The sound of retching was not exactly the festive wake-up call Arthur Cousland had anticipated, but in his line of work, he had woken up to far worse noises.
He sat up in bed, the servos in his goddesium arm whirring softly as they initialized. Beside him, the sheets were already cold where Rupee had been; she was currently kneeling on the bathroom tiles, holding back the silver hair of a very miserable Anne.
"It hurts," Anne groaned, her voice echoing slightly off the porcelain. "The ocean cookie is fighting me."
Arthur moved to the doorway, leaning against the frame. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes, watching the scene with a mixture of sympathy and a sudden, sharp realization. "The ocean cookie?"
"Emma's special," Rupee whispered, looking back at Arthur with wide, unpainted eyes. She grabbed a warm washcloth and dabbed Anne's forehead. "Sweetie, do you remember eating it?"
Anne nodded miserably, clutching her stomach. "Yesterday. At the festival. It tasted like crunchy water, but now it feels like a rock. Emma said it had minerals."
Arthur felt a chill that had nothing to do with the winter morning. He exchanged a look with Rupee. It was the third day. Usually, Anne's memory reset every single morning—a hard wipe that erased everything but her core programming and a few fragmented instincts. She should have woken up confused, unsure of where she was, asking who they were. Instead, she had woken up with a stomachache and a clear causal link to the previous afternoon.
She remembered.
"Okay," Arthur said, his voice steady despite the tightness in his chest. "We can fix the stomachache. A little antacid and some plain toast. But Anne..." He knelt down, bringing himself to her eye level. "Do you know who I am?"
Anne looked up, her golden eyes watery from the nausea but clear of the usual morning fog. "You're the Teacher. Arthur. And that's Rupee. And we... we are a rescue team."
Rupee let out a sound that was half-laugh, half-sob, and buried her face in Anne's shoulder. Arthur placed his mechanical hand on Anne's head, feeling the warmth of her life against the cold metal of his palm. The miracle was holding. The continuity of self that every other Nikke took for granted—and that Anne had been denied—was still intact.
"We are a rescue team," Arthur confirmed, his throat tight. "And we have work to do."
***
Four hours later, the warmth of the Outpost was a distant memory.
The wind on the surface did not howl; it shrieked. It was a physical force, a wall of abrasive ice crystals that scoured anything foolish enough to stand upright. Here, thirty kilometers from the safety of the Ark's subterranean dome, the world was a graveyard of steel and concrete.
Arthur adjusted his thermal goggles, the Heads-Up Display flickering as it compensated for the whiteout conditions. His goddesium limbs were unaffected by the cold, but the flesh of his face stung where the scarf didn't cover it. Behind him, tethered by a high-tensile safety line, trudged Rupee and Anne, followed by the hunched figure of a Mass-Produced Nikke—a Product 12 model with a scuffed helmet and a standard-issue rifle slung over her shoulder.
"Energy levels dropping by two percent per hour due to thermal regulation!" Rupee's voice crackled over the comms. Even in full winter tactical gear—a pristine white parka with fur trim that likely cost more than the Product 12's entire chassis—she managed to sound like she was hosting a travel vlog, albeit a desperate one. "Commander, are we sure the coordinates are correct? My navigation software is struggling to find a baseline amidst all this... nothingness."
"Trust the map," Arthur replied, his voice cutting through the static. "And trust the memory."
He glanced back at the Product 12. She was struggling in the deep snow, her heavy boots sinking with every step, but she kept moving.
It had been a strange morning. After stabilizing Anne's stomach with medical-grade suspension fluid, they had ventured out into the festival grounds to enjoy the "extra time" the universe had granted them. They had found the soldier sitting alone on a bench near the perimeter wall, staring at the artificial snow with a hollowness that seemed to suck the joy out of the air.
Arthur remembered the conversation clearly.
*"Unit 734," the Nikke had said when Arthur approached her, snapping a half-hearted salute. "Waiting for rotation, sir."
"At ease," Arthur had said, sitting beside her. "You look like you're attending a funeral, Soldier."
"It's the tree, sir," she had murmured, gesturing vaguely at the magnificent holographic spruce dominating the plaza. "It's too perfect. Too symmetric."
Anne had tilted her head. "You don't like the tree?"
"I like it fine," Unit 734 sighed, her shoulders slumping. "It just... it reminds me. Before the conversion. I was human once. I was twelve, I think. Or maybe ten. It's hard to tell what's real data and what's the effect of fragmentation."
She had looked up at Arthur, her visor retracting to reveal a plain, weary face—the kind of face designed to be forgotten. "I have one memory. Just one. My father and I decorated a pine tree on the surface. It was a scrubby, dying thing. We didn't have ornaments, so we used scrap metal and bits of colored glass. It was ugly. It was freezing. But we were there."
She looked down at her hands—standard-issue polymer, identical to a thousand others. "They're dead now. My family. The house is gone. The city is gone. I'm just a weapon with a ghost in the machine. Sometimes... sometimes I wish I didn't remember. It hurts to be the only one left who knows it happened."
"Memories are precious," Anne had said suddenly, stepping forward. Her voice was fierce, surprising them all. "Even the sad ones. Because if you forget, it's like they never existed at all. You have to keep them."
Unit 734 had laughed, a bitter, dry sound. "Keep them? What for? The tree is probably rotted or buried under ash. It's on the surface, Sector 12. No Commander would authorize a sortie for a sentimental hallucination. It's a waste of resources."
Arthur had stood up then, checking the charge on his prosthetic arm. "Sector 12 isn't far. We can take the elevator at Checkpoint Bravo."
The soldier had stared at him, slack-jawed. "Sir?"
