Episode-815
Chapter : 1629
"I can't do it again," he sobbed. "I can't bury anyone else. I'd rather die. I'd rather turn into a rock. I'd rather be nothing."
Mina crossed the room. She knelt in front of him. She didn't touch him yet. She waited until he lifted his head, until he looked at her through the veil of his tears.
"You aren't nothing," she said. "You are the man who solved the riddle of Anubis. You are the man who walked into the Dahaka Jungle for a stranger. You are the man who built an empire out of soap."
"That man is dead," Lloyd whispered. "He died in the courtyard."
"No," Mina said. "He's just hurt. He's badly hurt. But he's still in there. I can see him."
She reached out and placed her hand on his knee.
"The suit is done, Lloyd. You finished it. You succeeded. It is a masterpiece. It is the greatest weapon this world has ever seen. But it needs a pilot. It needs a human to drive it. If you get in there as a broken, hollow shell... you won't control it. It will control you. And then you really will be a monster."
Lloyd looked at the suit towering above them. It was silent. Cold. Waiting.
"I don't know how to be human right now," he admitted. "Being human hurts too much."
"I know," Mina said. "That's why you don't do it alone."
She took the polishing cloth from where it had fallen on the floor. She folded it neatly and placed it on the table.
"Come away from the machine, Lloyd," she said. "Just for a minute. Come sit with me. Let the metal be cold. You need to be warm."
Lloyd hesitated. He looked at the Aegis suit one last time, as if asking for permission to leave his post. The machine, obviously, said nothing.
Slowly, painfully, Lloyd nodded. He let Mina take his hand. He let her pull him up from the floor. He let her lead him away from the looming shadow of the god of war, toward the small circle of light where she had placed her books.
For the first time in days, he stepped away from the edge of the abyss. He wasn't safe yet. But he wasn't falling anymore.
Lloyd allowed Mina to lead him to a cleaner part of the laboratory, away from the immediate shadow of the Aegis suit. They sat on a pair of crates near a low-humming mana generator that provided a bit of warmth in the chilly underground air.
He pulled his hand away from hers. It wasn't an aggressive move, but a necessary one. He wrapped his arms around himself, shivering despite the warmth of the generator. The adrenaline that had fueled his manic episode was crashing, leaving him exposed and raw.
"You should leave," Lloyd said, staring at the floor. "I'm not... good company right now. I'm unstable. The System... my mind... it's a mess."
"I'm not leaving," Mina said simply. She adjusted her skirts and settled in, making it clear she was planted there like a tree.
"Why?" Lloyd asked. He looked up, his eyes searching hers with a desperate intensity. "Why are you here? Everyone else gave up. Rosa left. Amina left. Faria ran away crying. Why are you still here?"
"Because I know," Mina said. "I know about the other life. I know about the ghosts you brought with you."
Lloyd flinched. The mention of his past life was a physical trigger.
"You don't know," he whispered. "You know facts. You know data points. You know I was a soldier. You know I lived eighty years. But you don't know the weight of it."
He stood up again, unable to sit still. He began to pace in a tight circle.
"Who are you trying to save, Lloyd?" Mina asked again, repeating the question that had cracked his armor earlier. "With that suit. With this obsession. Who are you saving?"
"Everyone," Lloyd snapped. "I'm saving everyone."
"No," Mina said calmly. "You can't save everyone. You know that. You're a strategist. You know about acceptable losses. So who is it really?"
Lloyd stopped pacing. He turned to the Aegis suit.
"I'm trying to save the dead," he confessed. The words hung in the air, heavy and impossible.
He turned back to Mina, his face twisting in anguish.
Chapter : 1630
"You think this is about Jasmin? It is. But it's not just her. It's all of them. It's my squad from Earth. Sergeant Miller. Corporal Hicks. They trusted me. I led them into a canyon, and I watched them get torn apart by an IED. I survived. I got a medal. They got body bags."
He took a breath, a shuddering gasp.
"And my first life here. My mother. My father. My sister Jothi—the first Jothi. Rubel killed them. He slit their throats while I was sleeping two rooms away. I survived. I ran away. I learned magic. I became an assassin. I killed Rubel. But it didn't bring them back."
He walked over to Mina, his hands shaking as he held them out.
"I am cursed, Mina. It’s not magic. It’s probability. Everyone I love dies. Everyone I get close to ends up in the ground. I am a walking graveyard. I carry eighty years of tombstones in my head."
He pointed at his chest.
"Jasmin... she was the best of them. She was innocent. She didn't fight wars. She made tea. She sang songs. And she died because of me. Because I was too weak to protect her. Because I was too slow."
He looked at the ceiling, trying to blink back tears, but they spilled over.
"It felt like an earthquake," he whispered. "When I saw her die... it wasn't just sadness. It was a 9.5 magnitude earthquake hitting the city of my soul. The buildings didn't just shake; they fell. The foundations cracked. The streets opened up and swallowed everything. There is nothing left standing, Mina. It's just rubble. It's miles and miles of rubble."
He collapsed back onto the crate, exhausted by the confession.
"I'm afraid to rebuild," he admitted, his voice barely audible. "I'm sitting in the ruins, and I'm afraid to pick up a single brick. Because I know... I know as soon as I build a wall, as soon as I build a house... the ground is going to shake again. And it will all come down. And I don't think I can survive the fall next time."
He looked at her, his eyes begging for absolution or condemnation. He didn't care which.
"So I built the suit," he said. "The suit is a bunker. If I stay inside the bunker, I don't have to build a house. I don't have to let anyone in. If I stay in the suit, nothing can fall on me."
It was the truth. The naked, ugly, terrified truth of Lloyd Ferrum. He wasn't a hero. He was a survivor who was tired of surviving.
________________________________________
Mina sat in silence for a long moment. She absorbed the weight of his confession. She felt the crushing pressure of eighty years of loss. Most men would have broken long ago. Lloyd had kept walking, kept fighting, kept building, until he finally hit a wall he couldn't climb.
She didn't offer him pity. Pity was useless to a man like him. She didn't tell him it would be okay. That was a lie.
She stood up and walked over to him. She sat next to him on the crate, their shoulders touching. She took his hand in both of hers. Her skin was warm, a sharp contrast to his cold, clammy flesh.
"You are right," she whispered.
Lloyd looked at her, startled. He had expected her to argue. To tell him he was wrong.
"The ground shakes," Mina said, looking straight ahead at the dark machinery of the lab. "People die. It is a terrible, cruel, chaotic world. And you are right. It will happen again. You will lose people. I might die. You might die."
She turned to face him. Her eyes were dark and serious, filled with the wisdom of a historian who had studied the rise and fall of civilizations.
"But you are still here, Lloyd. And I am still here."
She squeezed his hand hard, anchoring him to the present moment.
"You talk about the ruins," she said. "You talk about the rubble. But look at what you do in the rubble. You don't just sit there. You build. You built a clinic in the slums. You built a company that feeds thousands. You built a machine to kill a god."
"I built a coffin," Lloyd muttered.
"No," Mina corrected him. "You built a legacy. Remember Ramos? Remember the story of Anubis?"
Lloyd nodded slowly. "He tried to bring his daughter back. He failed."