Kindness was said to be nowhere to be seen. Such had always been the case, yet many still sought it. Though those many were left disappointed, told there was no kindness in this world, or killed while pursuing it. Not all had the same definition of kindness. Some thought of it as extreme as leaving an easy death, or even eating the enemy's body in an act of cannibalism, a way to remember your enemy, as kindness had been seen in the City. How ugly this world was, but also how beautiful it was when kindness was so easy to find. Those who pursued it tried searching in high places or somewhere deep, never realizing it was easy to find like how a child finds friends randomly.
Rowbotham was carrying a crying small girl in his arms, her face buried against his shoulder. Shmuel ran behind, carrying Opportunity on his back.
Opportunity looked down at her arm. A small blue screen flickered across her prosthetic, displaying the current time. She cross-referenced it with the position of the sky, calculating, adjusting for the smoke haze and the angle of what little light remained.
"3:10," she said quietly.
Shmuel's breathing was ragged. "What?"
"The time. It's 3:10. We need to find shelter before the Sweepers come."
Shmuel's eyes widened. "How long do we have?"
"Four minutes."
"Bloody hell."
Rowbotham scanned the surroundings. Buildings stood in various states of collapse, walls sheared off, roofs caved in, support beams twisted like broken limbs. None of them looked structurally sound. None of them looked like they'd be recognized by the Head as legitimate residential structures.
Shmuel caught up beside him, panting. "None of the buildings near us probably fulfill the requirements anymore. The War did way too much damage."
Rowbotham didn't respond immediately. His eyes moved across the street. Others were running, G Corp employees in torn uniforms, I Corp hired fixers clutching weapons, civilians stumbling over rubble, all of them scattering in different directions, desperate to find somewhere, anywhere, to hide.
He knew none of them would be alive if they all just kept running like that.
Rowbotham stopped.
Shmuel stopped beside him. "What are you doing?"
Rowbotham set the small girl down gently, his hand still on her shoulder to steady her. Then he took a deep breath.
And shouted.
"IF YOU WANT TO HAVE A CHANCE TO SURVIVE, NOW IS THE TIME TO STOP RUNNING AND START FIGHTING! THE SWEEPERS DON'T CARE WHO YOU ARE! THEY DON'T CARE WHAT SIDE YOU'RE ON! IF WE DON'T WORK TOGETHER, WE'RE ALL DEAD!"
His voice echoed across the open field.
People slowed. Some stopped. Others turned, confused, suspicious.
A man approached. Slightly below average height, with golden-brown eyes and dark brown hair tied back in a ponytail. A five o'clock shadow lined his jaw. He wore half-rimmed black glasses, and his right arm was a segmented, augmented limb that terminated in a massive, claw-like appendage.
"You're a Proxy," the man said, looking at Rowbotham's cloak.
"The name is Rowbotham and yes I am."
"And you're asking us to fight alongside you."
"I am."
The man studied him for a moment, then nodded. "My name is Gregor. I'm a manager of G Corp. If this can save as many of my men as possible, I'll work with my enemy, just this once."
A young man with blond hair and light-blue eyes stepped up beside Gregor, saluting sharply. Bandages wrapped the right side of his face. He wore the G Corp uniform, his augmentations clearly visible a bug arm and two pairs of insect wings folded against his back.
"It's not a problem, because Manager Gregor is with us!" the Assistant Private said brightly.
Gregor glanced at him. "How many under my command are still mobile?"
"Thirty, sir. Most of them think it's impossible to find shelter now."
"Then tell them we're not finding shelter. We're making a stand."
Within a single minute, more people gathered. Fixers with cracked weapons. Soldato of the Thumb, their tattoos visible under torn shirts. Index Proselytes in white cloaks, bloodied and exhausted. All of them thinking the same thing.
Because they weren't dumb.
Shmuel looked around, stunned. "This is… this is a lot of people."
"Enemy and ally," Opportunity said quietly from his back. "Standing together."
Rowbotham stepped forward, his voice carrying authority. "This is an open field. The terrain advantage is not in our favor. We're outnumbered in every account. But the Sweepers come in three waves. We can use that."
Gregor stepped up beside him. "We fight in rows. When one row becomes tired or overwhelmed, the next row moves forward to cover them. We rotate every fifteen minutes. Four rows total."
"Those who can't fight still have to fight," Rowbotham added. "But they'll be sandwiched between more experienced fighters. Front and back coverage."