"You said it's a waste of resources," Arthur said, offering her a hand. "I say it's a retrieval mission. Vital intelligence regarding pre-war morale preservation. Grab your gear, Unit 734. We're going for a walk."*
Back in the present, a sudden gust of wind nearly knocked Anne over. Arthur moved instantly, his servos locking as he planted his feet and caught her by the harness. She looked up at him through her goggles, not with fear, but with an exhilarated determination.
"I'm okay!" she shouted over the wind. "Is it far?"
"According to her telemetry, we're close," Arthur said. He turned to the Product 12. "Soldier, look at the ridge. Does it look familiar?"
Unit 734 stopped, bracing herself against a rusted rebar jutting from the snow. She wiped the frost from her visor. "The topography... it's changed. The bombings leveled the residential block. But that structure..."
She pointed a trembling finger toward a skeletal ruin in the distance—the shattered remains of a radio tower, bent double like a weeping willow.
"My house was two streets east of the tower," she said, her voice trembling over the comms. "There was a park. A small one."
"Then we head east," Arthur commanded. He took point, breaking the trail through a snowdrift that came up to his waist.
Rupee moved up beside him, her assault rifle held at the low ready. Despite her complaints about the cold, her eyes scanned the horizon with the lethal precision of a Tetra Line elite. "Rapture signals are low, Commander. But I'm picking up seismic vibrations. Something big is sleeping deep underground. We shouldn't linger too long."
"We find the spot, we confirm the target, we leave," Arthur said. "Thirty minutes tops."
"You're a softie, you know that?" Rupee teased, nudging him. "Dragging us out to the frozen hellscape for a tree that might not even exist."
"Anne needed to see that memories matter," Arthur replied quietly, checking his motion tracker. "And frankly... so did I. If we stop caring about the things that made us human, we might as well let the Raptures win."
They pushed on. The landscape was a monochromatic nightmare of greys and whites. The ruins of the old world poked through the snow like tombstones—shattered walls, crushed vehicles, the hollow shell of a bus. It was silent, save for the wind.
"Here," Unit 734 stopped abruptly. She stood in the middle of a flat, featureless expanse of snow. "This is it. This is where the courtyard was."
She dropped to her knees, digging frantically into the snow with her armored hands. "It was right here. By the stone wall. We planted it near the wall so the wind wouldn't kill it."
Arthur watched her, a knot forming in his stomach. The area was desolate. There was no wall. There was no tree. Just ice and silence.
"It's gone," the soldier whispered, her digging slowing. "Of course it's gone. It's been years. Wood rots. People die. I told you. I told you it was stupid."
Anne walked over, kneeling beside the soldier. She didn't speak; she just started digging too, her small hands scooping away the powder.
"Kid, stop," Unit 734 said, her voice cracking. "It's not here."
"Maybe it's hiding," Anne said stubbornly. "Like I hide my diary. Keep digging."
Arthur sighed and activated the thermal heaters in his palms. "Rupee, watch the perimeter. I'm going to help them excavate."
"Aye aye, Captain," Rupee said, turning her back to the wind, her eyes scanning the ruins.
Arthur knelt and began to move the snow with efficient, mechanical scoops. He didn't expect to find anything organic. A pine tree surviving years of bombings and Rapture occupation was statistically impossible. But the mission wasn't about the tree. It was about the effort. It was about showing Unit 734 that her grief was valid enough to warrant a Commander's time.
His metal fingers hit something hard. Not stone. Not concrete.
"Hold on," Arthur said sharply.
He brushed away the loose powder. Buried about two feet down, preserved in a tomb of ice, was a shape. It wasn't a tree—not anymore. It was a petrified stump, the wood blackened and hardened into something akin to stone. But wrapped around the base, miraculously preserved by the freezing temperatures and the lack of oxygen in the ice, was a loop of wire.
Arthur carefully chipped the ice away. He pulled the object free. It was a piece of twisted copper wire, bent into the crude shape of a star, with a shard of blue stained glass caught in the center.
Unit 734 gasped. She reached out, her hands shaking so badly the servos whined. She took the star, staring at it as if it were the Holy Grail.
"My dad made this," she whispered. "He stripped the wire from an old generator. I found the glass in a church window down the street."
She clutched the dirty piece of scrap to her chest, bowing her head. The sound of her weeping was distorted by the helmet's vocal synthesizer, turning it into a static-filled keen.
"See?" Anne said softly, patting the soldier's armored shoulder. "It wasn't gone. It was just waiting."
Rupee turned around, lowering her rifle slightly. Even through her goggles, Arthur could see her smile. "Well. How about that. Actual treasure."
"Commander," Unit 734 said, looking up. Her voice was thicker now, but stronger. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me yet," Arthur said, standing up and scanning the horizon. The seismic vibrations Rupee had mentioned earlier were getting stronger. The ground beneath his boots gave a subtle, rhythmic shudder.
"Contact!" Rupee shouted, bringing her rifle up. "Three o'clock! Low profile, moving fast!"
Arthur spun around, through the swirling snow, shadows were detaching themselves from the ruins—slick, mechanical forms that moved with the jerky, predatory gait of lower-class Raptures. Scavengers. But where there were scavengers, a Lord class was rarely far behind.
"Anne, stay with Unit 734!" Arthur barked. "Rupee, suppression fire on the right flank! Soldier, can you shoot?"
Unit 734 stood up, tucking the copper star into a pouch on her vest. She racked the charging handle of her rifle, her posture shifting from that of a grieving daughter back to a machine of war.
"Yes, sir," she said, her voice cold and level. "Targeting active."
"Good," Arthur grinned, the adrenaline flooding his system. "Let's clear a path."