Phoenix

"What's this? Captain Fenix staring at a phoenix?"

"That's a nice homonym Fahz. You just think of it yourself?"

"…the fuck's a homonym?"

J.D. didn't laugh. It wasn't that he didn't find some humour in Fahz's ignorance of grammar, but it wasn't nearly enough to get laughter to emerge. Besides, standing in the ruins of Settlement 4, there wasn't much to laugh at. Not unless one took humour from seeing destroyed bodies and mutilated corpses.

"Never mind," he murmured. He gestured to Fahz and the platoon to follow him. "Come on."

He turned away from the banner and led the Gears down the street. Torn between his desire to keep his eyes facing straight ahead, and from the need to check his corners. The street they were on was relatively clean. The rubble of the buildings, and the bodies piled around them? Not so much. And all the while, the image of the tattered banner hung in his mind. The gear of the Coalition of Ordered Governments, with two wings spreading upwards from it. A phoenix, apparently, perhaps designed to symbolize the COG's re-emergence from the ashes. Funny then, that the old COG had lasted for over ninety years before being disbanded towards the end of the Locust War. The new COG wasn't even looking at three decades the way things were going.

"Hold."

The squad obeyed his command as they approached a roundabout. At the centre were marble statues of a woman holding a vase (purity), surrounded by cherubs (new life). Or so J.D. understood. By some quirk of fate, even if the waters of the fountain had stopped flowing, the architecture itself was intact. Shame that the waters were blood-red with the bodies of humans and Swarm alike.

They didn't linger long. Four "clears" reached his ears and they continued on their way. Settlement 2 had fallen in less than twenty-six hours. Settlement 4 had fallen in less than three. Without the DeeBees, the COG had no way of holding onto its territories effectively, least not those spread out this far from New Ephyra. He-

"Fenix."

…looked at Fahz, who'd come walking up beside him.

"Your head in the game?"

He glared at him. "Why wouldn't it be?"

"Well, when you're in a coma, and when you get a nice new haircut, and a new…" He looked at J.D.'s right arm. "…tattoo, man tends to change a bit."

J.D. snorted. "When did you change Fahz?"

"Oh, men like me don't change. Which makes me good at seeing people who think they've changed, but really haven't."

J.D.'s glare deepened. He knew what Fahz was talking about. He didn't have to say it, because Fahz knew he knew. And likewise knew that he'd never forgive him.

"Did you a favour Fenix. Dad was COG. Mum was COG. You're COG, no matter how long you hung out with anarchists."

J.D. grunted. He wanted to punch Fahz. To smash those glasses he always wore off his face, break them, then break his bloody nose like one of the protestors at Settlement 2 did before… He winced, and let the pad covering his right arm deliver another dose of anti-inflammatories.

"Just keep your head on straight Fenix," Fahz said. "Ugly as it is, we need all of them in this fight."

That might be the most intelligent thing you've said all day. J.D. glanced back at the fountain. Thinking of the day in Settlement 2. Thinking of the way Del and Kait had looked at him when the truth came out. Listening to Liz scream as the Hammer of Dawn incinerated her. Waking up, and finding no-one at his bedside. And thinking right now, of the tattered banner he'd seen earlier. A phoenix. A bird that was reborn from the ashes.

Walking through the ashes now, he was left to ask if anyone could come back from this.