Chapter Text
“Honerva?”
Matt peered around the office door.
Honerva kept her eyes glued to her monitor.
“Close the door behind you,” she said, her voice stern. Hollow. Emotionless. Her hair was down from its usual bun, messy, like she just...stopped caring.
Matt felt like he was looking in a mirror.
He swallowed hard, stepped inside, and closed the door with his elbow, his hands too full with equipment.
“Are you sure you’re ready to do this?” asked Matt. “I know how tempting it is to want to lose yourself in your work, but—”
Honerva lifted her head. Her eyes were dark. Angry. Apparently, she wasn’t in the mood for a lecture.
Matt went quiet. Maybe they could talk about that later.
“If you’re ready…” He lifted the arm with his laptop. “Let’s get started.”
“I’m sending a signal from my system to your custom headsets.” Honerva struck a final key and moved her keyboard aside. “A wireless upload.”
“Upload?” Matt lowered one of his headsets onto the top of Honerva’s desks. “What are you uploading?”
“A functional monitor for my work computer,” said Honerva. “I wouldn’t want these eight hours to go to waste. I assume you have no arguments against that.”
“I guess not,” said Matt, though he could think of several. “Anyway, make yourself as comfortable as possible. This is basically an eight-hour catnap.”
Honerva didn’t answer. She simply reached for her headset.
Matt took a seat in one of Honerva’s office chairs and started the program.
“Pretty cool here, right?” asked Matt, his voice quiet, calm, neutral. “We didn’t want this place to take up too much memory, but we didn’t just want a black void, either. That’s kind of creepy, right? So...we just added a few stars.” He gestured around himself. “They’re...kind of important to me. Stars, I mean. And they’re important to Shiro, too. We wouldn’t be together now if it wasn’t for the stars. Well, them and my dad.”
Matt tilted his head back and looked up, into the sky, the endless dark plane.
“He gave me the courage to tell Shiro how I feel. He and his words stayed with me, even after he died, just like starlight.” He set his hands on his belt and turned his head, toward Honerva.
She kneeled on the reflective floor, her laptop—pitch black, an asset without textures—balanced on her lap, clawed fingers tapping at its keys. Not an iota of her attention was spared from her work. Not one did the glowing eyes of her new model so much as glance up.
She wasn’t listening at all.
Matt frowned, and he kneeled in front of Honerva. “Listen, I really do know what you’re going through. I know how hard it is to lose someone you love. Especially the way you lost your son. The same way I lost my dad. I know how it feels to get stuck on a loop, thinking about what you could have done differently, seeing all the signs you couldn’t see before, wondering how things could have changed if you just put the pieces together earlier.” He reached for her shoulder. “But what happened to Lotor, it’s not your fault—”
“Don’t you dare touch me!” Honerva grabbed Matt by the wrist, hard enough to bruise, and threw it down. “You could never understand what I’ve experienced. You don’t know how it feels to be hated by your own child!”
Matt winced. “I’m sorry, I was just trying to help—”
“Trying to help?” growled Honerva. “Were you trying to help when you invited me into your project?” She typed frantically, furiously. “Were you trying to help when you enlisted my skills to recreate your lover’s right arm?” Every strike of a key sounded like a gunshot. “Or were you serving yourself? Putting your own needs above the needs of all others?”
She stabbed the enter key and climbed to her feet, her purple robes billowing around her.
“I…” Matt tilted his head back and looked up at her, already nervous, sure it was only going to get worse. “Honerva, I didn’t even know I was bothering you. I’m sorry, I—”
“If it wasn’t for you, I would have been a mother.” She grabbed Matt by the arm and yanked him to his feet. “You and this terrible university I devoted my life to pushed me further and further from my family with every passing day. I neglected my child. I abandoned him, driven by the desire to change a world that could never be changed.”
Matt could only stare. “I—”
“Nothing…” hissed Honerva. “Nothing has kept me further from my son this past year than you. It’s because of you that my son faced this year alone. It’s because of you that he reached that point where he met his own end. It’s because of you! You may as well have pushed him over the edge yourself!”
