Divorce (1)
"Hey, you guys hear about General Max?"
"What about General Max?"
In the barracks of the sentries standing watch in the most remote corner of the zone, a soldier freshly returned from leave began sharing the stories he had picked up in the center.
"General Max confessed that he really did order the murder of Second Lieutenant Bones. The center's in total chaos over it."
"So it was actually General Max who put him up to it?"
"I don't buy it. Does that sound like General Max to you?"
"Yeah, I don't really believe it either, but he confessed himself, so people can't just ignore it."
"Fair enough. When the man himself says he did it, no point arguing otherwise..."
"Honestly, I had my suspicions about Lieutenant Bones."
"Same here."
The slaughter of Colonel Samson's Second Team during the subjugation expedition was a story every common soldier knew. Naturally, Colonel Samson's testimony—that General Max had ordered Lieutenant Bones to commit murder—had spread throughout the zone as well. But so many of the men admired General Max's character that almost no one believed a word of it.
Some claimed it was suspicious that Bones had survived when the colonel had clearly meant to kill him. Others countered that there was no way a green second lieutenant could have wiped out a colonel and every veteran officer under him just by staging a mutiny.
And yet, against all expectations, General Max's own confession had brought the whole affair to a close.
"There's a rumor going around, though. They say the real culprit is someone else."
"The real culprit?"
"You know how Commander Yosef died not long ago?"
"Yeah, we all lined up for the funeral. Never thought he'd go like that during training..."
"It wasn't just an accident."
"Then what was it?"
"Divine punishment."
"Divine punishment?!"
Their voices rose, and the soldier telling the story flinched, pressing a finger to his lips and frantically signaling them to keep it down.
"Quiet, damn it! If the colonel finds out we're sitting around talking about this shit, he'll lose his mind!"
"Okay, okay... But what's this about divine punishment? Did he get struck by lightning or something?"
"Exactly."
"What?"
"I mean it—divine punishment. Lightning bolt dropped on him during training and that was it."
He drew a finger across his throat. The others stared at him as if the world had gone mad.
"How is that divine punishment? Sounds like he just had rotten luck."
"And what does any of that have to do with there being a different real culprit?"
"The talk is that Commander Yosef was the one who actually put Colonel Samson up to it, so heaven struck him down for it."
"Come on. That's stretching it pretty far, isn't it?"
"Except the rumor is coming from the officers themselves. More than a few guys have overheard the brass talking about it."
"Huh..."
If the officers were the ones spreading it, it was harder to dismiss as pure invention. Emotionally, Commander Yosef felt like a far more plausible villain than General Max anyway. They had all been quietly refusing to believe Max could have done such a thing; the idea that Yosef was the true mastermind and had been struck down for it was almost a relief.
As the soldiers fell into thoughtful silence, the newly returned man still had plenty left to share. He opened his mouth again with a meaningful look.
"You guys know the real reason Hayden is called the Miracle of the Crevasse?"
"What else is there?"
"Don't ask me if I know—just spit it out, you bastard."
"The real reason Hayden is called the Miracle of the Crevasse. You know it?"
"Sure. He fell into a crevasse and came out alive, right?"
"I find it harder to believe that he took down four large-class monsters with four bullets all by himself."
In truth Hayden had only killed two, but the officers' after-action chatter—"Of the five large-class monsters hunted in the expedition, one was finished by some boy soldier, two were brought down by Hayden himself, and the remaining two were crushed under the ones he killed, so we finished them easily. We're only alive because of him"—had warped among the rank and file into "Hayden killed four."
"Surviving the crevasse you can chalk up to luck, but killing monsters like that takes real skill."
"I've heard the story about him bagging four large-class monsters, but this is the first time I've heard he did it with four bullets."
"Right? That would mean one shot each. Sounds like a hell of an exaggeration."
"I think it's true."
"You think it's true?"
"I asked if you knew why he's called the Miracle of the Crevasse. It's not just because he came back alive."
"Then...?"
The soldiers leaned in, faces bright with curiosity. The returned man deliberately dropped his voice into something low and ominous.
"The reason Hayden is called the Miracle of the Crevasse is because when they pulled him out, an enormous monster was lying dead right beside him. A giant the zone had never seen before."
"Ah, that..."
One of the sentries perked up at the mention of the giant monster.
"You mean that furry giant that got brought into the zone a while back?"
"That's the one."
"Damn. The expedition was already over—I kept wondering where the hell they found that thing."
"From what I heard, the monster threatened His Excellency, so Hayden lured it away by jumping into the crevasse himself."
Every soldier listening jerked upright in shock.
"What? So he didn't just fall in by accident—he jumped on purpose to save His Excellency?"
"Hold on. You said the monster was already dead. You're telling me Hayden killed that thing after he fell into the crevasse?"
"That's right."
