Chapter Text
As I approached the Asdana star system, I began to feel a strong turbulence around me. It was as if I had just entered a vortex that threatened to sweep me and my armour away, leaving me stranded in the vast loneliness of space.
Memoria...
That was the force I felt all around me.
This strange substance, when accumulated in large quantities, had the ability to create whole new worlds. Like the one I was heading for.
The Penacony's Dreamscape.
Penacony, the Land of Dreams, was nothing more than a vast space station that had once housed a penal colony for the IPC. But this was no longer the case. It was now home to a luxury hotel, the Reverie, run by the wealthy Oak family. Inside it, their guests could submerge themselves in special devices filled with Memoria, the Dreampools, to access the Dreamscape, a realm of dreams where it was said that any wish could become true.
But, of course, a Stellaron Hunter couldn't just turn up at the front desk and ask for a room.
Maybe that's why the script chose me for this mission...
If you couldn't dive into a Dreampool, the only way to access the Dreamscape would be to physically enter the core of the Memory Zone. And only one of us had the means to do that.
I amplified SAM's power. Green flames erupted from the shoulders of my armour and with extreme speed I plunged deeper and deeper into the sea of Memoria that surrounded me.
I remembered the words Silver Wolf had said to me before I left:
"If someone like you tries to enter the Dreamscape... you will suffer an agony similar to death!"
I had decided to ignore the concern in her voice and had not replied. Since my dearest friend had been taken away from me, I had decided to stop showing my true feelings in front of my comrades. After all, they too might disappear one day, if it was written in the script.
Someone like me...
Perhaps it was because of the way I was born, but I had never been able to dream. After all, an organism created solely to be a weapon against the Swarm and destined to fade away in a short time, after its reason for existence had been exhausted, didn't need to dream.
A weapon had no need to dream.
But... maybe... if there was one place where that could change, it was here. If in the Land of Dreams called Penacony there was even the slightest hope of making the wish I could not fulfil in reality come true... then I would accept all the deaths I was destined for.
And... I wanted to see her again.
I knew she wouldn't be the same person who had once been so dear to me. I knew she wouldn't remember me. And I knew I wouldn't be able to escape Elio's script this time either.
SAM will fight the Astral Express.
I have to find a way to avoid this fate... I want to see her again... but I don't want her memory of me to be the Stellaron Hunters' weapon, SAM. I want her at least... to think of me as just Firefly.
I finally reached the core of the Memory Zone and the world went dark. A myriad of lights and blurred scenes flashed before my eyes.
A battlefield.
A sea of fire, piles of charred insect carcasses and the dismembered corpses of my fellow soldiers.
A new shoot sprouting from the earth.
A long sleep.
An awakening, a promise and new comrades.
An inescapable destiny.
But also a girl. The soft light of her golden eyes. The warmth of her touch.
And then she disappeared... and I was alone, locked in a cold steel prison.
In tears, I thought:
I want to find a dream of my own.