Before Matt could gasp, Honerva grabbed him by his throat and raised him off the floor, powered by her newfound Altean strength. His legs dangled uselessly beneath him.
Matt grabbed her by the wrist, his own hands weak and frail compared to hers. “Honerva,” he gasped. “I didn’t—know, I— You’re one of my closest friends! I wouldn’t—”
“Silence!”
Honerva threw Matt into the floor. It cracked beneath him.
“You are worthless,” spat Honerva, her voice ringing in Matt’s ear. “After what you did to me, to my family, you have no right to speak of yourself in such high esteem.”
Matt pushed himself up to his elbows, gasping for breath. His chest ached. “Honerva—”
“Beg if you must,” said Honerva, glaring down her nose, her image blurred in Matt’s dizzied gaze. “It won’t stop what’s already in motion.”
“What—” Matt lifted his head, gasping for breath in a world with no air. “W-What’s in motion? What did you…?”
“You killed my son,” said Honerva. “You, and this university, and myself. We are all responsible. And we will all pay in kind.”
“What—”
“The incendiaries have already been detonated,” said Honerva. “Everything that surrounds this little bubble we’ve stored our own minds in burns with the rage my son left behind. As we speak, our bodies are consumed by the flames. Soon, there will be nothing left of us for the headsets to read, and we will vanish, leaving nothing behind.”
Cold horror hit Matt like ice water. He raised a shaking hand and frantically summoned his interface, desperate for an escape.
“Don’t bother,” said Honerva. “I’ve removed the entire log out function from the code of your game. Neither of us will be leaving this room.”
“Honerva.” Matt raised his head, but he did not stand. “Please… This won’t bring Lotor back. It’s just causing more pain. My mother is going to lose her son. Pidge already lost their dad. Don’t make them lose their brother, too. And Shiro, he… Honerva, you’re taking what’s left of your own husband’s family. He needs you. My mom and Shiro and Pidge, they need me. T-They’re all—”
“Going to have everything taken from them,” hissed Honerva, her hands curled into fists. “Just like everything was taken from me.”
Matt froze.
He couldn’t breathe.
A wave of nausea and indescribable agony grabbed his every nerve.
The pain was unbearable. It doubled and tripled, searing his skin, tearing him apart molecule by molecule. He could feel the flames as they reached higher and higher in a world he couldn’t see. He heard nothing, saw nothing. He screamed, and then—
Matt β woke with a start.
He rolled over in the grass and jumped to his feet, searching, scanning the grove for anything, any glimmer of purple or gray, any sign of Honerva, of Haggar’s bluish skin, her glowing eyes.
But...there was nothing.
It was only him.
Him and the trees and the lions.
Matt dropped to his knees and clutched fistfuls of the grass, his mind racing.
It must have been a dream. It must have been. Nothing else made sense. But it was so vivid, he—
He could still feel the fire.
Matt bowed his head to the earth and buried his face in his arms. An agonized sob squeezed itself from his lungs.
It was just a dream.
A vivid nightmare. It just feels real. That couldn’t really happen. If it did, I wouldn’t be here, right?
Shiro’s going to log on soon. He’ll log on, and I can ask him how my Alpha’s doing, and he’ll say I— He’ll say he’s just fine.
It’s fine.
Just a dream.
Matt waited for a quintant.
For a movement, then another.
Movements turned to phoebes.
No sign of Shiro.
No sign of his Alpha.
Neither of them would neglect Altea for so long...unless they had a really, really good reason.
And he could think of only one.
Matt pressed his hands to the enormous, red and gold double doors.
Heavy as Matt’s soul, they opened.
Professor Sincline sat in his throne, his back flat against the cushion behind him, his arms as firm as stone on their armrests.
“Holt,” he growled in his newer, deeper Galra voice, every bit the fearsome emperor he’d been assigned to be. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”
Matt took a deep breath.
He came for a reason.
There was no easy way for him to say what he was going to say, but he needed to say it.