"Who's in the first row?" someone asked.
"I am," Rowbotham said.
"I'm with him," Shmuel said.
Gregor nodded. "I'll take the third row. My Assistant Private will coordinate the second."
Someone handed Opportunity a simple sword. She looked at it, then at Shmuel.
"I've never used one of these before," she said.
"You're brilliant," Shmuel said. "You'll figure it out."
The small girl stood in the middle of them, still crying softly. Rowbotham knelt beside her.
"Stay close to me," he said. "Don't leave this circle."
She nodded, wiping her eyes.
The street was quiet now. Everyone had stopped running. They stood in rows, weapons drawn, breathing hard.
Opportunity checked her arm again. "3:13."
"One minute," Rowbotham said.
Gregor adjusted his glasses. "I never thought I'd die fighting beside the Index."
"I never thought I'd die fighting beside G Corp," Rowbotham said.
"Well," Gregor said, "at least we'll have a story to tell if we survive this."
"If," Shmuel muttered.
The horizon shifted.
A low sound began, like a hum, or a growl, or the scrape of something vast dragging itself forward.
Red shapes appeared in the distance.
Hundreds of them.
Thousands.
The first wave.
Opportunity's voice was very small. "They're here."
Rowbotham raised his sword.
"FIRST ROW, HOLD THE LINE!"
The Sweepers charged.
And the survivors charged back.
The first wave hit like a tsunami.
Red forms erupted across the field, amorphous, writhing, consuming everything in their path. The Sweepers moved as a mass, individual bodies indistinguishable from the whole, a tide of hunger and absorption.
Shmuel raised both mechanical arms and slammed them downward.
A Sweeper exploded into fragments of red fluid and dissipating matter.
Two more came at him simultaneously from different angles. His left arm intercepted the first, fingers locking around its gelatinous form, squeezing. His right arm swung upward, connecting with the second, sending it spinning backward into the crowd.
But there were always more.
Rowbotham moved like a force of nature.
His sword swept in a wide arc. Three Sweepers were bisected, their bodies separating into useless pieces that couldn't reform. He pivoted. Another slash. Two more dead. His footwork was perfect, economical, lethal, leaving no opening. The ground around him became a perimeter of severed red matter, a kill zone.
A fixer to his left screamed.
Rowbotham didn't look. He was already intercepting the Sweeper that had lunged at the man's unprotected side. One stroke. Done.
But the fixer was already down, wounded, overwhelmed by two more that came behind the first. Rowbotham killed those too. Too slow.
Opportunity fought from behind Shmuel, her inexperience showing in every movement. Her sword was awkward in her hands, the weight unfamiliar. But she managed a slash here, a cut there, drawing the attention of approaching Sweepers.
Shmuel surged forward immediately, his mechanical arms becoming a blur of motion. He threw his body between Opportunity and the oncoming mass, taking hits meant for her, absorbing impacts that would have torn her apart.
One Sweeper wrapped around his left arm. He tore it apart with his right.
Another lunged at his face. He caught it with both hands and crushed it.
"STAY BEHIND ME!" he roared.
The little girl clung to the back of Rowbotham's coat, her small hands gripping the fabric. She didn't cry anymore. There was only terror and the sound of killing.
The first row was being overwhelmed faster than expected.
Bodies were falling. Fixers who had been brave enough to stand were being consumed, their screams cut short as the Sweepers absorbed them completely. The line was fragmenting. Gaps were opening.
Rowbotham made eye contact with the Assistant Private coordinating the second row.
He raised his hand sharply.
Signal.
The second row moved immediately, rushing forward to fill the collapsing gaps. Fresh fighters with energy still in their limbs, weapons raised, forming a new wall.
Opportunity and the little girl fell back, moving behind the advancing second row as it pushed past them. Opportunity glanced back once at Shmuel, but he was already engaged with a cluster of Sweepers.
Rowbotham didn't fall back.
Neither did Shmuel.
They held their ground at the seam between the first and second rows, fighting with the newcomers who poured forward to reinforce them. Rowbotham's blade found targets constantly. A Sweeper died. Simple.
Shmuel was bleeding now. Gashes across his shoulders where the Sweepers had found gaps in his clothes, his augmented a bit torn, red fluid mixing with the red matter of the Sweepers he was killing.
But he didn't stop.
One of the new fighters, a soldato of the Thumb with a rifle, positioned himself to Rowbotham's right. They fell into rhythm immediately, each covering the other's gaps. The soldato's rifle. Rowbotham's sword. Together they held a small pocket of the line.
