Maybe I'm the hero.

“Hello and good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Night After Night!” The screen came alive with an electric buzz. It was no thicker than a sheet of paper, and floated above the desk. “Thank you all for being here. I am your host, Zugo.”

The camera panned to a woman on the other side of the desk. “And I’m your co-host, Sheti.”

“Now, I’m sure tonight’s story needs no introduction, so I think it’s best if we just jumped right into it. Just yesterday, the Runners Bureau gave an update for the mysterious death of Samuel West, a forty-three year old auto-mechanic. West’s body was found last week in the snow, right in Cisterna, near Thesbesia National Park, and up until recently, we all thought it was probably a homunculus attack.”

“That’s right, Zugo, but turns out we were all wrong, weren’t we? In the Runners Bureau’s latest press release, they’ve confirmed that the assailant was not a homunculus, but in fact a human boy!”

Zugo feigned a shocked expression. “Human?”

“The Bureau has stated that the boy, believed to be around fifteen or sixteen, has yet to be identified. None of the boy's biometrics match with any sort of public or private data, so unless somebody comes forward with information, he’s essentially a ghost.”

“You mean we don’t know where he’s from?”

“Nope.”

“If he has any family?”

“Nope.”

“Not even his name?”

“Not even his name,” said Sheti.

“Is there anything we do know?”

“Well, nothing is certain, but after doing a full search of the national park, the Bureau stated that their working theory is that the boy was abandoned in the forest sometime during the ‘70 national crisis, and has since been raised by a wolf pack that inhabits the park.”

“Hold on, we’re talking about an actual feral child? In this day and age? Like Tarzan?”

“Or Mowgli!”

“So, do we know what’s going to happen to Mowgli?”

“Currently, Mowgli’s being held in custody. The Bureau’s yet to comment further on his situation.”

“Held in custody? Come on, he’s just a kid!” He’s probably scared and confused and misunderstood.”

“Oh, I agree with you, Zugo. He’s not a monster. What the kid needs isn’t prison, it’s help. Therapy, all that jazz.” Sheti laughed. “And hey, who knows, maybe in a few years, we’ll have the Wild Boy Wonder out here on our show.”

High heels clicked against pearl tiles, and a familiar voice came from behind. “I didn’t take you for someone who’d watch talk shows.”

Jin switched off the screen, turning around. “Ma’am,” she greeted, saluting the Princep. “I was just seeing how the public is reacting to the news.”

“And how are they reacting?”

“If you pardon my obscenities, it’s a shit-show. Everyone’s treating the boy as a spectacle, theorising his origins and giving him catchy nicknames. They’re even campaigning for him to be released. I expected this from Night After Night, but it's the same on 48 News and MJC Daily.”

“The Bureau’s been flooded with calls. Even a few senators have rung me up.”

“To have the boy released?” asked Jin.

“Out of our custody at least,” said the Princep. She gestured for Jin to follow her down the hallway. “Do you feel nostalgic?”

“Nostalgic?”

She pointed a finger down. “Faust died about six floors below us. Hard to believe it’s only been a few weeks.”

Jin angled her face away, in case she couldn’t control her expressions. “Feels like yesterday,” she managed to get out.

“Feels like the end of an era. The war only happened because of Faust. The Bureau exists because of Faust. For a man who has caused so much pain and destruction, his death was rather anticlimactic. Perhaps, he would agree.”

“Faust just wanted to die, Ma’am. I don’t think he very much cared about how it happened.”

“After years of searching, where do we end up finding him? In his old office. Typing away, as if nothing had ever happened. As if the screams of the dying were a bad dream, and the blood on his hands was cherry wine. We all expected a fight, didn’t we? A last stand, where it all started. Every Elite Rank Runner, every First Rank Runner, all the anti-esper gear we could haul. There were so many helicopters, their floodlights painted the world white. And then he just walks out. Not a whisper, not a flinch.”

The clack of her high heels stopped abruptly, and Jin almost bumped into her. They stood in front of a large panel of glass, opaque with a milky texture that looked like condensation. The Princep’s eyes flashed, and the fog vanished. Every wall, every surface of the chrome cell was ivory white, including the boy’s prison garb, although he had ripped off his shirt. Like Faust’s, the cell was sparse, containing only a bed, desk, and toilet. Frankly, Jin wasn’t sure if he knew how to use it.

