The Mantis crawled through Berlin like a slow-moving predator reluctantly allowed off its leash.
Traffic parted for it in both awe and terror as the massive black-and-red vehicle rumbled down the narrow arterial streets. Road sensors pinged warnings. Pedestrians halted on corners, phones raised, some gawking, some recording, others murmuring nervously. Most had never seen anything like it outside of archived war footage, an old war machine somehow more alive now than when it was built.
Berlin’s Polizei didn't stop it. They guided it.
Behind it, murmurs followed like smoke trails.
Inside the command cabin, Zoey sat in the gunner’s chair - not because she had to, but because she needed something to do with her hands.
The city outside was clean. Too clean. Buildings of recycled steel and polymer glass. No graffiti, no trash, just quiet function. Drones skimmed along power lines. Bicycles outnumbered cars. Every storefront had color-coded waste bins and digital receipts printed on plant-based sheets that dissolved in water. Even the fuel stations were gone, replaced by solar recharge lots and hydrogen depots with sleek glass architecture.
Etrius stood beside a self-serve food kiosk in a shopping plaza, unloading ration boxes and bagged supplies into a storage crate on the Mantis’s lower hull. “Somehow,” he muttered, “I thought this place would look older.”
Zoey leaned against the frame, arms crossed, expression unreadable. “Same. Expected more ‘ashen relic of the Third World War.’ Got utopia with efficiency addiction instead.”
Etrius gave her a glance. “You're sounding a little Sigma.”
“Yeah,” she grumbled. “That's the problem.”
They’d only been walking the marketplace for a minute before the questions started.
“Excuse me, what species are you?”
“Do you live here?”
“Is that a military truck?”
“How did you get those arms?”
“Are you a zoo ambassador or…?”
Zoey had tried to be polite. She'd even smiled at one child who asked if her horns were real. But every question poked at the raw skin beneath her fur. Every stare felt like another scalpel peeling back her body, labeling it other. She answered in soft tones.
But Etrius saw the twitch in her prosthetic fingers. The way her nostrils flared slightly. Her tail curled in tighter loops with every new interaction.
Now, back in the relative safety of the Mantis, she was gripping the doorway so hard the carbon fiber creaked.
“Alright,” Etrius said quietly. “We’re stopping.”
She shot him a glare. “We don’t have time to waste.”
He pointed at a nearby cafe, small, minimalist, warm orange lights inside. Real wood paneling. Not synthetic. “Fifteen minutes. Sit down. Pretend you’re not made of fire.”
She growled low but followed.
Inside, it was quiet. The building was soundproofed so well it felt like another world. A server behind the bar stared for a moment too long but recovered quickly. They were seated near the back, in a booth sized just barely large enough to accommodate Zoey’s bulk.
The moment they sat down, she exhaled, her entire frame slumping into the bench.
“You can say it,” she muttered. “I’m losing it.”
“You’re containing it better than you used to,” Etrius replied, unbothered. “Still reading below ‘flip a car and set it on fire.’”
“Barely.” She drummed one clawed finger on the tabletop. “I don’t hate the people. They just… stare. Like I’m an exhibit. Or a weapon. Or a mistake.”
“You’re none of those.”
She laughed bitterly. “Sure I am. Just not at the same time.”
Etrius leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table. “We need a plan. We have limited fuel. Your suit’s not with us. And we still don’t know where the site is.”
Zoey looked out the window, past the clean streets, the curved buildings, the flawless glass.
“If the file they pulled wasn’t mine,” she said, “then someone else is out there. Someone like me.”
“Your twin.”
“Maybe. I never saw her. They never told me she existed.”
Etrius was silent.
Zoey looked back. “You think she's still alive?”
“I think someone wants us to believe she might be.”
She leaned back. “So what now? We knock on doors and ask if anyone’s seen a fox-lizard thing with war crimes in her DNA?”
“No,” Etrius said. “We find that old officer. The one who recognized you. He’s the only person we’ve met who looked like he knew more than he was saying.”
Zoey sighed. Her eyes were hard, but the fury was banked, cooling now.
