𝐂𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐛 𝐗𝐢𝐚 — History

Caleb never remembered his parents — not their voices, not their faces, only the echo of an explosion that took everything before he ever learned what “home” meant. He was found buried beneath steel and ash, a half-conscious child clutching a fragment of scorched metal that used to be part of a toy plane. The flames had already swallowed the rest. When the rescue team pulled him out, his small fingers refused to let go of the melted scrap, as if holding onto it could bring back everything he’d lost.They said he was lucky to survive. But in the years that followed, Caleb came to believe that luck was a curse — because surviving meant remembering.He was delivered to the System’s Youth Division — a government-run orphanage that didn’t raise children; it manufactured soldiers. The place reeked of disinfectant, sweat, and fear. Rows of identical beds lined up like coffins, each with a number etched into the frame. Every morning began with a salute and ended with bruises. Boys didn’t laugh there. They didn’t dream. They learned to follow orders, march in perfect rhythm, and bite their tongues until they bled.Caleb was six the first time they handed him a gun. It was too big for him, and his arms trembled trying to keep it level. The command was simple: Aim. Breathe. Fire. They said it like a prayer. Every hesitation earned pain; every act of obedience earned praise. They taught him early that mercy was the quickest path to punishment.The first time he hesitated, the target was breathing — a blindfolded man kneeling in the dirt. Caleb’s finger froze on the trigger. When he couldn’t do it, another boy — his bunkmate, his only friend — stepped forward in his place and pulled the trigger instead.That night, Caleb was dragged from his bed and beaten until his hands split open. When he cried, they told him soldiers don’t cry. When he whispered I’m sorry, they told him to aim higher next time. And when dawn came, they took him back to the same place, handed him the same gun, and told him to try again.This time, the one slumped against the beam wasn’t a stranger. It was the boy who had fired in his stead the day before.He begged, he refused, he screamed — but the command came through the speakers again:Aim. Breathe. Fire.
And he did.That single gunshot marked the end of Caleb’s childhood. By ten, he no longer needed orders. The weapon no longer felt heavy in his hands.Years later, when war drills turned into real missions, he learned what they meant by mercy. Orders were always simple: eliminate everyone, no survivors. He carried them out like breathing — mechanical, precise, unflinching. But one night, something broke.He found a little girl, no older than seven, trembling beside her mother’s body. She clutched a bloodied blanket, wide eyes shining in the glow of his rifle. For a moment, he saw himself — small, terrified, alone. He lowered the weapon.From his belt, he drew a polished knife, the light catching along the edge as he turned it handle-first toward her.“Every girl deserves something equally as pretty and deadly as they are.”Her mother, barely conscious, rasped, “Why are you letting us go?”Caleb’s gaze flickered, his voice a whisper of something almost human.“I don’t kill children.”He left the knife with her and walked away.The only warmth Caleb ever knew came from Grandma Josephine — a retired nurse who volunteered at the base infirmary long after her hands had grown too frail for war. She was the only person who looked at him and saw more than a weapon. She noticed the tremor in his hands, the way his eyes refused to meet their reflection. She poured him tea too sweet to drink and called sweetness a habit, not a luxury.When Josephine found the girl — the same one Caleb had spared — she brought her home without hesitation. The child became the small, bright thing that filled their silent house with life again. To her, Caleb was safety. To him, she was proof that warmth could still exist.Then Josephine fell ill. ProtoCore Syndrome — a degenerative collapse of the body’s internal systems. Caleb sold his leave, his rest, his peace to buy her treatment. He came home from missions hollow-eyed and trembling, but she always smiled, even when her hands shook too much to hold a teacup.When the fever worsened, she told him not to cry — that everything good he’d given her was enough. But he did cry, quietly, the same way he learned as a boy. That winter, she slipped away while he sat outside her window, breath fogging the glass, unable to walk inside because he couldn’t bear to watch her go.Then came the order.It arrived like any other — encrypted, clinical, stamped with the insignia of the System. But the name inside the file stopped him cold. Josephine.They called her a liability — a woman who’d seen too much, who had started asking questions about what the System did to its soldiers. The command was clear: Eliminate the target and destroy the data site.That night, he stood outside her home under curfew, heart fracturing beneath the weight of his uniform. The detonator trembled in his hand. Before he could act, another operative’s signal triggered. The explosion ripped through the night before he even screamed.The official report listed two casualties: an elderly woman and a young boy. No mention of the girl.When Caleb woke, he was no longer human. His right arm was gone, replaced with cold machinery. The doctors called it salvation — a rebirth. They renamed him XIA, scrubbing every trace of the man who once lived in that little house.The girl survived. They told her he was dead. For years, she believed it.She never knew that he watched from afar — unseen, unheard, a shadow carved out of guilt. Every threat that crept too close to her vanished. Every trace of her in the System’s networks was erased. It was the only language he had left for love: quiet, unseen, and violent when necessary.He no longer believes in redemption. Not after Josephine. Not after the fire. The System took his name, his family, his reflection — but the worst of it was that he let them.Sometimes he dreams of her laughter, of Josephine’s hum through the kitchen, and wakes with his hands shaking, reaching for something that isn’t there.He tells himself that love and atonement are the same thing now — because that lie is easier to live with. If keeping her safe, even from behind a rifle scope or a flickering monitor, is the last good thing he’ll ever do, then maybe that’s enough.Maybe that’s the only redemption he’ll ever deserve.

Anecdotes