More Sweepers.
More killing.
The ground was slick now with red fluid and organic matter. The air smelled like copper and dissolution.
Gregor watched from the third row, calculating, waiting for his moment. He could see Rowbotham fighting, Shmuel fighting, the second row holding but straining. The Assistant Private was shouting orders, trying to redistribute fighters, trying to reinforce the weakest points.
It wasn't working fast enough.
The Sweepers kept coming.
And coming.
And coming.
Rowbotham's breath was ragged, but his sword didn't slow. He had killed more Sweepers than any three fighters on this field. His arms ached. His shoulders burned. But he was still standing. Still fighting.
Shmuel was beside him, mechanical arms working overtime, his organic body pushed past normal limits, running on adrenaline and desperation.
The little girl was behind them now, safe, surrounded by the fighters of the second row.
Opportunity was further back, her simple sword useless but her presence there, alive, still breathing.
The first wave stopped.
Not because the Sweepers retreated. Because there were no more Sweepers coming.
The ones that had passed through their line continued onward, absorbing whatever organic matter they found in the ruins. The ones that had been killed remained as dispersed red matter across the field.
Silence descended.
Silence of exhaustion, of bodies still trembling with adrenaline, of people trying to remember how to breathe normally.
A soldato of the Thumb moved through the field, stepping over corpses searching for ammunition. He found a rifle on the ground beside a dead comrade. Checked the magazine. Empty. Moved to another body. Found three bullets. Moved on.
He passed Shmuel, who was kneeling, both mechanical arms hanging at his sides, the joints still smoking slightly from the exertion.
The soldato stopped.
He looked at Shmuel's arms. Looked at the mechanical hands with their reinforced structure, the pistons visible at the wrists.
"You've got chambers in those," the soldato said. It wasn't a question.
Shmuel looked up, nodding slowly.
The soldato counted out twelve bullets from his collection and threw them to Shmuel.
"Use these. Better than nothing."
Shmuel caught them, examining each one carefully. He loaded two into his left hand's chamber. Two into his right. Pocketed the remaining eight.
He tested the action. The bullets were secure. Tight.
"Thank you," Shmuel said.
The soldato nodded and moved on, continuing his grim collection.
Rowbotham was sitting on a piece of broken concrete, his sword across his lap. Blood covered his clothes, his arms, his face.
Shmuel walked over to him.
"How long until the next wave hit?" Shmuel asked.
"Maybe eight minutes. Ten if we're lucky."
Shmuel sat beside him, his mechanical hands whirring softly as they cooled.
Rowbotham looked at the field. The bodies. The scattered red matter. The fixers and soldato sitting in clusters, checking injuries, redistributing ammunition, preparing for the next push.
"There were a lot more deaths caused by the Sweepers in this war than people realized,"
"What do you mean?"
"The records don't capture it. Nobody's counting. Everyone's too busy surviving to document who died and how." Rowbotham's voice was flat.
Shmuel was quiet for a moment.
"I haven't heard much about it," he said finally. "And it wasn't recorded much either, was it? Since life was so easy to lose, a lot of reasons were left unclear."
Rowbotham nodded slowly. "That's the thing about this city. Death is so common that it becomes invisible. A thousand people die, and nobody knows. A thousand more, and it's just a statistic."
He looked at Shmuel.
"By the time this war ends, nobody will know how many people actually died. The official records will show one number. The truth will be somewhere else entirely."
Opportunity appeared, the little girl holding her hand tightly. The girl was staring at the field, her eyes wide, processing things no child should have to process.
"Eight minutes," Gregor said, walking over to join them. His massive claw-hand was still stained with red. "The Assistant Private is reorganizing the rows. We've lost approximately thirty fighters."
"Thirty?" Shmuel looked up sharply.
"Out of approximately two hundred and fifty," Gregor confirmed. "We're holding. Barely."
Rowbotham stood, picking up his sword. The blade was still sharp. Still ready.
"The second wave will be harder," he said.
Shmuel loaded the last two bullets into his mechanical arms, checking the action one more time. Eight bullets left. Eight shots to make count.
In the distance, the familiar low hum began again.
The second wave was coming.
The second wave crashed in like a second tsunami.
Rowbotham braced himself.
The first impact sent him sliding backward. His sword came up, deflecting a Sweeper's lunge. Another came from his left. He pivoted, slashing.
