I screwed up.

That was the conclusion that Aleta came to that night, her knees drawn up to her chest on her couch, living room windows frosted-over so no one could see her crying. Thirty-four floors up and the woman still felt as if every person below had their eyes on her. Call her self-centered, paranoid-- the fear still stood, ever-present, in her mind.

She had stayed in that position since the afternoon, when she returned to her apartment and curled up on the couch, staring at the tea green walls with a blank stare usually associated with those at an asylum; her joints were stiff from lack of motor movement. She could feel her thoughts drifting, sifting through her fingers every time she managed to catch one, the effect of her delirious consciousness.

This was a battle that she was losing, and Aleta knew it.

The defeat hit her hard, later in the night. She had never lost before. Not with Logan, not with the Council, not with a gun. Who knew that she had finally found an enemy in herself that she couldn’t face? The realization shook her. She should have never taken on the job. She was a fool for doing so. Fyre was lined up for the promotion before her, and Mason. Both had level heads on their shoulders-- so why choose the unstable, emotional wreck of a woman instead? Why choose the person who had lost all her family and was known to make rash decisions?

Fallon would have never made such a horrible mess of things. He valued his officers more than anything else. Nobody would have died from such a simple mission. This was all her fault.

The thought tormented her throughout the night. At times she broke out into fits of sweat and tears, finally pulling off her sweater in frustration and burying her face in it so the dark couldn’t hear her scream. She didn’t want anyone, or anything, else knowing how bad it was. Mason knew, and that was enough. No more, no more.

Sleep blotted out the rest.

===

Aleta slid feet first down the chute, trying not to scream and risk being heard. Judging by the echoes rattling against the metal, Logan wasn’t too far behind. He toppled into her, grabbing her around the waist so she wouldn’t be jostled too badly. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” She stuck her foot out to slow their descent. “Where does this lead to, anyway?”

“The basement levels.” Logan kicked it out of the way and they were moving again, hurtling down the tube. “I’ve only gone down here once or twice. I think it’s some sort of air duct, but I can’t be sure. It flattens out for a long time towards the end, so we’re going to have to crawl out some of the way.”

The girl gripped his hand tightly. “All sixty-one levels?”

“Yeah, and then some. Below the ground.”

Her stomach flipped violently at the thought of being so deep beneath the earth, the streets, the people. It reminded her of a grave. She didn’t want to go any further.

“Logan…”

“Shh. It’s going to be okay. I’m right here.”

The chute was like a mind-numbing roller coaster ride, or what she had read of them. It was frightening, yet thrilling. Exciting? She didn’t think she had ever been really excited, before. And things were going to be okay. Of course things were going to be okay. Logan was there.

Aleta remained silent for the rest of the ride. Logan noticed her discomfort and hesitant fear; maybe he shouldn’t have brought her? Now that he thought of it, the tube was a little dark and scary for a seven-year-old…

Aleta’s muscles tensed. “Logan! The chute! It ends-- ”

“What-- ?”

The girl heard a thud when Logan’s forehead came in contact with a sharp bend, barely stopping herself from screaming. “Logan, Logan, wake up! Wake up!” she whispered, shaking him awake as she slid to a stop. Aleta flashed her watch; in the brief light, she saw a deep blue and purple bruise forming near his temple. She bit her lip. “Logan, you okay? Logan, wake up…”

She wanted to shout, to cry for help, but it occurred to her that they shouldn’t be down there. They would get in a lot of trouble, and Logan would be forced to move from the room they gave him here at Headquarters. He wouldn’t be able to take care of his little sister. He’d have to get a job. Aleta kept her mouth firmly shut and tried her best to tend to the bruise. She shook him many times, but the boy did not wake. She lay his head on her lap. She wondered if someone would find them, so deep underground. It was starting to get cold.

Just as she was floating towards sleep in the hollow of that chute, Logan still unconscious, Aleta heard a voice. It drifted through the metal, echoing emptily in her ears.

“…I don’t know what you’re offering, Xane, but I’m not interested.”

The familiarity almost made her call out: it was her Uncle Fallon. His tone, however, made her shrink back. She searched for her friend’s still surprisingly warm hand and clutched it, fearfully.

“I’m not offering anything. Simply mentioning a notion.” Aleta could hear the smile through his voice. She shivered. “Shouldn’t you hate the Corps? First for your wife, and now your brother? It’s okay. I understand. It’s natural.”

“Of course I don’t. We all knew the price. We all knew what we were getting into when we signed on.”

“You mean, when you recruited them?”

“I gave them all a choice.”

