Truth be told, the Revolutionary Army was never a single unified body, but a collection of many groups fighting under the same banner, but not necessarily standing side by side.
Their unity began and ended with the cause they shared. Beyond that, their beliefs diverged astronomically.
Some factions stuck to their morals, refusing to abandon their ethical standards and sense of justice. In other words, they were idealists, people who still believed that righteousness could shape the world.
Others, however, had long abandoned such notions. They no longer cared about the cost in human lives, for they understood that the world was not made of sunshine and rainbows.
To them, certain lives were nothing more than expendable waste.
The only belief that tied them together was their hatred for how the Republic ruled, and for how Germany had once again fallen under authoritarianism.
The reason they had not all been captured was simple.
Someone above them was pulling the strings. Someone within the Republic itself shielded their movements and ensured their survival.
In Munich, one of those figures was Friedemann Adler. The unfortunate truth, however, was that Julius didn’t know everyone else involved. Not even SIBYL had records of every traitor hidden within the Republic.
Even so, he saw an opportunity. In this unexpected discovery about Friedemann Adler, Julius found potential bait.
[My name is Anton Diepold Blumentritt, representative of Code Vanguard!]
And someone did take the bait way harder than anyone expected.
The announcement spread quickly. Hacked projections lit up plazas and train stations across Germany. Holograms flashed on the sides of skyscrapers in Berlin, Hanover, and Munich.
[I will be direct. You are to release Friedemann Adler immediately. He is a good man who took the blame for crimes he did not commit!]
The feed repeated Anton’s words in dozens of voices until the phrase "release Friedemann Adler" became a chant on the street and a headline on every illicit netnode.
[Those so-called narcotic trafficking charges? Lies! The containers seized by your authorities weren’t drugs. They were artificial mana circuits to support the unprivileged children who wish to fight the good fight!]
The public reaction was messy and wide. Some cheered the audacity and spread the feed further.
[He took responsibility to protect those below him! If you continue to hold him, there will be consequences. You cannot silence progress!]
Others watched from their homes and whispered that the Republic would answer with force. State channels denounced the Vanguard as terrorists and called the projections a coordinated psyop.
The Ministry promised a quick and decisive response. Patrol drones were multiplied, and checkpoints were tightened.
For Julius, however, the situation was different. Since he was still a probationary agent under the Directorate and without authorization for field deployment, he had no freedom to act as he wished.
A message soon arrived from Sabine, his sister-in-law, reinforcing that limitation. She instructed him to stay home for the time being and to let the Directorate handle the crisis.
Those who knew the truth understood that the entire situation was solely because of Julius.
Yet, despite being at the center of it all, he had no intention of stepping into the field.
There was no need. Because the scenario would unfold on its own.
"Code Vanguard..."
Unlike the Neon Hand, the group that had once tried to eliminate him directly, and one he had known little about, Code Vanguard was a different case.
In his previous life, they had been notorious. They weren’t hidden, nor did they disguise their actions behind vague ideals. Code Vanguard operated transparently, calling themselves freedom fighters, and many among the public saw them as such.
They had earned a following by acting as modern-day Robin Hoods, stealing from the corrupt, exposing the Republic’s secrets, and feeding the discontent of those left behind by the system.
"This won’t be enough."
Code Vanguard’s reach extended far beyond Germany. Their networks spanned across Europe. This incident alone wouldn’t destroy them. But it would cripple them enough to force a retreat, push them into hiding, and disrupt their operations for a while.
"I suppose this is a good first step."
In truth, Julius wasn’t entirely opposed to rebellion. He understood the necessity of resistance.
The problem lay in what would follow if the revolution ever succeeded. If the Republic fell, someone like him would be among the first to be purged. That was the irony of it all.
He didn’t disagree with their ideals, but he had no intention of dying to them again.
So before the Republic could be brought down, the revolution itself needed to be weakened and contained just enough to prevent it from spiraling out of control.
Moderation was the key.
Julius already had SIBYL under his command, and he would make certain it would never rise to power again.
But SIBYL alone wasn’t responsible for humanity’s downfall. There were many other factors that contributed in their own way, and Julius planned to address them one by one.
"My, what a mess..."
Isolde emerged from the laboratory, carrying two mugs of coffee. She placed them on the table and took a seat across from Julius. The lab was still in the process of renovation, so there was not much furniture.
"Indeed," Julius replied. "But the Defense Ministry won’t stay idle."
"I do hope Mister Gabriel comes out unscathed."
"He will," Julius said. "Gabriel won’t fall that easily. For now, what plans do you have in mind, Doctor Isolde?"
"Hmm," she thought for a moment, resting her chin on her hand. "Since you said I’m free to do as I please, I intend to convert half of the facility into my old clinic."
Julius nodded.
That was right. Before the invention of SIBYL, Isolde had been a psychologist. She wasn’t a magi-tech engineer by profession, though she had been the one to design the foundational blueprints that made AI implantation possible.
With her background in both psychology and artificial intelligence, her research had bridged the gap between mind and machine.
Yet, despite her achievements and the technology her work had birthed, Isolde was, at her core, still a psychologist.
"This reminds me, Mister Schneider, would you care for a therapy session?"
Julius blinked. "Me?"
"Yes," Isolde replied with a smile. "I have a feeling you could use one."