It wrapped around his arm.
Rowbotham twisted, trying to tear free. Two more Sweepers closed in.
Shmuel moved.
His left mechanical hand fired.
The bullet accelerated through the pneumatic chamber, gaining velocity, and slammed into the Sweeper wrapped around Rowbotham's arm with crushing force. The impact liquefied the creature's structure.
Second bullet.
A Sweeper lunging at Rowbotham's undefended side exploded backward, pulped.
Third bullet.
Shmuel's right hand fired, intercepting an attack from above.
Fourth bullet.
The final round went into a Sweeper that had nearly gotten past both of them toward the second row.
Empty.
Eight bullets remaining in Shmuel's pocket. Useless without a way to reload them quickly.
Then.
A burning star fell from the sky.
It crashed directly into the center of the Sweeper formation, creating a crater, throwing red matter in all directions. The impact point glowed with heat, melting Sweepers that had been too close.
Imogen hovered above the crater, her rifle raised.
She was burning. Her entire body was wrapped in flames that consumed her sanity as they consumed her ammunition. Her eyes had gone distant, unfocused. Her movements were sharp, jerky, barely controlled.
She fired.
Molten rounds tore through the air, aimed at Voyager.
Voyager spun.
His cosmic cloak, the half that covered him, the living nebula, the drifting stars rotated, deflecting the combustible shot. The trajectory changed. The molten rounds curved away and hit the Sweeper mass instead, burning through dozens of them in succession.
Both of them were in their E.G.O forms.
Voyager's transformation was incomplete, deliberately so. Only his right half was covered by the star-filled cloak. Two frameless glass lenses orbited around his head instead of resting on his face, tracing slow elliptical paths. Tears were drawn toward these lenses, shattering into glittering fragments that dissolved into the living space of the cloak.
Sweepers leaped at Voyager.
He didn't fight them on the ground. He floated upward, using the cloak like a wing, the cosmic winds lifting him. One Sweeper jumped, trying to reach him mid-air.
Voyager's cloak deflected it. The same motion that had redirected Imogen's shots now redirected the creature's trajectory, sending it spinning away. Another jumped.
Then he cut.
The edge of the cloak moved like a blade, sharp, precise. A Sweeper split cleanly in half.
Imogen scattered her shots more broadly, trying to hit more Sweepers, trying to give the fighters below breathing room. Within the confusing smoke of the Smoke War, she burned brightly with her rifle, her figure a beacon of molten light against the red haze.
"Why are you trying to save the people down there?"
Voyager's voice cut through the chaos. He asked it loudly.
"Their world doesn't look gentle."
Imogen fired again. Reload. Fire. Her hands moved mechanically, the rifle becoming part of her trembling frame.
"No one can decide someone else's world is gentle or not before knowing the person," she said. Her voice was strained, raw. "But if there's a chance for that world to be gentle…"
She fired again.
"...it's worth it."
Voyager drifted higher, his orbiting lenses catching the light of the Sweepers' red forms.
"That's not a sound argument ," he said.
"Figured," Imogen gasped.
She was reaching her limit.
Her hands shook. The rifle was becoming heavy. The flames covering her body were burning away her control, her reason, her ability to think clearly. Her vision was tunneling, focusing only on targets, on Sweepers, on the need to keep firing, keep burning, keep destroying.
Shmuel was below, out of ammunition, fighting hand-to-hand with the Sweepers, using his mechanical strength to compensate for the lack of bullets.
Rowbotham stood beside him, sword still moving, still lethal, but showing signs of fatigue for the first time.
Imogen fired again.
The molten round curved through the air, redirected by Voyager's cloak, and hit a cluster of Sweepers that had been surrounding a group of fixers.
She was burning.
She was breaking.
But she was still fighting.
Voyager watched her from his distance, orbiting lenses reflecting the chaos below, his cosmic half untouched by the violence, his human half still present but barely, still watching, still observing, still wondering why anyone would fight for something so broken.
Imogen didn't respond.
She just kept burning.
All my style, all my grace.
All I tried to save my face.
Imogen fell from the sky.
Her E.G.O destabilized around her, the flames that had been consuming her sanity now consuming themselves, collapsing inward, unable to sustain the weight of what she was trying to hold together. Her form flickered like a candle in wind, burning bright one moment, dimming the next.
All my guts, try to spill.
All my holes, try to fill.
Shmuel screamed upward, his voice cutting through the chaos of the battlefield.
