Page 8 of Reaper Said Mine

"I am not trying to get killed," I say.

"Good."

"I am trying to get the truth."

Bellamy grimaces. "That is not as reassuring as you think."

"It was not meant to be."

He pushes away from the column. "I will send you what I find."

"Thank you."

"Do not sound so shocked. I am capable of generosity when properly caffeinated."

"You are capable of many things when properly caffeinated. Journalism is sometimes one of them."

"There she is." He points at me as he backs away. "Warmth. Viewers are going to love that."

I turn back to my desk before he can see me smile.

For the next three days, the story becomes a room I lock myself inside.

I read until my eyes burn. I watch old battle footage until the shapes of ships begin appearing behind my eyelids whenever I blink. I cross-reference casualty reports, trade routes, insurance claims, Combine shareholder communications, Coalition diplomatic language, Alliance military posture, and every scrap of credible eyewitness testimony I can find from Guyver Station since Gnash seized it. The more I learn, the less the official story holds together.

Gnash is brutal, yes.

No honest reading of the record allows otherwise.

But brutality is not the same as chaos, and the man in the reports is not chaotic. He taxes ships but rarely seizes them without cause. He executes traitors but pays informants. He raids Combine holdings with theatrical violence while leaving neutral merchants largely untouched. He refuses interviews but allows market inspectors aboard. He threatens diplomats in public and then quietly honors the terms of agreements he supposedly mocked.

By the second night, my apartment has become a nest of glowing files and empty meal cartons. Rain slides down the window in silver threads, blurring the city lights beyond the glass. My bare feet are cold against the floor. The air tastes faintly of reheated noodles, cheap citrus cleaner, and exhaustion. I sit cross-legged on my couch with my compad balanced on one knee and a mug of caf gone bitter beside me.

A clip from seven months ago plays across the opposite wall.

Gnash stands in a docking bay surrounded by smoke, wreckage, and Reaper warriors. A Combine representative kneels before him with blood on his collar and terror shining on his face. The clip has been used in a thousand commentary segments as proof of Gnash's barbarism. I have seen the edited version. Everyone has.

This time, I watch the raw feed.

The Combine man says something the clipped version removed.

"Those workers were not citizens," he gasps. "They were assets."

Gnash goes still.

The Reapers around him go still too, as if the entire bay has inhaled.

Then Gnash steps closer, bends down, and says in a voice low enough that I have to enhance the audio twice, "Say that again."

The Combine man does not.

The feed cuts three minutes later, but I already know what happened after because the casualty report sits open beside me. Four Combine security officers dead. One executive maimed and returned alive. Seventeen laborers removed from corporate custody. Twelve later registered as residents of Guyver Station.

I sit back slowly, the mug warming my palms.

"Oh," I whisper to the empty apartment. "There you are."

He wasn't the hero some people desperately wanted, nor was he the mindless monster described by his enemies. What made him dangerous was the possibility that he existed somewhere between those extremes, in a space that resisted easy explanations.