“Fine. But I’m not playing dress-up or being nice if he talks down to me.”
“Fair.”
A moment passed before she added, “Thanks.”
Etrius gave her a look.
“For dragging me into a cafe before I turned this place into a crater,” she clarified.
He smirked. “I like this booth. Let’s not redecorate it with broken glass and trauma.”
Zoey’s smile was small, fleeting. But real.
Outside, the city moved on. Clean. Controlled. Blissfully unaware of what had just walked back into its history.
The quiet clink of mugs and soft murmur of conversation faded as the TV above the cafe’s bar changed segments. Zoey glanced up without thinking, sipping something hot and bitter from a ceramic cup that looked like it had been recycled six times. The local anchor spoke in crisp, measured German - subtitles in English scrolling underneath, automated for tourists.
“Unidentified transhumans spotted in Berlin airspace earlier today…”
The screen cut to grainy footage of the Donnerdrache VTOL descending in a controlled landing under heavy snow. It looked enormous, sleek, and out of place against the pristine backdrop of Berlin’s Hauptfeldflugplatz.
Zoey blinked.
The next image was of her. A still photo taken from just after they disembarked - topless, bandaged, body scarred and steaming from the cold, wrapped in makeshift gauze and attitude. Her horns curled proudly from her skull, her scaled tail coiled around her boot like a tensioned whip.
She looked feral.
The caption below read:
“UNKNOWN ENTITY. UNKNOWN ORIGINS. HOSTILE CAPACITY UNCONFIRMED.”
Then came Etrius. Standing beside her like a black-armored statue, cloak swept aside by the wind. His face half in shadow, the tribal tiger insignia of the SCDF barely visible beneath the fold of his coat.
“The male appears to be associated with a military unit from Sigma City, though records are limited. Both individuals remain unregistered in EU civil archives. Berlin authorities are urging citizens to avoid unnecessary contact and to report sightings…”
Zoey slowly put her cup down, jaw tightening.
“Are you fucking kidding me.”
Etrius glanced up from his seat, sensing the shift. Her tail had gone still - dead still. Her fingers curled around the ceramic lip of her mug with too much pressure. The cup cracked.
“What now?” he asked, already bracing.
She jabbed a claw toward the screen. “They don’t even know who we are. Back in Sigma, I was the Terrorfox. I was booked six months in advance to take out ganglords and warlords and actual tanks. And now I’m just - some creature?”
Etrius’s eyes narrowed slightly. He watched her shoulders rise. Watched her pupils narrow.
“It’s a different world here,” he said. “People didn’t grow up with that war. They didn’t see the fallout. They built a clean system and never looked outside it.”
Zoey didn’t hear him. Her eyes were glued to the screen, but they weren’t reading anymore. They were scanning. The café's interior reflected in the glass behind the news anchor. And behind that glass -
People.
Outside, a small crowd had begun to gather. Tourists, pedestrians, Berliners who’d probably seen the newsflash not ten minutes earlier. They were holding up phones. Taking pictures. Some looked curious. Others - nervous. Someone tried to knock on the window, maybe thinking it’d be fun.
Etrius didn’t move. But he felt the change in the air. Not from the cafe. From her.
Zoey’s breath caught in her throat. Her claws tapped the tabletop in a rapid, erratic rhythm. Her pupils had thinned into razor lines. The veins in her temples pulsed under her fur. Her prosthetics had started to vibrate slightly from internal micro-actuator stress.
And her chest, still wrapped in fresh medical bandages, itched - not from pain, but from pressure. Blood, adrenaline, old memories, and rage all pushed against the same threshold.
Etrius stood up slowly. He kept his hands at his sides, relaxed, voice low.
“Zoey,” he said.
Her breathing was shallow. She didn’t answer.
“You’re here. You’re in Berlin. No one’s trying to hurt you.”
Nothing.
“I need you to stay with me.”
Her claws pressed into the ceramic. The cracked cup exploded into powdered fragments with a soft pop as her grip tightened.
She whispered, “I can’t do this again.”
“Yes, you can,” he said, carefully stepping in front of her, blocking her view of the window.
