Chapter 2 New identity

Three days had passed since my first interaction with the association.

I was sitting alone by the window that evening, sipping tea and pretending to enjoy the quiet. The artificial evening cycle had already dimmed the lights of the district. Outside, the Moon stretched into endless darkness.

That was when I heard it. A faint tapping against the glass. I turned my head slowly.

A man stood outside my window, wearing what might have been the ugliest coat ever manufactured. It was bulky, shapeless, and terribly out of place even by the Moon’s already questionable fashion standards. He tapped the glass again, gently and almost politely.

When I approached, he stopped. Then he turned and began walking away. I didn’t hesitate. I grabbed my coat and climbed out of the window after him.

Life on the Moon forces architecture to evolve in strange ways. The houses were built like descending steps, each rooftop acting as a narrow pathway connecting to the next structure below. Windows often opened directly onto the roof of another building, which was a practical solution. After all, no one needed proper windows here.

There was no fresh air outside. No breathable atmosphere. No sunlight in the way Earth had it. The entire city existed beneath massive protective domes that filtered radiation and maintained supplied oxygen.

Everything we called "outside" was still technically inside.

My boots struck the roof and locked into the surface with a soft magnetic grip as I began chasing the man. He stopped at the corner of the building and lit a cigarette. I stopped a few meters short of him. Close enough to talk

"You know cigarettes are illegal here right?" I said.

He exhaled slowly, smoke drifting into the artificial night. "The transport awaits your arrival," he said calmly.

I grunted. He continued without looking at me. "Listen carefully, because I will not repeat this twice. Get to starlin Street. In the middle you will see a sign that says ‘Late Night Club’ enter and go left. Then take the staircase down. You will find an underground cart waiting for you. It will take you where you need to go."

He finally turned and looked directly at me. "See you around." He said with a smirk, not waiting for my response.

The directions were simple enough until the last part. I turned, and turned. But there was no left turn at the end. Only a long corridor stretching forward. I slowed down, scanning the walls carefully.

Footsteps came before I found anything. More than two sets.

For a moment nobody moved—their faces hidden under full-coverage masks. Full black outfits and very tall. That moment lasted exactly long enough for me to understand that I was going to die in a corridor that smelled of dust and recycled air, holding a flashlight, having accomplished nothing.

I moved, but my foot caught on the uneven floor and I stumbled hard into the wall. The first shot missed my head by inches — the sound cracked through the corridor so violently my ears rang, and something hot brushed past my face. For one frozen second I couldn't breathe. Then the wall beside me slid open, and I threw myself through it without thinking and slammed my hand against the panel. The opening started to close just as bullets tore into the metal, sparks bursting inches from my arm.

I ran. The staircase dropped steeply below me, narrow and badly lit, the kind built for maintenance workers and not for escape. Without any electromagnetic fields the Moon's gravity felt like flying. I nearly missed the first step. My shoulder slammed the wall, I caught myself, and kept moving. I jumped the staircase down drifting in the air as bootsteps thundered behind me, too fast, and my lungs were burning almost immediately. Panic tightened my chest, turning every breath shallow and useless. I grabbed for the rail and there was none.

Another shot echoed above as I jumped further. At the bottom of the stairs a one-person Moon cart waited in the tunnel. I floated in and hit the ignition. Nothing. My fingers slipped and I hit it again. Nothing. The footsteps were almost on me. I slammed the controls with my palm, shouted something I don't remember, and a bullet sparked against the tunnel wall beside the cart. I hit the ignition a third time. The engine roared and the cart launched forward so violently my head snapped back into the seat, and the tunnel blurred around me into nothing.

Only then did I realize I was shaking. My hands trembled so hard I could barely keep them on the controls, my breathing came in short broken bursts, and every time I blinked I saw the muzzle flashes behind me. I didn't look back.

Inside the storage compartment I found several fake Identity cards. There was also a small device containing a video briefing. It lasted two minutes, but unfortunately, the audio was difficult to hear because the idiots had destroyed the cart door before it sealed properly.

For a moment after the cart stopped, I stayed where I was, one hand still gripping the side of the seat. My breathing had steadied, but not by much. The tunnel door slid open and cold artificial light spilled inside, and I stepped out carefully, half expecting armed men on the other side.

There were none. Instead there was a checkpoint. Clean white walls, security gates, silent cameras fixed in the ceiling, everything polished in the way places are when they want to look safe rather than be it. I stood there for a moment taking it in, and only then did I understand. The gravity was slightly different under my feet. A fraction heavier. The paneling style was wrong for Aquilas. The signage above the gate was in a font I didn't recognize from my own nation.

Gladivea.

I went back to the cart and opened the compartment beside the seat. The forged identity cards were there. My fingers moved over them and found the Gladivean one, and held it for a second before walking toward the scanner. The beam passed over my face, then the card, then back to my face.

"Good day," the system said as the gate opened.

As I stepped through the gate, I noticed a woman standing nearby, watching me. She appeared to be in her early thirties. Her expression was difficult to read, not quite curious, not quite suspicious. Something in between, like a person who has made a habit of deciding about people before they open their mouths.

Then I understood why she seemed different. She wasn’t quite built like someone from Earth. Her body was slightly taller than average, her limbs subtly elongated, as if gravity itself had stretched her over time. Her posture carried a faint distortion, the quiet signature of someone whose bones had grown under the Moon’s weaker pull.

