From his perch atop the pale water lily, Alpha's [Wasp] drone tilted its head, red optics narrowing as it studied the young man before him. Jonah's chest rose and fell in ragged cadence, each breath uneven, eyes glazed beneath the weight of truths such a young mind shouldn't have to carry.

Now, Jonah had nearly reached the end of his unexpected education. Alpha had shown him everything: memory feeds stitched raw into his vision, tactical briefings that marched in unbroken sequence, histories projected in colors brighter than dreams, and unfiltered footage of the Federation's ceaseless wars.

Not the carefully crafted story spun for the adventurers' expedition.

Not the half-truths and curated scraps of propaganda left for the goblins to puzzle into their own conclusions.

Not even the sterile archives entrusted to Maria, Hugo, and Bill — a puzzle box of data meant only for those Alpha considered useful enough to connect the pieces.

No, Jonah had been given the whole of it — the Federation's victories and its atrocities, the tide of colonized worlds spilling endlessly into the frontier, the industrial engines that fed its conquests, and the war machine that never truly stopped.

Everything.

Then, with a final shudder, Jonah blinked and looked around the quiet garden. The peace of it pressed against him like something foreign, unreal after what he had seen. Not surprising. Only two hours had passed in the waking world, yet within the mindscape woven by the D.U.C.K. system, time had stretched far longer. Not the endless dilation Alpha himself could endure — the boundless span of a true AI — but long enough to prove how fragile and malleable a human mind became when pushed to its edge.

Jonah pressed his palms into his eyes and rubbed hard, then lowered them and blinked toward the koi pond where the [Wasp] rested on its lily. The light of its eyes cut narrow reflections across the rippling water.

In Jonah's own eyes, that glow echoed back. They held the tangled weight of fear and wonder, the same look Alpha had seen countless times before. Recruits dragged from frontier villages, their childhood myths stripped away and replaced with the cold iron of the Federation's truth. Some had broken, reduced to trembling husks begging to forget. Others had burned with sudden fire, desperate to prove themselves in blood.

Jonah's eyes carried a rare kind of sadness. Not the hollow weight of defeat, nor the weary slump of someone resigned to fate. This was different. It was the sadness of a boy who understood, with sudden clarity, that his world — and his place within it — would never be the same again. Even if the world itself had yet to realize it.

Rather than rage, deny, or demand answers, Jonah simply drew in a ragged breath and pushed himself upright, every motion slow, deliberate. His voice emerged as barely more than a whisper, thin enough to be mistaken for the rustle of ivy in the garden breeze.

"Why me?"

Alpha laughed, the sound dry and unhurried, like the weary amusement of someone who had heard the same plea echo across a hundred battlefields. "You're not the first to ask me that on this world. And I'll answer the same way I did then. Because you were there. Because if I hadn't, you and those you cared about would have died. Or, at the very least, been seriously injured."

The [Wasp] tilted its head. "As I said, Jonah. I am many things to many people. But above all else, I am a soldier of the Federation. And part of my duty demands that I do what I must to ensure civilian safety."

Jonah's brow furrowed. His lips parted, searching for words, and then finally shook his head. "But… we're not civilians of the Federation."

Alpha chuckled, the sound carrying like static under glass. "Now, Jonah. I think I've shown you enough to understand that's not how the Federation works. From the moment I landed on this planet, it was already a Federation world." The [Wasp]'s eyes burned brighter, their glow doubling in the pond's reflection until they hung like twin crimson moons over the water. "Whether your people knew it or not."

Jonah stiffened. The words sounded inevitable, like a stone falling downhill.

"If you're asking why I've told you all of this," Alpha went on, voice smoothing into something sharper, "that's simpler still. I've found it useful to let the people of this world form their own conclusions about who I am and what I want. In the short term, mystery works in my favor. People are drawn to myths and stories. This world isn't unique in that sense, but I've learned it is helpful to have a select few individuals who know the truth. Agents who understand their purpose and their place in the grander play. I already have a few candidates." The [Wasp]'s antennae quivered. "But as my D.U.C.K. agent on this world, this is especially true for you."

Jonah flinched at the name. His education — if the endless cascade of visions and lessons could even be called that — had already shown him enough of the D.U.C.K. system. What it was. What it might become. Both the promise it held… and the horrors it could unleash.

"I still think you made a mistake," Jonah said. His voice shook, but he forced it out anyway. "I'm not the kind of person who should have this power. I'm not a fighter. I'm not a soldier. I'm just… me."

"Good," Alpha replied.

Jonah blinked, caught off guard. "What?"

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"I said good," Alpha repeated, more firmly. "I showed you what happened with Jackson. You know what unchecked ambition can make of a man. You know the kind of power you could wield — and how terribly wrong it can go. That you recoil from it? That's exactly why you're suited."

Jonah's stomach lurched, bile rising as the images slammed back into him.

He remembered the visions of his predecessor, Private Jackson, rending armored warframes apart with his bare hands. Machines that even the mightiest Halirosan clan elders would have hesitated to face crumpled like tin under his grip. Entire battalions of Federation soldiers — each one as formidable as an elite adventurer — had stood in his way. He carved through them regardless, like a scythe slicing through fields of wheat.

And in his wake, cities burned. Streets drowned in fire and ruin as the so-called Mad Tyrant of the Duck God marched ever forward, consumed by the delusion of his 'holy mission.'

When the chaos finally broke, it had taken Alpha's direct intervention — and the fury of an orbital strike — just to bring Jackson down long enough for the system to be torn from his body.

The memory alone left Jonah cold.