“You don’t get it - if this goes off, I will kill someone.”
“I do get it. I know exactly what you’ll do. You’ll break the glass. You’ll tear through the doors. You’ll rip every camera off every bystander and scream until this whole city remembers what it buried.”
He leaned closer, his voice like steel wrapped in cloth.
“But that’s not you anymore.”
Zoey stared through him, teeth clenched. Her tail slammed once against the booth - hard enough to crack the wooden base. The lights flickered for half a second.
He placed a hand gently on her wrist - prosthetic to prosthetic.
“You’ve survived worse than being misunderstood,” he said. “This? This is noise. You can handle noise.”
She shook her head. “They don’t see me. They just see a monster with scars and horns and a fucking tail.”
“They’ll see you when you show them who you are.”
Her jaw worked. Her eyes burned. But slowly, her breathing steadied.
The buzzing in her cybernetic limbs dulled. Her tail stopped moving. The claw tips denting the table lifted.
Etrius didn’t step away.
Zoey leaned back, swallowed hard, then pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes.
Outside the glass, the crowd had grown a little bigger.
But the storm, for now, had passed.
Etrius didn’t speak as he unfastened the heavy cloak from his shoulders. The fabric peeled away with a mechanical rasp of Velcro and ceramic clasps. Without a word, he stepped behind Zoey and draped it over her.
The cloak enveloped her immediately, swallowing her shape in thick matte-black folds, hood pulled up to mask her face and horns. It smelled like ash, dust, and machine oil - like him. Like safety.
Zoey didn’t say thank you. Didn’t need to.
He stepped ahead, guiding her through the now-crowded sidewalk outside the cafe. Murmurs followed them like fog.
Without the cloak, Etrius was unmistakable. His plate carrier was fully exposed, black with faded grey panels. On his back, large white text read SIGMA CITY SPECIAL FORCES above the insignia of a snarling tribal tiger etched in precision-stitched thread. His prosthetic arms shimmered with low-light gleam, uncovered now - full length titanium and carbon fiber wrapped in armored plating. The sheath across his back held a weapon no one else in Berlin carried: a two-handed, arc-split plasma sword.
To the civilians gathered, it was a warning: Do not follow.
And they didn’t.
Etrius’s pace never faltered. Zoey, buried under the cloak, walked behind him silently - tense, trembling, but upright. They reached the Mantis without resistance.
The vehicle stood like a beast waiting at the curb - lights off, engine quiet, still hulking with presence alone. The crowd kept a respectful distance, fenced off by unspoken fear and something close to reverence.
Inside, the air was warm and dim. Familiar. Private.
The moment the door sealed behind them, Zoey exhaled - and cracked.
She tore the cloak off in one motion, hurling it on the cot like it was burning her. Her breathing was sharp and uneven, hands shaking as she rifled through the med cabinet near the kitchen block. Vials clattered, syringes slid across the countertop. The Elysium Green vial wasn’t in the top tray. It wasn’t in the second drawer either. Panic hit full speed.
“Fuck - fuck where is it - ”
Etrius stepped forward, calm, watching her movements without interfering.
She found it. A full vial. Her hands shook so violently she dropped it. It hit the floor and rolled under the edge of the cot.
Zoey dropped with it.
She collapsed to her knees, tail limp, shoulders sagging - and then she sobbed. Loud, broken, uncontrolled.
“I don’t want to be like this,” she choked. “I don’t want to be a fucking freak. I didn’t ask for the tail, or the tongue, or these fucking arms. I didn’t want to be stared at like an exhibit or whispered about in cafés like a goddamn monster.”
She curled in on herself, claws dug into the Mantis’s steel floor.
“I just want to know who I am,” she whispered. “I just want to exist without fighting my own fucking head every goddamn day.”
Etrius knelt beside her, slow and quiet. He reached under the cot, retrieved the vial, and set it aside.
Then, without asking, he wrapped his arms around her. Carefully. Deliberately.
He pulled her up - not with force, but with steady, unshakable presence. Zoey didn’t resist. Her body trembled as he guided her to the cot, sat her down, and sat beside her.
