[2026]

“Cleaning up the filth.” Nyx says casually as he hands 5275 a new assignment. Assassinating former world leaders. Blackmailing oil tycoons. Secretly protecting radical activists. The war had officially been over for two years, but their work still continued.

Tomorrow morning 5275 would start another day in a new place targeting someone whose name she would be forced to forget. In the meantime though, she wasted time in the almost empty rec room.

The couch she sat on was worn thin and worn out by hundreds of people sitting on it. The once rough canvas was comfy like a well-loved tshirt. 5275 sat huddled in the corner drawing. Drawing then burning. Because no evidence of any kind was ever left over from their hits.

An assassin. I was once just an information gatherer. Not a killer. She laughed to herself thinking about how she went from a part-time illustrator to a killer. And here I am again, drawing and killing.

“What are you drawing this time, 5275?” Two soldiers, 4079 and 5184, walk up behind 5275 and look at her wrinkled piece of paper.

A small gasp escapes 4079 before he quickly covers his mouth. On the dirty sheet of paper, teeth and a full mustache snarl back at them. What looks like blood and spit crawls out from the corner of their mouth. And the lips, in an absurd and manic smile, show pieces of skin flaking off and cracking.

4079 stares at the drawing for a few moments before managing words and barely whispering. “Your drawings are always intense... and unforgiving, 5275.”

How can he still be surprised by death? That’s funny. 5275 thinks to herself.

The other man, 5184, says confidently, “I love them. They’re haunting. All your drawings are so life-like. But why do you draw if you just end up burning them anyway? What's the point?”

5275 moves the precious paper mouth towards her chest instinctually and away from their eyes. “Why do you bother talking if no one will listen to you? Why waste your breath?”

“It was a fucking honest question.”

“That was my honest answer and I didn’t mean it with any particular malice. I can’t tell you why I still draw, just like you can’t tell me why you still have the willpower to talk in a world that doesn’t care what you say. We both just do it. To feel alive? To feel like we exist? I don’t know why we do anything.”

“I think you do it because you feel guilty." 4079 says as if speaking to himself. "Do you feel guilty? Do you draw because you’re haunted?”

5275 brings the paper back down from her chest and stares at it. “No, I don’t feel haunted. I don’t feel anything. It just feels like a task. Something to do.”

“Have you ever read Fahrenheit 451, 4079?” She says as she uncrinkles the folded edges of the page with care.

“I don’t think I have. What does that have to do with this?” 5184 replies curtly. Still upset for being dismissed so exactly.

“The firemen in this book burn books. Because books in this time are considered dangerous.” 5275 holds up the piece of paper. “In the end, when the main character runs away from mainstream society, he finds a whole community of people that each have memorize books or pieces of books. They recognize that books themselves aren’t that important. It is the ideas within them.”

“This piece of paper is meaningless.” 5275 holds the piece of paper in her fist to the two soldiers.

“But I remember. I remember these little details of every life I’ve burned. Just because their life isn’t written down in some file doesn’t mean that they didn’t live. And just because I don’t have a trophy or a scar from their death doesn’t mean I didn’t kill them.”

She takes the piece of paper and holds it between her thumb and index finger. 5275 grabs her small lighter from her right pocket and lights it. 5275 watches it burn like she has watched hundreds of these pieces of paper burn before. The unnamed man’s snarl catches fire and the fire surrounding it makes it feel real again. A real face and not just a drawing.

Even though the flame is over in a flash, 5275 remains staring at her ash-covered fingers and says, “When they ask us what we're doing, you can say, We're remembering. That's where we'll win out in the long run. And someday we'll remember so much that we'll build the biggest goddamn steamshovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in it and cover it up.”

“That is the power of books and the power of memory.” 5275 says as she takes another small piece of paper out of pocket and begins drawing again.