“Major?”
The door opened, easy from the other side. The veteran’s cheeks were wet, though whether with Bridger’s remnant tears or with his own I could not say. “We had him and we lost him, our one chance.” The fatigues hung slack around him, man-sized on a body that was still a boy’s in scale. Bridger had been thorough. He launched the Major into life with all his gear, his pack, his helmet, bedroll, ammunition, rifle on his shoulder, while Bridger’s own kid-bright backpack rested in his hands, personal effects packed neatly for the tearful loved ones. “I’ll kill it,” the Major announced. “Sniper. I’ll kill it.”
I slumped useless before him, grief’s convulsions too severe to let me stand. It was not despair. Despair is a numbing blackness, which offers at least the consolation that there is no next task to face; I had tasks still.
“Sniper did this!” the Major continued, his voice iron enough to make MASON’s seem weak. “We could have saved everyone, living and dead, and Sniper destroyed it, Sniper, with its petty duty, and its Hive System. I’ll kill it. I’ll run it through, and feel its blood across my hands, and taste its last breath as it gasps away its life!”
I choked down breath enough to start my pleading, “Major, stop.”
“And then I’ll gather all its stupid dolls and burn them!” He kicked the one that lay beside me, his eyes taking pleasure as the neck flopped limp. “How far do you think the smoke would reach? A million toy corpses burning, but not the real one! Never the real one. No funeral rites for Sniper, no mourning fans and speeches. I’ll haul it to a field somewhere and watch the dogs and birds feast on its heart!”
“Stop, it won’t help.”
“And then the others, Ockham, Tully Mardi—there’s one you should’ve finished off long ago. They did this with their petty ambitions. I’ll make their bodies carrion, all of them!”
“Stop, Achilles. It isn’t Sniper’s fault, it’s ours.”
He turned, just enough to glance sidelong at me, while the helmet’s shadow veiled his expression. “So, you did know.”
I choked. “I felt like saying something would make it more true.”
He fidgeted with the rifle at his shoulder, where his shield should be. “How long have you known it was me?”
“I wasn’t positive until Lieutenant Aimer turned so conspicuously into Patroclus.”
“Have I always been … myself?”
“I don’t think so,” I answered, softly. “At first I think you were just an abstract soldier, but as Bridger matured, and their concepts of war and death matured, you matured with them. When they read the Iliad, it changed you. We both helped Bridger read it, over and over, Homer’s version and Apollo’s version too, so you became Achilles bit by bit.” I felt my breath grow steady, loss’s sorrow easing as a different sorrow took its place: pity. “I’ve always wondered which war you remember: the World Wars, or Apollo’s future war flying in your giant robot hero-god across the dark of Space, or Troy.”
I wasn’t sure that he would answer. The Major—Achilles—he was never one to open his heart, not in any version. He was my commander, and a king. He owed me nothing. Even if we had been friends, co-parents, I had lied to him these long years, pretending I did not hear his Greekisms, his invocations of Hades and the other deathless gods, his fear whenever his Lieutenant Aimer volunteered for some mission. I had lied by feigning ignorance; even if I said nothing, I had lied.
Achilles flexed his veteran shoulders beneath the pack and straps. “You know, even when it isn’t in my hand, I can always feel the rifle with me.” He stroked its stock, then reached out, grasping at something invisible in the air before him. “And the controllers”—his hand fell to his side now—“and the spear. I remember all three, not jumbled, three full lives. I remember growing up on the mountains with Chiron the centaur who taught me to hunt, and with Chiron the flight instructor who made me best pilot in the forces. I remember losing Patroclus three times. And Hector, I remember the feel of Hector’s blood, the stink of Hector’s corpse growing fouler day by day, three times, a different smell each time. I remember dying, too, Apollo’s arrow, Paris. Three times. More than three, so many versions.” He turned to me. “You know what else I remember? I remember the Odyssey. I remember when Odysseus came to see us in the Underworld, do you remember that part?” He paused. “We were all there, Tiresias who knew too much, and my Patroclus, and that blowhard Agamemnon. I said then that I would rather be the lowest man alive, breaking my back to plow another’s land for a starvation wage, rather than be what I was, the most honored of the dead. I meant it. Ten years I’ve been a tiny plastic toy babysitting a child in a gutter, and I’ve thanked the gods for every day. I think that’s why they picked me as guardian. I understood Bridger’s gift better than anyone. The dead want to live. Even those of us who never really existed in the first place, we want to live, not all of us, maybe, but most of us. We want it more than anything. Even if it means being a toy, or a slave, or suffering like you and I have, Mycroft, we want to live. That’s more important than the Hives and what might happen to this world, wonderful as this world is. Bridger would have given life to everybody, everyone who ever died, or will die, more, even to people who were half fictitious like me, everyone that anyone ever believed would want to live. We could have. They tested us, the Fates, the gods, your Providence, it has so many names. They gave us one chance to let everybody live. We failed.”
I had thought I’d mastered my tears, but Boo emerged now, sniffing for his absent master, his friendly, furry face confused but not yet sad. Halley came with him, Apollo’s long, green Pillarcat, abandoned at Romanova after Tully’s arrest. The U-beast had tracked us somehow, locked onto me perhaps or Bridger, seeking a familiar scent. I hardly had strength enough to speak as my tears flowed free. “You know Fate better than that, Achilles!” I had not intended the reproof to come out as a scream, but it did, sharp as the grief that spurred it. “Fate doesn’t taunt. This was all planned. Paris takes Helen. We lose Bridger and Apollo. The war begins. It’s all one Plan. You being here now in Bridger’s place, that’s the Plan too.”