The Cypher’s Kiss: A Choice Based Short Story
By Cathleen Rootsaert
CONTINUE IN SECRET
You grab Ammien's hand. "I can't give up on us."
"I can't live without you either," Ammien whispers so closely that their eye lashes brush your cheek.
Creeping through the shadows, you return to your flat and stay together until the morning.
Things continue this way for weeks. You fall deeper and deeper in love. If you’re honest, sneaking around makes your romance even more exciting, and pushes the guilt of your deception into the background. You've never been more happy. Life, often difficult in Bastion, is sweet and joyful for you and Ammien.
Just as the saying, "Never build your future on a Shaper ruin" goes — the lies that are the woven into your relationship are a ticking bomb.
On a normal day the small tingles and distractions from being connected to Ammien are manageable, even exciting. But this day, disaster happens.
You and a rookie, Freelancer Thorne, pick up a routine contract to silence a Shaper relic near the Heart of Rage. Together you are deep, deep in a narrow cave and the blinding heat and steam from rivers of lava mean that you are both flying blind and completely reliant on your cypher. Today it’s Ammien.
This relic turns out to be more complex than anything Freelancer Thorne has ever seen in his young career. With each attempt, you fail to silence the relic and Titan after Titan emerges from the pending cataclysm. Thorne panics and becomes frozen with fear, unable to complete his task. It's all taking too long! And now Ammien is vulnerable to the Anthem and its dangerous call.
"It's so beautiful. My mind wants to be near to it."
"Hold on, Ammien!" You radio a distress beacon.
Although you attack the Titans with everything you’ve got, but they mercilessly swat you out of the air. You’re only one lancer and between the unstable relic and the monstrous beasts, the situation is dire. When will help come? Suddenly, torn between your duty to Freelancer Thorne, who needs your help immediately, and your anguish for Ammien, who has your heart forever, you lock up. You crash hard into a cave wall and slide down behind a rock.
Your mind races, but you can't do a thing.
You are locked up inside your javelin suit as Freelancer Thorne is crushed beneath the foot of an enormous Titan. You are locked up inside your suit as Ammien struggles with the Anthem's deadly voice. You are locked up as two other Freelancers answer the distress call and see, in an instant, how the problem arose. They rush to repair your failure.
In the end, the relic is silenced and the Titans are defeated but the toll is devastating — two Freelancers dead, a third seriously injured and in a coma, and Ammien barely pulled back from the brink of madness.
That night, you and Ammien meet in a dark alley. You cry and hold each other. It's only a matter of time until you're found out and punished. Once the injured Freelancer awakes, she'll tell everything that she saw. You and Ammien will both be banished from the Enclave — probably tried for murder. One thing is certain: you'll never see each other again.
"Let’s run away together, before we're found out," you say.
"Run where?"
"I have friends with the Regulators. We'll start a new life far, far from here."
Ammien grimly shakes their head. "I have an easier solution. We kill the Freelancer before they wake up."
You talk and argue for most of the night until you come to a decision.