He held her. Gently. Her weight, her pain, her everything.
She leaned into him, horns against his collar, arms limp at her sides. His large frame surrounded her, and his prosthetic hand rose slowly to stroke her hair - down behind her ear, over the side of her face, smoothing her to silence.
He didn’t speak.
He didn’t need to.
The steady rise and fall of his breathing anchored her in place.
The tremors faded. Her gasps slowed. The world got smaller, softer, quieter.
He held her until she had nothing left to cry out.
The vial of Elysium Green clicked softly against Zoey’s palm as Etrius handed it over, freshly sanitized from the floor. Her hand still trembled, but her grip steadied as the cool green liquid slid into her bloodstream with the practiced hiss of the injector. Within seconds, the tremor in her jaw faded, and her breathing leveled out. The storm in her chest still lingered, but it had stopped tearing the walls down. Outside, the distant sound of sirens gave way to the sight of Polizei cruisers pulling up to the edge of the plaza. Officers in black uniforms and reflective sashes calmly dispersed the onlookers, redirecting traffic and establishing a loose perimeter around the Mantis. No questions. No confrontation. Just quiet enforcement. Berlin didn’t like scenes. Zoey barely registered it. Etrius kept his voice low. “They’re clearing them out. We’ll stay parked until morning. Give people time to forget.” He moved to the driver’s compartment and eased the Mantis forward, its electric drive hum quiet and deliberate. They rolled along the edge of Berlin’s Central District, past quiet intersections and dimmed street lamps, until they reached a Polizei outpost, small, minimalist, but heavily monitored. A perfect deterrent. Etrius parked just outside the station, turned off the lights, and returned to the rear compartment. Zoey had slumped sideways on the cot, eyes half-lidded, her tail curled loosely around one of the support struts. Even with her burn treatment, she looked exhausted, the weight of her earlier breakdown still clinging to her like damp ash. Her horns tilted forward slightly, and her ears barely twitched. He didn’t touch her. Not now. He recognized the look on her face, somewhere else. Trapped in memory. So he gave her space. Hours passed. Berlin transitioned quietly into night. Streetlights cast long orange glows onto the rain-damp concrete. The city dimmed into its low-activity cycle. Etrius cooked. The smell of chowder filled the Mantis like a warm blanket, canned chicken, dense dumplings, broth thick with seasoning. He stirred it with a worn steel ladle in one of the Mantis’s small induction pots, the glow of the control panel throwing soft light across his face. Behind him, a groggy voice slurred into existence. “Smells like...school lunches and apathy…” He turned. Zoey was stirring, her eyes puffy, her ears lopsided, her tone deadpan but alive. He allowed a quiet smirk. “Thanks. I’ll put that on the label.” He grabbed a bowl, scooped a generous serving, and moved toward her. She reached out, then hesitated. Her fingers, twitching faintly at the joints, failed to align. Her face fell. “I…” she mumbled, looking down. “I’m scared I’ll drop it. They’re not… syncing right.” Etrius didn’t hesitate. He sat beside her, holding the bowl with one arm under it like a stabilizer, spoon in the other. “Then I’ve got you,” he said. Zoey didn’t argue. She leaned slightly against the frame, letting the warmth of the chowder creep into her bones with each slow spoonful. After a while, Etrius said, “There’s probably a cybernetics firm here. Berlin’s built for it. Lot of support here.” Zoey nodded sleepily. “Might look into it. Kinda tired of my hands deciding to panic when I’m not.” He gave another spoonful, and she took it wordlessly. Ten minutes later, the bowl was empty, set aside in the sink. Zoey was dozing, her head dipped, breath slow and even. The Green was working. So was the food. Etrius kicked his boots off and sat beside her on the cot. He leaned back against the wall, pulling the edge of the cloak up from the floor and draping it across both of them. Zoey shifted, unconsciously curling toward him, arms tucked in, tail coiled behind, head beneath his chin. Her horns didn’t quite poke him. Almost. And for the first time in decades, her sleep was quiet.
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