“Psh. Details.” A chuckle. “It’s all right if you don’t blame yourself, though. But you need someone to blame for all this…tragedy. What better than the Corps itself?”

“I built this Corps. It’s like a child I never had-- ”

“-- nor ever will-- ”

“-- and I will not give it up that easily.” Aleta felt her uncle’s anger radiate through the metal. “You are a fool for thinking I would.”

“But Fallon, how can you resist such a beautiful object? For certainly, a bomb is a beautiful thing. So much destruction simply must be…”

“Is that the last bomb from…?”

“…the war? Why of course.”

Aleta gently set Logan’s head on the metal and she crawled closer to the opening of the chute. There, before her eyes, stood something no taller than her. Its chrome casing gleamed in the light of the sole flickering, fluorescent spotlight that was trained on it. In his hand the man named Xane held a crystal of some sort. He offered it to Fallon insistently.

“Come, now. Take it.”

“No.”

“Don’t be obstinate. With the Corps under your command and this weapon beneath your belt, you can truly bring peace to New Terra. You can fix it all, Fallon. All you have to do is take the stone.”

A pause. “No.”

Xane looked slightly ruffled, and the hand with the stone retreated back into his coat pocket. “Well fine, then. But I’ll tell you now: you will never be happy, Fallon. This pointless battle you fight, this ideal you strive for…you’ll never reach it like this-- capturing bases and people, sparing lives. For in order to reach peace, you must stop disorder. Disorder can only be stopped by force. This, and the army you have so skillfully recruited, can obtain this. Easily. And yet you still refuse! I don’t understand it!

“This is the treason of war, my friend. The truth that no one knows. The truth that you now know.”

He gestured grandly to the weapon behind him.

“Peace can and will only ever follow destruction. Love will only ever exist with hate, because only then can you distinguish between the two. You will eventually hate the very cause you are working towards as you watch it go nowhere. Though you will never admit it, you will hate the Corps…because this is the way things go. People hate. People watch the hatred grow and look for things to love, instead. And when they love too many things, they begin to hate again.

“Destroy things, Fallon…and in the silence, you will find peace.”

Fallon took a step back, his footstep echoing in the basement. “You’re mad.”

Xane threw his hands in the air.

“That’s what they all say!” he roared. “I thought that you would be different, but now I see that my time is wasted on you. Goodbye, Fallon. Come to me when you’re ready. Or not. I’ll try again with the next commander; it makes no difference to me. I’ll still be here. You might not be.” The albino laughed.

“And remember-- don’t forget to hate!”

Aleta watched him leave with wide eyes, not quite sure if her mind could comprehend exactly what they had said.

“…Aleta…?”

The girl jumped when Logan touched her shoulder lightly. “We’d best get going, ‘leta.”
She nodded and waited a minute as Fallon turned off the lights and left, then helped Logan out of the chute, holding his head protectively. Logan nodded towards the door. “What was that all about?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know…how do we get out of here?”

“There should be a ladder somewhere on the wall,” he told her. “We’ll climb up to the first basement level and use the stairs from there.”

As they were climbing Aleta stopped and looked down, eyes focusing in the metallic body of the bomb below her. It stood, solid and imposing, in the dark. What could something so small possibly do to help the peace?

“C’mon, Aleta!”

Aleta startled.

“Right. I’m coming!”

===

BOOM.

Aleta bolted up on the couch gasping for air, as if she had been underwater the whole time. Breathe in, breathe out. What was that sound? Breathe in, breathe out. She was still in shock from the dream, whatever it meant. She shook her head, trying to shoo away the feeling that something was wrong. Horribly wrong.

BOOM.

There it was again. That sound.

The woman swung her legs out of bed, heated skin coming in unwelcome contact with the cold air. She could feel the warmth on the carpet, but it dissipated barely an inch from the ground. Lights from the window played on her wide eyes, as multi-colored as a shop window display. Aleta was lost in it, entranced by a magic she didn’t quite understand.

BOOM.

“…a beautiful thing. So much destruction simply must be…”

The woman fumbled for the button on the wall, unfrosting the glass.

“Destroy things...”

She plastered her face against the window, horror and wonder both alive in her eyes as the smoke from a hundred fires rose into the early morning sky. Dawn creeped its golden fingers up along the grey-black salted curtain of night, alongside the licking flames. In the streets, specks of light sparked as bullets were fired, creating mini fireworks below. What could they possibly be celebrating? Even from thirty-four floors up Aleta could recognize the Resistance uniforms, but it was the haze of cloudy radiance that held her there, at the window.

"...and in the silence, you will find peace."

God, it was beautiful.