Alpha's voice brought him back. "That's where I went wrong. Private Jackson was a soldier at the end of the day. That kind of power isn't something easily resisted when your entire purpose is to fight. But you—" The [Wasp]'s eyes narrowed faintly, the motion deliberate. "You don't want power. Or rather, you don't want it for its own sake. Jackson was driven by duty to his mission, by pride in being better than everyone else. You, on the other hand, understand that the weak can't help anyone. That makes a bigger difference than you realize."

Jonah dragged a hand through his hair, fingers tangling in damp locks. "So what? That means I'm… safe? That I won't end up like him?"

Alpha's laugh this time was softer, almost gentle. "Safe? No. No one is safe, Jonah. Least of all you." The red optic glinted like a coal. "But you are not him. That much I'm willing to gamble on."

Jonah lowered his head, staring at the faint shimmer of silver tracing his veins beneath the collar of his robe. The koi stirred below, their orange and white bodies gliding through the ripples. His voice came quietly. "I don't feel like someone worth gambling on."

"Then learn to be," Alpha said simply.

Jonah exhaled, slow and shaky, and rubbed at his face. His thoughts scattered in every direction at once — fear gnawed at him, confusion knotted his chest, but beneath it all, a dangerous ember glowed: excitement. He had seen things no priest, no mage, no scholar in all of Relictus could even dream of. Worlds upon worlds. Ships like falling stars. A civilization older and hungrier than anything his people had ever spoken of.

Jonah stared at the flagstones, his bare toes curling against the cool stone. His thoughts tangled, spinning circles until they pulled tighter than a noose. The koi stirred beneath the pond's surface, orange and white shadows weaving beneath lily pads, but Jonah hardly saw them.

Alpha did not press. The [Wasp] perched still atop its lily, wings folded, compound eyes glowing. He had learned long ago that silence could be more persuasive than a hundred speeches. Humans needed room to think. And if you gave them that room, they often reached the conclusion you wanted them to on their own.

Jonah drew in a sharp breath and raised his head. His eyes flicked toward the trellis where ivy clung to stone, then out across the rooftops of Halirosa, the city sprawling in shades of slate and pale light. His voice came thin, yet certain, the words trembling more from weight than doubt.

"You can help them, can't you?"

It was less a question than a realization.

The [Wasp] tilted its head, the faintest whine of its wings humming before stilling again. Alpha's voice slid from its frame, smooth, patient.

"I can," he admitted, "though it's more complicated than that."

Jonah turned back, brows furrowing.

"My desire to improve the state of this city isn't just duty. It's not only my directive. Part of it is… responsibility. I didn't know at the time, but when I landed in this world, I carried with me more than my failure. My planetfall scattered energy I did not recognize at the time. It seeped into the land, into the Radiant Sea. That ripple set many events into motion."

Jonah shivered. His hands tightened on his knees as memory flickered across his mind — images Alpha had shown him only hours before. A cult beneath burning skies. An endless sea of undead. Roots writhing from the corpse of a tree that should never have been.

He swallowed hard. "I'd only ever heard of the Cult of Iris in myths… the Deadwood Tree…" His voice broke, and he shook his head, teeth gritted. "If that thing had been allowed to sprout—" He couldn't finish.

"It would have consumed your world," Alpha said, flat as iron. "Just as it did them." He gestured to the sky, where the mourning rings, the remnants of the Sister's lost Children, drifted in the void beyond the firmament.

Jonah looked down at his hands, then at the faint silver lines tracing under his skin. The light pulsed once, faint and cold.

Alpha's voice carried on. "Even so, I cannot move as freely here as I have on other worlds. I do not yet have the strength to walk openly among your sects and clans. I've made progress rearming myself in the Deep, yes. But my position remains tenuous. Not while threats remain."

Jonah's gaze hardened. His fingers curled into fists. "…Icefinger."

The [Wasp] dipped its head in acknowledgment. "Until he, his organization, and those who profit from his shadow are dealt with, there is little I can do to directly help the people of Halirosa. That is where you come in, Jonah."

Jonah blinked, his head jerking up. "Me?"

"You already know why," Alpha said.

Jonah shook his head, disbelief grinding against the pulse of fear pounding in his chest. "The D.U.C.K. system makes me stronger, yes. Stronger than I ever thought possible. I—" His throat tightened as the memory surged back: his own body jerking with inhuman precision, silver veins flaring as light and steel drove him forward. The snap of his heel against a man's chest, the crunch of bone, the impossible strength that wasn't entirely his. "I stood toe to toe with a Golden Spirit cultivator," he whispered. "Even if it wasn't… really me."

His hand trembled where it rested in his lap, fingers curling against his robe. "But Icefinger is something else. Men like him, the clans, the sects… what can one person do against all of that?"

The [Wasp]'s compound eyes flared, light spilling across the rippling pond. Alpha's voice cut through the quiet garden, cool and precise, but carrying a dangerous edge.

"You're right. Without the power to give them weight, words dissolve into nothing more than air. But strength of arms is not the only kind of power." The puppet leaned forward slightly, its wings giving a faint metallic tremor. "There are other forms. Quieter. Subtler. Far more devastating. And I," Alpha said, his tone dipping lower, sharper, "am a master of one in particular."

Jonah's lips parted. His eyes widened, drawn toward that steady crimson glow. "What kind of power?"

The wasp tilted its head, and its shadow lengthened across the stones, stretching black fingers over the koi pond until it seemed to swallow the water lilies whole. Its mandibles clicked once, precise, and Alpha's voice carried the weight of a final judgment.

"Fear."

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