What he saw was real.
And he was the only one in all of Altea who knew about it.
“Professor Sincline, it’s...about your wife. Honerva. She—”
“I know what happened to my wife,” said Professor Sincline. “She went up in flames with the university, with two professors, eight students, all her research, and you. All that is left of her on Earth are the two androids she spilled her life into before she had the chance to take what was left.”
Matt could only stare.
What…?
“It was like a dream, wasn’t it, Holt?” Sincline raised a fist to his cheek and leaned against it. “Like waking from a dream you didn’t know you were having. You open your eyes, and you’re somewhere else, with an entirely new set of memories and a life you know shouldn’t be yours. Yet, there it is. No matter how impossible it may seem, every moment that led to your own demise still took place.”
Matt’s throat had never felt drier.
“Your...death?”
“I lost my son,” said Sincline. “I lost the love of my life. What was left for me in that place?”
Matt opened his mouth.
Not a sound came out.
“I buried Honerva,” said Professor Sincline. “I put every penny left to my name into Altea. Rest assured, Shirogane won’t go hungry anytime soon.”
Matt’s hands shook.
“She left me a message, you know,” said Sincline. “A recording of her voice. The last time I would ever hear it. And she explained to me what she did. Why she chose the path she took.”
Sincline climbed to his full, Galra height.
That same cold horror from his encounter with Honerva coursed through Matt’s veins once more.
“I didn’t understand, at the time,” said Sincline, descending from his throne, marching down the red-carpeted steps to Matt’s level, or as close as he could get. “And then, I came here, and my memories of this place collided with my memories of Earth like the cannibalization of a galaxy. Honerva’s motives are clear to me now. As are my own.”
“Your motives?” whispered Matt, too afraid to truly speak. “What do you mean your motives? Professor—”
“Professor Sincline died the very moment his wife did.” A great, empirical shadow loomed over Matt like the moon casting its shadow upon the earth. “I am not, nor have I ever been, a college professor. Not truly, though my borrowed memories suggest otherwise. This form, made of textures and models, hand-painted by a mere man, is all I have ever truly been.” His eyes shined from his silhouette, violet, menacing. “The Galra who stands before you now is no professor, but an emperor.”
Matt opened his mouth to say something, anything, to try to find reason in what had once been a colleague, an investor, a peer, but no words could have pierced the veil of something so insane.
“Thanks to you, Holt, I have an empire.” He turned away, and his cape billowed behind him, nearly slapping Matt across his face. “Consider this my declaration of war.”
Matt hadn’t been able to shake the horror left behind since his conversation with Professor Sincline. Since...Emperor Zarkon’s declaration of war, whatever he meant by that.
He sat in the shadow of one of his grove’s many jade lions. He gripped his staff, eyes boring a hole into the grass in front of his crossed legs.
And in the shadow of the jade lion, he received a message.
Situation urgent.
Sincline unstable.
Daibazaal in civil war.
Castle under siege.
Need immediate assistance.
—Kolivan
Matt set his jaw.
His heart pounded. His head swam.
Everything had gone so wrong so fast.
Matt set his staff on the ground.
He raised his hands.
His keyboard appeared beneath them.
Retreat.
Regroup @ 159.33, 502.67.
Bring your most trusted allies only.
—Matt
“What happened?” asked Matt.
“None of us can be sure,” said Kolivan. “The attack came without warning. Our fellow Galra were taken out one by one. If it hadn’t been for your words of caution a few quintants ago, I don’t think any of us would have made it out at all.”
Matt scanned the sparse number of Galra. Kolivan. Thace. Ulaz. No more than ten others.
“Are...these the only ones who made it out?”
“Zarkon’s followers were relentless,” said Kolivan. “Them and the creature.”
“Creature?” asked Matt. “What creature?”
“Again, none of us are sure. Any of us who would have gotten close enough to get a look were close enough to be destroyed. And they didn’t respawn.”
Matt covered his mouth with his hand, not in shock, but in thought.