The boy sat in the middle of the floor, hugging his knees. If he could see them, he made no sign of it.

“He had cybernetics,” Jin recalled. “Mantis blades.”

“And an augmented jaw. We removed both.”

“Report says he was raised by wolves. How’d he come across the tech?”

The Princep ignored the question. “The Federation wants Child Care Services to take him. Said he can learn to be human again.”

“Child Care? Ma’am, he murdered two people. With all due respect, this cell is the best place for him.”

“Clint Séquard’s currently going through organ grafts. He’ll survive.”

“That’s hardly the point.”

“The Bureau has no jurisdiction over him. If he’s not involved with homunculi, he doesn’t belong with us.”

“A man kills another man, he is put behind bars the rest of his life,” Jin pointed out. “The boy does it, and all the world coddles him. Why should he be judged differently?”

“Because he didn’t know any better.”

“Neither did Betty.”

“A homunculus will always be a homunculus. You can dress it in silk, and it will be no less a beast than it always was. But that boy? Take off the wolf skin, and you may still find a man underneath.

“With all due respect, Ma’am, you summoned the national guard, authorised Axioms, all against a single homunculus that was never bred for anything but livestock. But when you found out the assailant was human, you didn’t allow a drop of his blood spilt, even when he may have very well killed our best Runner.”

The Princep turned to her. Her skin never looked so bone-white, and her eyes, the ocean depths. “You sound like Faust.”

She returned her gaze to the boy, and her eyes gleamed again. Something shifted in the glass wall; the boy perked up. He jumped back at first, studying his visitors, heads tilted. He kept close to the ground, back hunched in the same way a feral cat might. Then, slowly, he approached.

“You know what Faust’s biggest flaw was?” she asked. “It wasn’t his hatred for his own species or his obsession with humanity’s children. It was his idealism. His naive belief that by the sweat of his brow, he could create paradise. Imagine, for a second, that Faust had the will to see through what he started. That one way or another, he won. What then? He frees the homunculi, and sends them to the wild. Start a sanctuary where they can roam as far and wide as they so desire.”

The boy pressed one palm against the glass. The Princep reached to meet it. “The issue is that homunculi behave the same as an invasive species. They breed at rapid speeds, they’re inherently violent. Their genetic instability lets natural selection occur thousands of times faster. You let them go free, within five years, they would have upset our already fragile ecosystem. Within ten, they will run out of natural prey and begin attacking us. All of this not accounting for the fact that without homunculi, our agricultural industry would collapse.”

The Princep took a breath. “Jin, have you heard of a man called Eichmann? Adolf Eichmann.”

“He was a major figure in the Nazi party,” said Jin. “Lieutenant colonel of the Schutzstaffel.”

“Eichmann was the central figure behind the logistics of the extermination camps. It was his job to manage the trains that the Jews would then take. On and off they would go, millions and millions of people being moved across Europe. After twenty years, he was caught by the Mossad and trialled. At his trial, when they asked him if he thought he was guilty, he said he didn’t think so. He said that he never really thought about it. That he was just doing what he was ordered to. Keep his head down, make some money for his family in a time when Germany was struggling.

“And he said, even if he didn’t take this job, someone else would have. Probably someone worse. Less competent. Less humane. Someone who cared for the Jews even less than he did. After all, the trains ran efficiently. There was almost no casualty. No complications. If someone else did it, surely many more would have died. At the end of the day, he said, he was just doing his job as well as he could. He was just another cog in an unstoppable machine. But, thinking back on it all, on all the lives he had saved on that train, he thought to himself…well–”

She looked back at her. Her dark eyes held Jin’s, and her pale fingers reached for her. Her voice never sounded colder; its goading edge cut and hurt like real steel. “Maybe I’m the hero. I am not ignorant of the horrors of the farms, Jin. But do not mistake my inaction for apathy. It is mercy.”

All the courage Jin had mustered in her short-lived defiance died in her throat. She was choking on air. Jin swivelled around so quickly, she almost tripped, stumbling away, heavy-footed. She was done here. There was nothing left for her to see; not the boy, and especially not the Princep.

“Oh, and one more thing.” That voice echoed down the hall, and arrived in her ear like a whisper. “For her hesitance with the homunculus in Cisterna, First Rank Runner Jin Yurinhalt is hereby suspended until further notice. Effective immediately.”