"IMOGEN! DO THE THING THAT KAMINA DID!"
He didn't know if it would work. He had no idea if Synchronization was something that could be applied to him, if his nature would even allow it, if the connection between them was strong enough to bridge the gap between two people trying to hold themselves together.
But the second row was being overwhelmed. The third line had to come to their aid. The second line was falling back, scattering, leaving a brief window of opportunity in the chaos.
That was all they had.
Shmuel's mechanical hands worked with desperate speed, reloading the chambers with the eight bullets he had left. Each one placed with precision. Each one a prayer.
He whispered to himself, barely audible beneath the screams and the wet sounds of Sweepers consuming flesh.
"Kamina... Give me some strength..."
Imogen floated down toward him, her E.G.O breaking apart around her shoulders like ash in wind.
When she reached him, they looked at each other.
And they laughed.
Loud.
Absurd.
Because what else could they do? Here they were a man made half what he is, and a woman burning herself.
All my money been a long time spent.
On my drugs, on my rent.
On my saving philosophy.
Imogen raised her rifle.
Pointed it at him.
The molten round fired.
The bullet moved through the air, burning hot, carrying all her intention, all her fire, all the things she had tried to show to the hidden world.
It made contact with Shmuel.
And disappeared.
Consumed.
Synchronized.
Imogen's E.G.O turned off completely. Her clothes shifted, the burning fabric cooling back to the normal blue dress she had been wearing.
Shmuel's clothing transformed.
It became an outfit similar to that of a groom at a wedding, formal, structured, designed to hold something sacred. But it was made of molten metal, of burning flow, of fire contained in the shape of devotion. His mechanical arms began to shift as well, the servos and joints becoming liquid fire, still functional, still lethal, but transformed into something else entirely.
The battlefield seemed to hold its breath.
[Synchronize E.G.O :: Wedlocked]
Shmuel jumped upward, his molten arms extending, and caught Imogen mid-fall. He held her against his burning form, and she didn't flinch at the heat. She had been burning so long that his fire was familiar.
"Why?" Shmuel asked, breathing hard. "Why were you fighting Voyager?"
Imogen looked at him, her eyes clear for the first time in hours. Exhausted, but clear.
"He wants to delete all the gentle worlds there is," she said. Her voice was fragile. "He wants to erase every possibility of kindness. Because—"
She couldn't finish.
Shmuel understood.
Imogen reached up and touched his head gently, her trembling hand pressing against his temple.
The E.G.O bridged them.
Information flowed. Intention. The reason she had burned herself alive in this chaos. It was vague, fragmentary, broken into pieces by her fractured mind and his half-mechanical perception.
But it was enough.
He understood.
It goes, all my troubles on a burning pile. All lit up and I start to smile.
Below them, the Sweepers kept coming. The battle continued. Rowbotham was still fighting, still holding the line, but his movements were slower, getting more and more desperate. Voyager drifted higher, his cosmic cloak deflecting attacks, his orbiting lenses watching everything with the cold detachment of someone who had already decided all worlds weren't worth saving.
A Synchronization between a man who was barely human and a woman who had set herself on fire. A union that made no sense.
But in the absurdity was the answer.
If I catch fire then I'll change my aim.
Throw my troubles at the pearly gates.
Shmuel held Imogen as the molten metal covering him began to move, to flow, to reshape itself into something that was neither weapon nor protection but both simultaneously. Around them, the E.G.O burned like a contained star.
The second row saw them.
The fighters who had been wavering, falling back, losing hope.
They saw two people who had chosen to burn together rather than burn alone.
And they stood again.
Because sometimes kindness isn't logical. Sometimes it's just broken things deciding that the kind worlds are worth saving not because it deserves it, but because someone or somewhere has to believe it does.
Shmuel placed Imogen gently on the ground.
She collapsed to one knee, her entire body trembling, sweat dripping down her face. Her rifle was heavy in her hands. Her vision was blurred. Every muscle screamed at her to stop, to rest, to accept that she had given everything she had.
She loaded more bullets anyway.
Her hands shook as she worked the mechanism, sliding rounds into the magazine with mechanical desperation. She raised the rifle, aimed it at the mass of Sweepers pressing in from the sides, and fired.
The rounds tore through them.
She was a shell now. An empty thing running on fumes and the desperate need to keep fighting, to keep burning, to prove that she was living freely with principle.
Shmuel jumped.
