The image on the screen burned into my retinas, a high-resolution ghost from a life I had tried to murder. ODA 7214. The designation was a key, unlocking a door in my mind that I had sealed shut with years of denial and willful ignorance. My memory, the one I had so carefully suppressed, came rushing back not as a gentle stream, but as a tidal wave. It was a violent, chaotic flood of sights, sounds, and sensations from the world before, so real and vivid it felt like I was drowning.
The oppressive heat of a desert sun beating down on my helmet. The gritty, perpetual taste of sand in my mouth. The deafening, concussive roar of a firefight, a sound so much louder and more visceral than the digitized cracks of the game's weapons. The heavy, solid weight of my M4 rifle, so much more real and consequential than the weightless models in this virtual world.
And Ben's face.
I saw him laughing as we sat on the hood of a dusty Humvee, sharing a lukewarm ration pack that tasted like cardboard. I saw him grim and focused, his eyes dark with concentration as we stacked up on a door, ready to breach. I saw him grinning, giving me a thumbs-up after a successful mission.
And I saw him terrified, his face smeared with soot and blood, his own uniform on fire, shouting my name as he pulled me from the twisted, burning wreckage of our vehicle.
My legs gave out. The strength vanished from my body. I collapsed to my knees in front of the console, my hands pressed hard against my temples as if I could physically hold the memories back, as if I could stop the flood. But I couldn't. They were a part of me. They were the foundation of the man I had tried so desperately not to be.
The Ghost wasn't just some parasite. He wasn't some random envious soldier. He was a piece of my own soul that I had tried to amputate, and it had come back to haunt me with a vengeance.
"Leo? Leo, what is it?" Anya's voice was a distant, muffled sound from across a vast ocean. She was beside me, her hand on my shoulder, her grip firm and grounding. But I could barely feel it. I was lost in the storm of the past.
I was seeing it all again. The pride I felt the first time I put on the uniform. The sense of belonging, of brotherhood, something I had never felt before and never felt since. The missions. The adrenaline. The killing. The real killing. Not the clean, digital terminations of Aegis Protocol, where bodies conveniently faded away. I remembered the messy, ugly, soul-staining reality of it. The smell of copper and cordite. The weight of the lives I had taken. The faces of the men who hadn't made it back, faces that I would see in my dreams for years.
This was why I had left. This was why I had run. After the ambush, after Ben saved me, I couldn't do it anymore. I had seen behind the curtain of heroism and purpose and found only pain and loss. I had gone to college, taken a soul-crushing sales job, anything to be "normal." I had been running from the man in that photograph. The "killer" Ben had accused me of being. He was right. I was.
And Ben... Ben had stayed in. He had recovered from his burns and re-enlisted. It was all he knew. It was who he was. We had tried to keep in touch. Phone calls filled with long, awkward silences. I didn't want to talk about the past, and he didn't know how to talk about the present. So we drifted apart. I had let us drift apart. It was easier than having him around, a living, breathing reminder of the person I was trying to kill inside myself.
"He knew," I whispered, the words ragged, torn from my throat. "All this time... inside my head... listening to my thoughts, feeling my fear... he knew who I was. And I never recognized him. I never even tried."
The taunts, the insults, the psychological warfare—it all made a new, horrifying kind of sense. When he called me weak, he was comparing me to the soldier he had served with, the man who had charged back into a fire for him. When he talked about my lack of killer instinct, he was remembering the person who had fought beside him, who had done what needed to be done to survive. He wasn't just envious of my avatar. He felt betrayed. I had abandoned him in the real world, and then I had abandoned him again in this one, treating him like a monster, a parasite to be excised.
The deal with The Archivist... the memory of it was a new kind of agony. It was no longer a clever tactical sacrifice. It was a monstrous act. I hadn't just sacrificed a memory of professional pride. I had paid a piece of my soul to a digital devil to erase my best friend. The irony was so profound it was physically painful. I had given up the memory of being a successful salesman, a hollow ambition I had chased to escape my past, to destroy the last remnant of a man who represented true loyalty, a brother who had saved my life.
I looked at my hands. They were shaking. Not with fear, but with a deep, soul-shaking grief and guilt that was more powerful than any in-game debuff or status effect. Who was I? Was I Leo, the college student? Leo, the gamer? Leo, the soldier? Or was I just Leo, the man who runs away? The man who betrays his friends to save himself?
Anya knelt in front of me, her good knee on the cold floor, her face a mask of deep concern. She didn't push, she didn't demand answers. She just waited. "Leo, talk to me," she said softly. "Who was he?"
I finally looked up from the screen, my eyes meeting hers. I saw no judgment in her gaze, only a steady, patient strength. She deserved the truth. She was the only person in this world who did.
"He was my friend," I said, my voice breaking on the last word. "His name was Ben. And I think... I think I killed him."