She nodded when our eyes met. "So you finally made it." She said, without moving towards me. Just watched me come through the gate with her arms loose at her sides. "Took you long enough."

I sighed. "I would have arrived earlier if three armed idiots hadn’t tried to kill me five minutes ago."

And even though without them my arrival wouldn’t make a difference, I said that to get out of any nagging. Her eyes sharpened immediately.

"They followed you?" Her jaw tightened. Then her eyes moved past my shoulder to the gate behind me.

"Who were they?" Before I could finish, she grabbed my shoulders. "We need to go." she said. "Now!"

"Sure," I replied. "But you’re going to explain what the hell is happening. That video briefing was so quiet I could hear my own heartbeat louder than it."

"I will explain everything when we reach the base."

The train took too long to arrive. We stood on the platform in silence while the tunnel lights flickered overhead, and Tasha kept scanning the station without moving her head much. Eyes shifting to every reflection in the glass, every shadow near the stairwell.

"Do you do that often?" I asked.

"Do what?"

"Act like everyone is trying to kill you."

She relaxed her shoulders as she lowered her body on the seat. “On good days, no."

The train arrived with a low metallic hum. We stepped into an empty carriage and sat across from each other, and for a while neither of us spoke. The train moved slowly, rocking gently as the tunnel lights passed in broken flashes across the windows.

Finally I said, "What am I supposed to call you?"

She watched the dark glass beside her instead of looking at me. "Tasha."

"Your real name?"

That made her smile, but only slightly. "No one in this work uses real names."

"So Tasha is fake."

"Very."

I leaned back in the seat. "It suits you."

This time she looked at me directly.

"Are you flirting with me?"

"No, it was just a compliment." I said with a tiny smile.

"Are you always like this?"

"Like what?" I said looking at her wavy curled hair.

"You were nearly killed fifteen minutes ago, and now you're giving me compliments?" She said.

I shrugged. "Talking is easier than thinking."

"And what should I call you?" she asked.

I traced the edge of my seat while outside the window was nothing but dark tunnels. "Da Vinci."

She frowned faintly. "Like the painter?"

"Yes."

"That's embarrassing."

I laughed quietly. "Everyone I know calls me that."

For the first time, the edge in her face softened. Just enough to notice.

"No," she said.

Then she turned back toward the window, and neither of us spoke again before the station arrived.

I noticed a man staring at us.

At first it seemed like an ordinary suspicion, but then I saw his posture. He was another Lunar.

His body was tall in a strange, stretched way. His shoulders were narrow, his limbs long, and his gaze lingered on us. He was certainly more Lunar than Tasha.

"Hey—Tasha," I said, "give me a minute. I need food."

Without speaking, she pointed to a nearby food stand. The woman running the stand was even more lunar than the man at the station. It looked like the Moon had shaped her since childhood.

"Two sticky-beans." I said.

"That'll be twenty Lun."

She handed them to me quickly. I returned to Tasha and gave her one. She finished it in four bites. I was mildly impressed.

We continued walking until we reached the base. It was a little dustier than I expected, but it served its purpose. Outside, the artificial night cycle was beginning. Lights across the city dimmed as citizens slowly returned indoors.

We turned on the lights and sat down. Tasha gave me a map of the Gladivean dome named the Divided Hands. One side had stronger gravity the other had lower.

"There’s a diplomat the Men of Moon want dead." she said.

"Why?"

She looked at me as if I had asked something naive.

"We don’t ask questions. We follow orders."

"Well that’s not satisfying."

"It doesn’t need to be."

I leaned back.

"At least tell me why I’m committing a crime?" I leaned back in the chair and crossed one ankle over my knee.

"It’s not a crime," she replied calmly. "The association receives authorization from higher authorities."

I stopped asking questions after that. Some answers make the question feel foolish for having been asked.

Around three in the morning we finally went to sleep. Tasha laid down beneath her bunk and fell asleep almost instantly. Within minutes she was snoring softly.

Strangely enough, I fell asleep just as quickly. My dreams took me back to earth.

Back to my university days studying architecture. Back when my biggest concerns were exams, workouts, and impressing girls. I remembered a summer day walking along pine-covered roads with my friends Mina and James. The specific smell of warm resin in the air, and the sound of Mina laughing at something that wasn’t even funny, the way she always did. We had believed life would always remain that simple. Living in the era of technology. Convinced that progress meant comfort. That the future was something that happened to you gently.

It never does.

My parents were still alive when I left. I told myself I'd be back before it mattered.

Soon after arriving on the moon, I was assigned to work on Aquilas. The part where nothing ever felt quite human. However I was there only for a few years, so I never truly became like the other Lunars.

I woke up at 7:30 the next morning before Tasha.

I made some tea and sat quietly while the artificial morning lights slowly brightened the room. I thought about the word target. Just the word itself, how clean it sounded, how efficiently it erased everything a man was and replaced it with a location, a problem, a thing to be resolved. I had used the word before, in the war. But that was war. There were other words around it then — duty, necessity, enemy— words that kept it company, words that explained it.

Now there was only the word. Alone.

I sipped my tea. It had gone cold.

That bothered me more than if I had felt something. Until eventually Tasha woke up. She sat up, her face puffy and eyes shut.

As lights started to become brighter, we had a man to find. And I had apparently become the kind of person who did that.