“That’s bizarre. No one should have been able to erase code from the game unless it’s from the outside. It’s like the conservation of matter. Lines of code, even individual bits can be moved around, but they can’t be destroyed. Not unless Shiro did something. But he wouldn’t.”
“He might,” said Kolivan. “He’s done it before.”
“No,” said Matt. “If he was going to do something like that...he’d target me. Not anyone else. Zarkon did this. It’s just a matter of how.”
“So we find out,” said Kolivan. “We position a network of spies around Altea and track Zarkon’s whereabouts until we find out what he’s doing, and we put a stop to it.”
Matt lowered his hand. “I can’t ask you to do that. It would be too dangerous.”
Kolivan’s hardened stare refused to budge. “So would doing nothing. With all due respect, Daibazaal is our home, and it’s already under attack. The rest of Altea is sure to follow. If we leave Altea defenseless, there could be nothing left by the end of spring.”
Matt closed his eyes.
He knitted his brow.
“...Okay.” He lifted his head and looked across the crowd of Galra. Former teachers. Friends, all of them. “We’re doing this as an opt-in, though, not an opt-out. So...if anyone is up for this, step forward.”
Ulaz was the first to step forward.
Then Thace.
Murdok, Baltheig, Lasarr, Kraig, Sal, Varek… Everyone. Not a single person hesitated to join the cause.
Matt took a deep breath, almost overwhelmed by the devotion, the motivation of people he’d always admired, but never quite so much as in that moment.
“Are...you all sure?” asked Matt. “You’ll have to change your class. Paladins aren’t exactly stealthy.”
“We’re prepared to do what we need to,” said Kolivan.
Matt crossed his arms. “Then… You’ll need a name.”
“I have an idea,” said Thace very quickly, as if he’d been sitting on the idea. “Paladins of Castle Daibazaal had their quarters in the Marmora wing.” He drew his knife from his belt, turned it over in his hand, and looked around at his comrades with a calm expression. “How do we all feel about calling ourselves the Blade of Marmora?”
There was no dissent, no argument.
Kolivan clasped his hands behind his back.
“That settles it,” said Kolivan. “We’ll need to discuss who will be stationed where.”
“I can—”
“You will stay in hiding,” snapped Kolivan, cutting Matt short. “You are irreplaceable. No one in Altea knows the world better than you. Zarkon will target you relentlessly if he catches so much as a glimpse of you. The fact that you haven’t been killed already suggests he may need you for something. Whatever that something might be, you can’t let him have it. Stay hidden at all costs.”
“Guess I wasn’t very good at that,” said Matt, looking over his shoulder with a smile.
Pidge frowned at him, hands fisted in his cloak, hair and wings buffeted by the wind. “You… You are the real Matt.”
Matt winced. “I wouldn’t say that.”
“I would,” said Pidge. “You remember everything. You even remember dying. You’re Matt α.”
“I’m not, though,” said Matt. “Saying I’m Matt α completely ignores all the experiences I have as Matt β. Sure, I remember losing Dad and all that therapy and my last words to you and my last hug with Mom, but...I remember waking up surrounded by darkness with no idea how much time passed and working on Altea with a version of myself I couldn’t see, too. I have memories of conversations from both points of view.”
“That means you can’t call yourself Matt β, either, though,” said Pidge.
“Oh, I know,” said Matt.
“So what are you?” asked Pidge.
“Well…” Matt absently scratched through Black’s feathers where they were thickest around his neck. “I’m Matt α’s nature and memories combined with Matt β’s, right? I’m the sum of two sets of experiences. So...I’ve been thinking of myself as Matt Σ.”
“How did this even happen?” asked Pidge. “It doesn’t make any sense. You just...had a dream that turned out to be real?”
“Well, I have a few theories,” said Matt. “I think the most likely one is that I’ve spent a lot of time wearing that custom headset and I died in it, so...maybe I just stored updates of my memories a little at a time, and something about that sudden loss of contact with my brain activity shot all of those memories into the closest thing to the source it could find. It just felt like a dream because, well...isn’t that kind of what dreams are?” He shrugged. “Imagine you woke up one day with a whole bunch of memories that don’t really line up with where you currently are. Like...if you woke in your own bed back home, but you had memories of being a space explorer or something with no idea how you would have gotten from where you were to where you are. Wouldn’t you call that a dream?”
