"That 'First' of yours, Enzo Cartier."
I lagged for a moment, too shocked to process what I'd just heard. The people of Melysia, the masses, only knew members of the Upper Four by their ranking: First, Second, Third, or Fourth. Their names always remained classified to the public eye. Only those who were in A.X.A., or who knew them personally, knew their real names.
"Enzo—!?" My mind was ringing loudly.
How does he know Enzo? He even knows his full name!
"How do you know him!?" I asked, alarmed.
"What if I told you he was once a part of Heathen?"
Ian's words sank me in place. I couldn't believe what I was hearing.
"Enzo was in Heathen…? No, no, no. You're actually messing with me now."
"How else wouId I know his 'classified' full name?"
I stuttered. "I-I don't know! How the hell do you know First!?"
"He was a Fractless kid who just so happened to come across one of my proxies after running away from his shelter. He was an orphan, and he wanted to stay anywhere but that shelter. So to answer his desperation, I generously took him under my wing."
"You raised him...?"
She scoffed. "Hell no! He was already a teen when he came along. He was just looking for a place to stay, and since I'd realized he was Fractless, I thought it wouldn't hurt to introduce him to Heathen."
"Wouldn't you have just used him? Why didn't you just take control of him as one of your proxies?"
"Because he took heavy interest in what I was preaching. At the time, no one else was willing to hear-out my teachings. Yet here was an unexpected young man willing to cooperate. He was so, so invested. As a minority in the crowd full of Fractals, Enzo was searching desperately for a place of belonging. So he listened to what I said, and practiced what I told him to practice, and through-and-through all of that, not once did I ever feel the need to use my Fractal on him. He'd proven loyalty to me without ever presenting a useful Fractal, a condition I used to deem people worthy at the time. He was a Fractless, but not a useless one."
What is this? What is all of this?
From what Ian was currently telling me, it was completely disproportionate to the upbringing I assumed Enzo had. From the philosophies about power, to the preaches about privilege and strength, I'd always thought Enzo had grown up in a wealthy family that provided a Fractless like him multitudes of opportunities that he grasped and took advantage of.
That's the kind of life Enzo made it sound like he had.
Yet here Ian was, explaining to me that the boy hadn't even grown up with proper parental figures. He was an orphan. An orphan who just so happened to stumble across the Sin of Sloth and be inducted into the cursed dogma of Heathen, where he worked his way up to prove his worth as a Fractless.
Enzo, you shithead. You were bluffing the whole time.
I realized Enzo had been acting-out a false perspective of his life whenever he spoke to me. It angered me to finally learn the true narrative, but at the same time, it humored me.
What a joke. This is who 'First' was?
But up until now, to everyone who surrounded him, it was never about his upbringing. The most notable thing about Enzo was always his strength, especially as a Fractless. Curiosity had suddenly gripped me by the neck.
"So Enzo had the awakening? The Fractless awakening you were telling me about?"
The girl nodded. "Enzo was the only Fractless ever in the history of Melysia to achieve an awakening. He was the first of his kind, until you came along of course."
"So how did it happen?" I asked, wanting to relate it to my experience to define how my own awakening came about.
"I hadn't witnessed the actual awakening itself, so I never got to deduce what caused it to this day. He just suddenly came home one day, covered in blood from head-to-toe. Besides his appearance, I could already sense something about him was different. He wouldn't tell me what happened, but it was clear he'd received a psychological scar of some sort. He'd definitely been placed in that fight-or-flight state. Up until then, he'd only performed minor errands for me, like retrieving certain things, or helping set-up Fractal Boxes for me. He was never involved in Heathen's true purpose, which was to hunt down HP Fractal users." The girl sighed. "It wasn't until the day that he came home bloody, after undergoing what I assumed was his awakening, that he'd quickly found confidence in the field of fighting. Suddenly, he was asking me if he could attempt to carry out one of the eliminations, and not thinking much of it, I decided to let him try."
"Even as a Fractless?"
"Yes. I initially assumed he was just going to get himself killed, because by that point I already saw him as disposable. That was until he was coming back from every listed hit alive and unscathed. One after the other, he was taking down our HP Fractal targets one-by-one until we'd eventually reached a point where we had no more. He had shockingly put us in a position where we actually had to find more targets. It was inexplicable, so that's when my research on him began, and only then I started to understand the true essence of Fractless power."
But Enzo is with A.X.A. now.
"How did he go from Heathen to A.X.A.?" I asked.
"Tsk... He got cocky, said that Heathen's goals were too one-dimensional for him. Since he'd grown in power, he wanted to also become a part of the bigger power—the political power."
"A.X.A…"
"He'd grown tired of my ideals and didn't care about it anymore. His philosophy had grown stagnant. His mind had become stuck on the idea of strength and power alone," she said.
That sounds more like the Enzo I know.
"So he got up and left."
"You didn't try to make him stay? Why didn't you just take control of him and keep him as a proxy?"
"He'd be nothing as a proxy. None of those special capabilities apply when the Fractless is under my control. I simply let him go. I didn't even try to keep him at Heathen."
"But why...?"
"By the time he'd left, his ability to counter HP Fractals had become so efficient that I knew even I wouldn't be able to stop him. Most of it was contributed-to by the fact that he knew the ins-and-outs of Heathen too well, considering he'd been part of the organization for a while. By the time he chose to leave, he already understood how to collapse the foundation I'd built. But even if he did, I could easily expose the crimes he committed for Heathen and displace his position in society entirely. So we formed an ultimatum: I'd let him go without any complications as long as he kept his mouth shut about Heathen. From there, we parted ways."
I get it now. That must be why Enzo chose not to participate in Operation Zenith.
I noticed the girl beginning to smile sinisterly. She leaned in towards me before speaking. "I'm not going to make the same mistake with you."
My heart-rate shot-up.
"You're going to do my bidding and I'll make sure you have no escape from it, because you are the second-coming of Enzo Cartier. You are the next awakened Fractless to carry out Heathen's purpose to eliminate those with HP Fractals that threaten the balance and order of our reality."
"No... No!" I began to panic. There was too much responsibility being placed on my shoulders all at once. "I never agreed to this—!"
"I told you, you don't have a choice."
"But I don't want to do this! I don't want to do any of this!" I slammed the table, knocking my coffee over onto the floor. Tension in the room had quickly risen, as all the other people in the café began to look our way, concerned about what was happening.
"I'm not going to let you waste your gifted potential on a useless position at A.X.A. like Enzo has chosen to do! You are going to use that gift for Heathen!"
"No!" I shouted back. "Fuck no! I never agreed to any of this!"
"How many times do I have to tell you that you don't have a choice?" The girl stood-up from her seat, and as she rose, so too did everyone else in the café. With all their heads locked in place, glaring my way, I realized I was alone among a room full of 21.
21…?
I'd subconsciously already calculated the number of threats in the room without even realizing. Then, in unison, they all began to move. In a progressive lean towards me, the heat of the room was closing-in to condense on the singularity stuck in the center of it all—me.
"Welcome to Heathen, Klyson." They all spoke together as one collective voice.
My fight-or-flight state had been activated.