"No way."
"Insane..."
"Want to know how the monster died?"
What they had already heard was more than enough to leave them reeling, yet the story clearly was not finished. The soldiers asked with taut faces,
"How? How was it dead?"
"A massive icicle had punched straight through its skull."
"Whoa. So an icicle just happened to fall and he got lucky?"
"I heard he didn't have a single scratch on him even after falling into the crevasse. Guy's got some serious luck."
They all seemed convinced Hayden could not possibly have killed the giant himself. The storyteller shook his head.
"Here's where it gets really creepy. That icicle didn't fall on its own."
"Then what?"
"Someone shot it down with a rifle."
"A rifle?"
"You're not about to say Hayden fired the shot, are you?"
"Why would Hayden shoot an icicle?"
"To drop it on the bastard's head, obviously."
"Wait—so you're saying Hayden shot the icicle to kill the monster, and it punched clean through its skull?"
"That's exactly what I'm saying."
Silence blanketed the barracks. The tale was simply too absurd. Surviving a fall into a crevasse was an established fact they could accept. But a ten-year-old boy calmly calculating against a monster hundreds of times his size, then executing the plan perfectly and succeeding—none of them could swallow that easily.
"Come on, does that even make sense? Sounds like the commander's residence is just hyping Hayden up."
"I heard His Excellency actually didn't want to send Hayden on the expedition at all."
"Why not?"
"Because it was too dangerous."
"What? We go out every damn year! Only his kid counts as a kid?"
"Well, that's the normal way of thinking. It's always orphans like us who get shoved into the dangerous jobs."
The mood in the barracks shifted, turning somber.
"So... Hayden still went on the expedition anyway?"
"From what I hear, he was desperate to go. You know he was the one who changed this expedition to a small elite force, right?"
"Yeah. Our colonel bitched endlessly about not getting to go."
"The colonel was pissed he couldn't rack up any merit, but honestly we were relieved. When regular soldiers like us go on those expeditions, we stand in the front ranks and end up dead or crippled more often than not."
Not a single man in the barracks disagreed. This was the outermost fringe of the zone—a place where monster attacks could come at any moment. It was where orphans who had enlisted simply to survive, without a single officer's patronage, were finally pushed by the sponsored soldiers. They were the ones drafted most often for the subjugation expeditions, and the ones who died the most.
"But this time the wounded numbered under thirty. And most of those were officers, not grunts like us. Deaths, not counting the ones Colonel Samson murdered, were only six. Have you ever seen that many people come back alive?"
"Never..."
"So why did Hayden suddenly switch it to a small elite force this time?"
"That's another special thing about him."
The returned soldier puffed up, clearly loaded with stories from the center.
"I heard that after Hayden went missing as a kid, he lived in the slums the whole time."
"Missing?!"
"He wasn't raised in the commander's residence?"
"So that's why he just appeared out of nowhere? There was never any talk of a kid before."
"I always figured they were just hiding him."
"Maybe that's why he seems to value our lives more than the people from the center do."
"Now that you mention it, hasn't Hayden been throwing charity parties every month?"
"You're right, he has."
"Wait—so Hayden coming back was around that officers' meeting when General Bartom died? That's when the talk first started."
"I heard that story in the center this time too. General Bartom really had it coming."
"I thought Major General Meursault shot him because of some attitude problem?"
"Actually, right in front of Hayden, he insulted Hayden's real mother."
"What?!"
"Crazy..."
The soldiers who had automatically spat curses at the mention of mother-bashing suddenly sensed something off and asked again.
"Uh... real mother?"
"Don't tell me Hayden isn't Lady Daphne's child?"
"That's right. Apparently His Excellency already had a fiancée before he married Lady Daphne."
"Then why marry Lady Daphne at all...?"
"The fiancée suddenly vanished from the zone, so he had no choice but to marry Lady Daphne. I heard that now that Hayden's back, they might divorce soon."
"Shit, divorcing Lady Daphne..."
One soldier who had been listening with rapt attention suddenly felt a jolt of unease.
"Hey, who the hell did you hear all this from?"
"Second Lieutenant Lucas."
"Who's that? Some new officer?"
"He was on Hayden's team during the expedition. Lucas seems to worship Hayden too. The way he talked about him, I thought the guy was in love."
"Hayden's only about ten years old. Respect already?"
"You've listened to this whole story and you're still hung up on age?"
"He is a kid, though."
"That's what makes it even more impressive. And Lucas saw Hayden's performance in the expedition with his own eyes."
"Hearing all this, I kind of want to see him for myself. Find out if he's really that different from ordinary people."
In a barracks on the outermost fringe of the zone, the soldiers were busy inflating their fantasies of Hayden.
Meanwhile, that same Hayden—who was indeed something other than ordinary—was forcing his father to get a divorce.