Julius was unsure whether to take her words seriously. "Is that a professional opinion, or personal curiosity?"
"Perhaps both?" Isolde replied. "I tend to notice these things rather quickly. And after observing you, it’s clear you’ve got too many thoughts and far too little rest. Honestly, it’s not even difficult to tell."
"...."
"So? Are you interested? It could be a decent way to pass the time before I go pick up my daughter from school."
"I doubt I’d make for a good patient," he said. "People like me don’t exactly have much to say that isn’t better left unsaid."
"Then that makes you the best kind of patient," Isolde countered, taking a sip of her coffee. "The ones who think they have nothing to say usually have the most to uncover."
"...Alright, I guess."
Isolde clasped her hands together, visibly pleased. "Perfect. Let’s move to the other room."
She rose from her seat with a spark of enthusiasm that contrasted Julius’s calm indifference. Isolde seemed genuinely eager to test the new equipment.
"Firstly, please sit here," she said, gesturing toward a reclining chair connected to a complex array of cables.
Julius regarded it briefly before sitting down. He wasn’t entirely sure what it was, so he asked SIBYL for clarification. The AI displayed the information directly onto his retinal interface.
Apparently, it was called a Cerebral-Psionic Resonance Scanner, an advanced machine designed to map neural wave patterns and measure the traces of magic embedded in human consciousness.
The scanner glowed with blue light as Isolde activated it from the control panel
"This model can read psionic dissonance and neural stress levels simultaneously," she eagerly explained, adjusting the calibration. "It’s far more efficient than the standard EEG, and it can even identify subconscious magical interference patterns."
Julius raised an eyebrow. "You’re telling me this thing can read thoughts?"
"Not exactly," Isolde replied with a smile. "It can’t read your mind. But it can tell me how much of it you’re suppressing."
At her instructions, Julius closed his eyes and cleared his thoughts. When the process finished, Julius sat up straight and turned to look at Isolde.
When the process ended, Julius opened his eyes. He sat up straight and turned toward Isolde.
"Is there a problem?" he asked.
"...."
But Isolde didn’t respond. Her attention was fixed on the holographic display hovering above the console. The next moment, she turned to look at him with a concerned expression.
"Mister Schneider... if I may be blunt, how are you still sane?"
Julius looked up from the console, caught off guard by the question. "...Pardon?"
"What I’m seeing here shouldn’t be compatible with normal human cognition. Your neural patterns and psionic frequencies resemble those of a war veteran who’s seen decades of combat trauma. No—"
She leaned closer to the data, her brows furrowing.
"—It’s more severe than that. These readings are almost identical to people serving in concentration camps."
"...."
"Your mind shows signs of extreme stress, layered trauma, and repeated psychological reconstruction. Yet, somehow, it’s stable. That shouldn’t be possible. Any other subject with these readings would have lost their sense of self long ago."
The information she referred to wasn’t public knowledge. The concentration camp studies had been classified under the Ministry of Internal Affairs decades ago. But Isolde knew them firsthand.
In the past, she had served as a psychologist assigned to assist in those very studies, evaluating the survivors, documenting what remained of their minds, and witnessing firsthand what prolonged despair did to the human psyche.
That experience made what she saw before her all the more impossible.
Julius’s readings were those of a man who had already been broken once and found a way to rebuild himself from the pieces.
"Mister Schneider... what exactly have you been through?" Isolde asked. "It might be out of my place to ask, but did you experience any form of trauma in your childhood?"
It was a cautious question, but one that barely scratched the surface of what the data suggested.
To call it "childhood trauma" was an understatement, because the readings implied exposure to psychological strain comparable to the survivors of concentration camps.
Isolde found it difficult to imagine such experiences being inflicted on a child, especially one from a family like the Schneiders. She doubted Julius’s father could ever subject him to something that cruel.
Yet, in her profession, nothing was ever truly impossible.
However, despite the seriousness in her questions, Julius just tilted his head.
"I don’t know? I was told I had impairments when it came to learning as a child. But I attended an institution that specialized in that sort of thing. I overcame it with medical assistance and eventually started to excel among my peers. Though, I suppose I hit a limit early on and ended up rather mediocre afterward. Does that have anything to do with trauma?"
"...Not exactly," Isolde replied. "But that institution, what was it called?"
"I don’t remember."
"...I see."
Julius’s answer was half a lie. In truth, he wasn’t entirely sure of his own psychological state after regression. And Isolde would never truly understand what he had gone through.
"Is there a problem?" he asked, noticing her expression tighten.
"Ah, no," she said after a moment, shaking her head. "Just... was this institution called Colors?"
"Colors..." Julius murmured, repeating the name as if it were foreign to him.
He quickly accessed SIBYL through his neural link and looked up Colors.
Apparently, Colors was an advanced psychiatric and developmental facility for children with special needs. However, it was decommissioned in 2134 following a series of investigations into unethical human experimentation.
He closed the feed after a few seconds. "I think it was. Yeah, sounds like it."
"Mister Schneider, this might sound strange, but... I think we’ve met before."
"...?"
"Colors... It was the first facility I ever worked in. I joined as an intern there. And it was during that time that I first developed the prototype for SIBYL."
"...."
It was a revelation he couldn’t help but meet with disbelief.