“...I guess,” said Pidge. "But that doesn't explain what happened with Zarkon."
"You're right," conceded Matt, looking over Black’s side, toward the grove below. They were getting close. "But I don't know how Zarkon died, so...I have to go off what I do know."
“Does Shiro know?” asked Pidge. "What you are, I mean."
Matt grimaced. “Uhh… No?”
“Matt, he’d want to know.”
“Of course he would,” said Matt, gripping Black’s feathers tighter. “That’s...kind of the problem. He already spends too much of his life in here. Imagine if he knew I remembered everything. The first time I told him I loved him. Moving into his apartment. Every day I fell deeper in love with him. Every night I fell asleep in his arms. Every kiss.” He heaved a sigh that felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. “Pidge, I can’t do that to him.”
“So instead, you torture yourself,” said Pidge. “You know that’s what you’re doing, right?”
“...Yeah,” said Matt. “I know. But Shiro needs to move on. I’m already holding him back enough just by being here.”
“What about me?” asked Pidge. “Why am I any different?”
“You aren’t,” said Matt. “But the difference between you and Shiro is that you’d figure it out. The second I said one little thing that even hints that I might know something I shouldn’t, you’d call me out on it. Maybe in front of Shiro. I’d rather keep it a secret from you, sure, but I already know that’s not going to happen, so...I might as well cut my losses now.”
“I still don’t like it, Matt.” Pidge leaned in and laid their head on Matt’s back. “You love him. And he loves you. Don’t you think he should have the right to make his own choices?”
“Not when I know he’s going to make the wrong one,” said Matt. “I know it’s kind of a moral gray area, but… I want him to be happy. He won’t be if he’s with me.”
“Says who?” asked Pidge. “What makes this version of you any different from the version on Earth?”
“It’s the not the kind of relationship Shiro deserves.” Matt led Black into a descent. “We can’t curl up and watch a movie together after a long day, we can’t decorate the apartment for holidays together or go grocery shopping together or visit anywhere outside of Altea… He can’t ignore the rest of his life for me. This isn’t his world, Pidge. He needs to live his own life.”
“But—”
“No, Pidge.” Black’s feet hit the ground. “I already made up my mind.” He looked over his shoulder. “Just promise me you won’t say anything.”
Pidge scowled. The green markings that had appeared on their face when they bonded with their mount scrunched up. “Fine. I won’t make your choices for you. I’m not a hypocrite.”
Matt rolled his eyes. “Yeah, sure, as long as you don’t—”
The clearing of a throat cut Matt short, and he turned around, searching for its source.
He found that source in the shadow of a tree, leaning against its trunk, prosthetic arm crossed over his natural one, eyebrow raised.
“So.” Shiro pushed himself off the trunk and emerged from the shade. “What happened to ‘Don’t tell Pidge I’m here’?”
Matt smiled nervously.
Well...quiznak.
Blumarius_Fumparius 4:03 PM PST
I did have a dream like that! Ages ago! There was a frozen lake, and a battle, and the boy who came in crying when we had our interview was there!
Petalsalt 4:06 PM PST
I haven’t had any dreams at all in a long time.
Lady Laxum 4:07 PM PST
This is going to sound really weird, Blum, but I had the same exact dream, with the same boy and everything. Why didn’t you say something earlier?
BravestWarrior 4:07 PM PST
I was about to ask the same thing you did, SkyWatcher. I just had a strange dream like that. But it was about a fire. I died at the end, too, just like you.
Blumarius_Fumparius 4:09 PM PST
I could say the same, Plaxum! And yes, I died at the end, too!
Lady Laxum 4:11 PM PST
So did I!
SkyWatcherShay 4:15 PM PST
Does anyone have Takashi Shirogane’s phone number?