The transport hub was silent, save for the soft, rhythmic hum of the elevator's standby power and the sound of my own ragged breathing. Anya didn't press me for more. She just waited, a still point of calm in the storm that was raging inside my head. She knelt in front of me, a silent guardian, giving me the space I needed to pull the shattered pieces of my identity back together. The photograph of me and Ben was still glowing on the console screen behind her, a silent accusation, a testament to a life I had tried to erase.
"Before college," I began, my voice low and unsteady, the words feeling foreign in my mouth after years of suppression. "Before the sales job... before I was this person... I was someone else. I was Sergeant Leo Karter. United States Army Special Forces."
Anya's eyes widened slightly, the only outward sign of her surprise. Her expression didn't change, but I could see a new understanding dawning in her gaze. She was processing this new information, re-evaluating everything she thought she knew about me. My "gamer knowledge," my surprising tactical instincts from the very first match, my ability to stay calm under fire—it all clicked into place for her, I was sure. It wasn't the knowledge of a gamer. It was the muscle memory of a soldier.
"I enlisted right out of high school," I continued, the memories now flowing freely, the dam I had so carefully constructed for years now completely broken. "I wanted... I don't know. Purpose, I guess. Adventure. I grew up in a small town with no future. The army promised me the world. It promised me I could be a hero." I let out a short, bitter laugh. "I was young and stupid. I believed them."
"Ben—Sergeant Ben Carter—he was in my unit. He joined up around the same time. We went through everything together. Basic training, selection, the Q Course... everything. He was my partner. My best friend. He was the brother I never had. We went through hell together, and it forged something between us. We saw things. We did things."
I didn't need to tell her the specifics, the classified details of missions in dusty, forgotten countries. She was a veteran of her own wars; she would understand. I told her about the feeling. The weight. The moral cost of being a weapon for a cause you only half-understood. I told her about the camaraderie, the brotherhood that was stronger than blood, the feeling of knowing that the men to your left and right would die for you without a second's hesitation.
And I told her about the final tour.
"It was a bad one. We were tired. We had been in-country for almost a year. We were extended twice. Morale was low. We were getting sloppy." My voice grew distant as I retreated into the memory. "We were on a routine patrol, something we had done a hundred times before. We were ambushed. Our vehicle, the lead Humvee, was hit by an IED. A big one."
The memory was so vivid I could almost smell the smoke and burning diesel. "It was chaos... fire everywhere. A perfect kill box. I was trapped in the passenger seat. My leg was pinned under the dashboard, shattered. I couldn't get out." I looked down at my own two legs, whole and healthy in this digital world. The phantom pain of the old injury ached. "The whole vehicle was on fire. The ammo inside started to cook off. I thought I was going to die. I accepted it."
I took a shaky breath. "But Ben... he came back for me. He was in the vehicle behind us. He ran back into the fire, ignoring the orders to retreat. He ignored the bullets. He wrenched the door open, cut my seatbelt, and pulled me out just before the fuel tank exploded. He saved my life."
"His uniform was on fire," I whispered, the image seared into my brain. "He was burned. Badly. But he never let go of me. He dragged me to cover and saved my life, and he never said a word about it afterwards. It was just... what you did."
"After that," I said, my voice growing quiet, "I was done. The physical injuries healed, eventually. But... something inside me broke that day. I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't be that person. The hero I wanted to be felt like a monster. The purpose felt like a lie. So I left. I took my honorable discharge, used the GI Bill for college, and I tried to bury him. The soldier. Sergeant Karter. I never talked about it. I never told anyone. I just wanted to be normal. I wanted a boring life."
"And Ben?" Anya asked softly, her voice gentle.
"He stayed in," I said, my voice thick with a guilt so profound it was almost choking me. "He loved it. He believed in it. He got promoted. He recovered from his burns. We tried to keep in touch, but it was hard. I didn't want to talk about the old days, and he didn't know how to talk about anything else. Every time he called, it was a reminder of the man I was so desperately trying to run away from. So I stopped answering his calls. I let us drift apart."
I looked back at the screen, at Ben's smiling, youthful face. "The last time I talked to him, over a year ago, he told me he was getting into VR training simulations. Said it was the future of combat training. He must have been at the same advanced military VR center as me on the day of the crash. Maybe he was even there to see me. I'll never know."
The pieces of the puzzle clicked together with a horrifying finality. "He was trapped in the code, a 'ghost,' while I got a new body. A new chance. He must have been watching me from the very beginning. Watching me stumble around Dustgate, terrified, a shadow of the man he knew. He must have hated me. For getting a body. For surviving when he didn't. For abandoning him, all over again."
Anya was silent for a long time, her expression unreadable. She was processing the confession, connecting the dots of the past few weeks. I had laid the darkest part of my soul bare for her, and I braced myself for her judgment, for her disgust.
"So that's it," she said finally, her voice surprisingly gentle. There was no judgment in it, only a quiet understanding. "That's why you're so good at this. It was never a game for you. Not really."
"I tried to make it one," I said bitterly. "I tried to pretend. It was easier than remembering."
"You didn't kill him, Leo," she said, her voice firm now, pulling me back from the edge of my self-loathing. "The System killed him. The crash killed him. The Archivist twisted him into a monster and used him. You fought that monster because that's what he had become. You didn't know. You couldn't have known."
Her words were meant to comfort, to absolve me, but they offered little solace. I should have known. On some subconscious level, his fighting style, his tactics, his rage... it had all felt familiar. I had just refused to see it because seeing it would have meant facing the man I had buried.
"He paid the ultimate price to get this message to me," I said, my gaze returning to the photograph on the screen. "Why? Why go through all that just to show me this picture? If he hated me so much, why not just let me die in ignorance?"
It wasn't an accusation. It wasn't a final curse. It was something else. A final message. A final mission. And I knew, with a certainty that settled deep in my bones, that I had to see it through. For him.