘Zero Capsule’, and the ‘lie detector’ are, right?”

“In theory,” Eden answers.

You were the one who gave me all those resources. If there’s any problems with them, I wouldn’t be able to tell, he thinks.

“All the research I gave you was genuine. I didn’t tamper with any of it. Even if you don’t believe me, you can see that their contents weren’t invented from thin air,” says Yasha. “My wristcom has a lie detector equipped. The red light shines when it detects a lie. For example, ‘I’m an alpha,’ ‘you’re an alpha,’ ‘I know how to fly a plane,’ ‘I don’t know how to fly a plane,’ see… I expect you’re thinking, I can fake the lie detector too—after all, you don’t know much about the subject. I can’t deny that, but this is all the evidence in my power to provide. I swear on everything I possess and everything I will possess, the lie detector is real. If you want, I’ll wear it whenever I’m around you. I won’t lie to you.”

Her tone is deeply sincere, almost beseeching. Eden doesn’t think he can fully believe it, but he’s not unmoved either. He tightens his lips, silent. Yasha gives a small smile and continues.

“Being the Consul is a high-risk job. Before I was born, my father was already investigating a one-and-done method of preventing assassination. You can’t stop others from coveting what you have; you can only stop their hand by making the price of killing the Consul too high to bear. So my father thought, he should link his life with the safety of the entire Protected Area. If he was murdered, anyone who’d benefit from his death wouldn’t survive either.”

It seemed that the Consul thought the ship should go down with the captain.

“Initially, research went well, and we obtained a ‘Zero Capsule.’ The capsule would be installed inside the Consul’s brain. Once activated, it can’t be removed, can’t be stopped, can’t be reversed. The plan was, once the Consul died by assassination, the capsule would send out a signal for the destruction of the Protected Area Core, exposing everyone inside the Protected Area to the extreme temperatures and radiation outside. But the researchers stumbled over the next question: how do you tell the difference between the Consul dying of natural causes and dying of assassination? The experiments went on for years, but right up to my father’s poisoning, they still hadn’t made any inroads. The capsule can only be triggered by a single condition, but there’s a thousand ways to assassinate somebody.”

The report had explained this in detail. The trauma of a scalpel incision is similar to that of a stabbing. The mental shock of a nightmare is similar to that of an assault. Even advanced technology was helpless against the challenge. Linking the safety of the Consul with the Protected Area Core proved impossible to reconcile with avoiding unintended catastrophe at the slightest error . In the end, the project had been shelved.

Yasha touches her wristcom; it scans a line of light over her head, projecting a cross-section as a hologram. Eden stares at the hologram for a few seconds before his eyes abruptly widen.

The Zero Capsule is installed in Yasha’s head, identical to the diagrams in the research.

“Father’s research never succeeded. The capsule can still only be triggered by a single condition,” Yasha said unhurriedly, as if she didn’t have a button that could destroy the world in her head. “I set the only condition as ‘trigger when the paired device is triggered.’ And the paired device…”

She stretches out her hand again. A device the size of a pill lies on her palm.

“The paired device can only be triggered by the surgery used on Exiles,” says Yasha.

For a moment, Eden’s expression is blank. Then realization shoots up his spine like lightning and explodes in his brain with a deafening sound. He takes rapid breaths, even takes a step back. Could it, no, it can’t be, she can’t be saying…

“No surgery is required. You just have to swallow it,” says Yasha. “The nanobots enter the ingester’s body and install the device in the brain. It activates one hour later. Like the Zero Capsule, it can’t be removed, can’t be stopped, can’t be reversed. If you choose to take it, no one will be able to touch your memories. Any level of brainwashing will activate the Zero Capsule. I’ll die, and simultaneously the Protected Area Core will self-destruct. Humanity will face true extinction on Earth. No one will survive.

She says that.

The lie detector does not light up.

Every hair on him stands on end. Eden trembles, and doesn’t know what emotion is causing it. It could be a lie. It could be a trap. But the voice of doubt is growing fainter and fainter. Every ounce of instinct tells him to believe. The red-haired, green-eyed Consul-to-be stands before him, holding the switch capable of destroying herself and the world, palm up, fingers extended. Her eyes shine. What’s in there…anticipation, the gamble to end all gambles, ecstacy, ecstacy, ecstacy—she’d become aware of that trust between them, that trust against all reason, before Eden did. She’s willing to light the world on fire for it.

“You’re crazy,” Eden says, his voice shaking, already in retreat. “What if there’s someone who wants to destroy the world? What if someone kidnaps me and forcibly…”

“No one will touch you as long as I live!” Yasha cries. Her eyes blaze, perfectly rational and perfectly mad. “If I can’t do it, if I fail to protect you—again—then let it all happen!”

Then let it all happen, if Yasha loses her star once more. If even climbing to the greatest heights isn’t enough to guard her treasure, then let her pay with her life, then let the city become dust and ash, let the survivors wail, let the sun fall. If she must lose again, then there will be no winner left on Earth.

“Believe me,” says Yasha. She doesn’t come closer, only holds her hand out. “I won’t let go of you, but I won’t revise your choice for you. It doesn’t matter to me who you want to become. I’ll still be a dictator, but I won’t be my father. Things will improve. The sky will be reopened. We’ll be okay. We have many, many years to figure out what to do. Take it. Would you like to take it?”

This is madness, Eden thinks. This is inhuman, overweening pride, the deed of a tyrant, utterly wrong…His heart thunders. His fingers tremble. His vision is blurred with tears and he doesn’t know why he’s crying. He thinks, this isn’t love, at the minimum it isn’t normal, it’s completely unhealthy. But what does he know about love? The Eden from before might have been able to teach Yasha how to love, but the current Eden can’t, he himself doesn’t even know how. They’re both monstrosities, like the products of two malformed machines, warped and twisted in different ways but similarly awful. He stares at the pill, thinks about “falling”, “becoming the monster”, “madness.” He thinks of Zero Capsule, the paired device, the doomsday in his imaginings. He…

He feels at peace.

Eden takes the pill and swallows it.

He betrays his former sacrifice, to join a tyrant in her depravity, to aid and abet a madness and obsession that may destroy the world, and he doesn’t care, he doesn’t care one fucking bit. His alpha lets out a joyous shriek. His tyrant launches herself at him, wraps him in her arms, kisses him, congratulates him on his fall. His Yasha laughs aloud, cups his face, babbles how worried she was, how happy she is. The future Consul rests in Eden’s arms, her eyes reflecting a man-made sky.

She says, “We’ll be okay. Everything will be okay.”

For the first time, Eden feels hope.