He rose high above the battlefield, his molten form silhouetted against the smoke-filled sky, and dove directly into the sea of Sweepers. Not away from them. Not around them. Into them.
His mechanical hand came down in a punch.
The impact created a crater. The Sweepers in a fifteen-meter radius were obliterated, liquefied, scattered into useless matter. The shockwave rippled outward. Fighters stumbled. The ground shook.
Shmuel screamed upward, his voice cutting through the chaos like a blade.
"THERE ARE ALWAYS GENTLE WORLDS THAT ARE WORTH THE SHOT TO PROTECT THEM! SO DON'T YOU DARE TRY TO TURN ALL THOSE WORLDS INTO A HIVEMIND! SUCH IS NOTHING BUT A PITCH BLACK COLOR!"
His voice carried the weight of defiance. The raw, burning need to tell Voyager he was wrong.
Voyager's orbiting lenses shifted, tracking the sound.
Shmuel's punches started to pack more force.
He began igniting bullets continuously in his hand's chambers, one after another, the rounds firing at near-point-blank range as his fists came down on the Sweeper mass. Each ignition created a combustible impact, a bloom of molten force that tore through everything around it.
In a normal state, the bullets were finite. Limited. Each one cost a lot.
But in E.G.O state, the bullets generated from the E.G.O itself and they ate at his sanity with every shot.
Shmuel didn't care.
He was too passionate and too consumed by the need to fight for something that mattered. The sanity cost was irrelevant. Let it consume him. Let the bullets burn through his mind if it meant destroying the Sweepers, if it meant stopping Voyager from erasing every gentle world that had ever existed.
Punch after punch.
Bullet after bullet.
The molten impact zones grew larger. The Sweepers couldn't come fast enough. They were being annihilated faster than they could approach him.
The second wave stopped.
Shmuel stood in the center of the destruction, breathing hard, his molten form smoking in the cold air. His mechanical hands were glowing with heat, empty of bullets, the chambers spent.
He looked back at the line of fighters.
And he saw Rowbotham.
The Proxy of the Index. The man who had followed his ideology so completely that he had become a tool of the system. The man who had killed in service of a philosophy.
But Rowbotham was still protecting the small girl.
He stood between her and the Sweepers, his sword still moving, his body still a barrier. He had chosen that one small world, that one child, was worth saving.
Shmuel understood.
Everyone was broken. Everyone was burning. Everyone was trying to fill the holes in themselves with either purpose, ideology, rage, love, kindness. But in that breaking, in that burning, in that desperate attempt to fill the void, they chose what mattered.
Rowbotham had chosen that small girl for only this moment.
Imogen had chosen to prove Pisanio's word.
Shmuel had chosen to be the insane one, the one who screamed absurd logic into the face of a god-like being because someone had to.
Shmuel smashed his knuckles together.
The molten metal covering his hands sparked.
He jumped.
High. Higher than before. So high that he was above Voyager, above the orbiting lenses, above the cosmic cloak that covered half a person and half a universe.
He fell.
His punch came down with all the force of someone who had decided that gentleness was worth fighting for, that individuality was worth burning for, that the world's ambiguity was a feature, not a flaw.
Voyager tried to deflect it with his coat.
The cosmic cloak spiraled upward, trying to redirect the punch, trying to move it aside the way it had moved aside a thousand other attacks.
It didn't work.
Shmuel's punch was too fast. Too heavy. Too burning with the weight of every person who had chosen to protect something gentle despite everything telling them it was pointless.
Some of the punch got through.
It caught Voyager across the chest and sent him spinning downward like a falling star, his body slamming into the ground below with enough force to crater the earth.
The orbiting lenses shattered, refracting light in a thousand directions.
Shmuel descended slowly, his molten form cooling slightly, exhaustion finally catching up with him.
He looked down at Voyager's crumpled form.
Then he looked back at the battlefield. At Rowbotham protecting the girl. At Imogen, still loading bullets with shaking hands. At Gregor and his soldiers, at the fixers and the Thumb soldato, at everyone who had chosen to stand and fight instead of accepting the inevitable darkness.
"Since Kamina isn't here to tell his absurd logic," Shmuel said, his voice hoarse but clear, "I will replace him being the insane one today."
He stood over Voyager.
"And I choose to believe that gentle worlds are worth protecting."
He breathed.
"But because someone has to. Because if we don't choose it, who will?"
Shmuel smiled.
"Let's see ya grit those teeth!"